There are cameras everywhere — and it’s going to be OK.
I probably speak for many fellow members of the media industry when I say I love cameras. They bring facts and images to people in so many ways, and tell stories that would be difficult using only words. As conveyors of messages of hope and beauty, and watchdogs who show the public how those in power live and operate, the lens is a tremendous tool.
However, the digital revolution has placed lenses in the hands of the general public and organizations and businesses more than ever before. What used to seem like a detailed espionage arrangement is now simply the security-camera system of a campus; the devices James Bond or Star Trek used as props are now real-life communications used by most people out and about in public.
That’s why I’d like to see us all embrace being photographed or videoed as a normal, everyday part of life. Not only is it normal for news organizations and their representatives to be out on the street, creating images that might have news value, but it’s also normal to see your friends, family and neighbors with their phones out, trying to capture what they feel is noteworthy.
The idea that who is taking the video or photo, and for what purpose, is a cause for alarm, seems natural enough. However, there seems to be so many legitimate business and legal reasons to record images that one cannot simply assume ill will for having a camera in hand — especially out in public.
Parents will most likely always be protective of their children in a way that prompts them to at least ask a stranger why they’re photographing children, unless it’s an obvious time and place. It really helps when media have logos, vehicles and clothing that identifies them by organization, and it helps even more if media explains to adults what’s going on.
As we get further into the 2016 presidential campaign, Iowans are going to see more and more unidentified media, bloggers and party or campaign staff with cameras. Not all of them are going to announce who they’re with, or why they are here, and some will be confronted, while others will simply look out of place.
To some, it might look out of place to see a local newspaper reporter or photographer in certain places around town or out on a highway or in the country. Maybe folks who see one of us with camera in hand don’t think the scene has news value, or don’t want an embarrassing moment captured. That’s where our judgment is used in weighing news value against the emotions and reputations of everyone involved.
More often than not, a journalist is going to click the shutter. Images and video can always be deleted or not published, but if you don’t record it, those choices never exist.
If your neighbors can see what you’re doing from a public street, so can anyone with a camera phone; if you’re quietly in your home with the shades drawn, you have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Drones will pose a different type of challenge. Not only will there be as many types of private, public and cooperate individuals operating drones in the future as there are with camera phones now, drones are basically helicopters that can go almost anywhere, and there is a lot to figure out in that realm.
People have said to reporters “You guys want to sell a lot of papers” — as if that were a bad thing — and don’t realize the human component of journalism. We try to put ourselves in a reader’s spot, and sometimes, we think of a public event as camera-worthy — just as your Aunt Ruthie might think a potato salad and a family picnic is worthy of a photo.
Contact Jason W. Brooks at 641-792-3121 ext. 6532 or jbrooks@newtondailynews.com