Video Ethics and Staging -Jennifer Elston

I agree completely with David Wertheimer's article "Staged, Staging, Stages."  Staging of any kind should not be permitted in journalism.  We, as journalists, are there to show the truth and should keep our impact as minimal as possible. Wertheimer suggests using wireless mics and long lenses and then he "tries to be a fly on the wall and just capture it all naturally."  I have to admit that sometimes it is tempting to want to ask a subject to repeat themselves or redo their action, but that is not true.  It is not reality.  When photographers and videographers do this, journalism gets a bad reputation and many viewers start to believe that news is faked for convenience.  The best natural sound, clips, and photographs are actually not staged.   When filming a subject, film at eye level so that the viewers do not get a wrong psychological image from the shot. 

As far as video editing ethics go, editing should be invisible but it should definitely not be used as a way to create bias.  Cuts should not be used to tell anything but the truth.  Editing techniques should be transparent and not as a tool to create bias or to falsify information in any way.