[Avodah] Halachic Analysis: The Hillary Photo Controversy

[T613K at aol.com]

>> From the perspective of midevar sheqer tirchaq, the caption  should have
>> read something like " ... (Secr. Clinton's image removed  from the 
photo.)"
>> To mislead people into thinking this was the  actual scene (even if the
>> scene was set up for the photo-up) is  halachically problematic, no?

> Why should it be?  How is anyone  harmed by not seeing the whole set-up
> photo? ...[--RZS]

I'm  talking about midevar sheqer tirchaq, and you are answering me
in terms of  hezeq. Lying (leshaqeir) is assur. Misrepresenting the
truth without an  outright lie (leshanos) is only mutar in specific
circumstances:

--  
Micha  Berger              
micha at aishdas.org         







>>>> 
Niether "midvar sheker tirchak" nor any other halachic issur or hashkafic  
problem attach to the alteration of photos that are printed in newspapers, 
with  the exception of photos that are /intended/ to mislead, e.g., printing 
a picture  of a yeshiva bochur who has been bloodied by Arabs with the 
caption, "Arab boy  beaten by Israeli police."  
 
Aside from such /intentional falsification/, no other type of alteration is 
 in any way problematic from a Torah point of view, since in this day and 
age  /everyone/ knows about photo-shopping, photo-cropping, changing the 
background  scenery, showing just one person, enlarged, cropped from a photo 
that originally  showed a group, etc etc etc.  It is perfectly well understood 
by all  literate people that photographs in newspapers are altered in myriad 
ways every  day -- enlarged, lightened, darkened, faces blurred out to 
protect witnesses,  etc etc etc etc.  
 
In the case of the particular photo presently under discussion, it was  
originally released purportedly as a photo of Important People in the Situation 
 Room, watching the take-down of Osama in real time.  As subsequently  
reported in the NY Times and many other newspapers, the SEAL invasion of the OBL 
 compound was /not/ seen in Washington in real time and the photo was 
itself,  therefore, a misrepresentation of what actually happened.  "Mrs.Clinton 
has  said she does not recall what they were  watching.... it falls
short of  what photography, at its best,  historically has been thought to 
do:  present the  truth."   (NY Times, see _http://tinyurl.com/3r56z8n_ 
(http://tinyurl.com/3r56z8n) )


Of course in the computer age, "present the truth" is exactly what  
photography no longer does, and even the NYT knows that ("historically" "at its  
best").   To attack a tiny-circulation Jewish paper for doing what it  always 
does -- delete photos of women -- is completely disingenuous and has  
nothing to do with halacha.   Personally I find the policy of deleting  women 
distasteful, but this full-throated attack on one tiny Jewish  newspaper is much 
worse than distasteful -- it is reprehensible.   Especially when the 
alleged "chillul Hashem" is being perpetrated and  disseminated by Orthodox Jews 
themselves,  who are blackening the name of  fellow Jews under the guise of 
disassociating themselves from the alleged  [non-existent] chillul Hashem.
 
Non-Jewish media only picked up and magnified the story after secular  
Jewish media, and later Orthodox media, picked it up and made "much ado about  
nothing."  In this case, literally NOTHING: an unfilled space in a  
photograph, which itself was a photograph of nothing.  Just some people  looking at 
nobody remembers what.  All the talk talk talk created a story  where there 
had been none, and it may be that the very discussion, especially  the 
negative discussion and condemnation, itself is a transgression of "lo  selech 
rachil be'amecha."
 
 

--Toby Katz
================





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