It's been hard to move in the UK recently for the media handwringing and mea culpas at the discovery of an apparent spate of deception in the TV industry. First, the Queen didn't storm out from her photo session with Annie Leibowitz; and now it appears that a man's death of Alzheimer's that was shown on television earlier this week was not in fact his death. The chief philosophical question this raises is: what it to be honest when you are editing a documentary?
The cases of the Queen and of the Alzheimer's sufferer are relatively straightforward. In both cases, something was shown as happening when in fact it did not. And it seems reasonable to think that this is dishonest.
But what should our criteria for honesty in editing be? A documentary - if it is to have anything like a popular appeal - needs a story arc. It needs to introduce characters, get us involved in their fates, and interested enough to see how their story develops. But clearly the subjects of the documentary will be ordinary people, with messy ordinary lives which do not usually conform to the dictates of a well structured narrative. So it looks like the very process of structuring someone's life into a coherent narrative will involve a kind of falsification. So what is to be done?
One option might be to think of editing as a form of interpretation, and transform the question of truth in editing into one of truth in interpretation. But it looks like it will be forbiddingly difficult to flesh out an account of what it is for an interpretation to be correct. So, currently I'm becoming increasingly tempted by the thought that we should pass the buck on the problem of truth here, and focus our moral attention instead on ensuring that no one is wronged by the documentary that results. So long as no one has a reasonable complaint about the way they have been portrayed, we need not worry about the truth in this context.
Showing posts with label Deception. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Deception. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
Media Ethics and Deception
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Ethics of Deception in Research & FreudPops!
Advances in the History of Psychology have an excellent post giving a Bibliography of The Use of Deception in Research
It is a fairly comprehensive list, and roams far outside the usual ethics journals. You might be wondering why is there a picture of Freud as a lollipop in this post? Well Advances in the History of Psychology also introduced me to the fact that Archie McPhee are now selling Freud Headpops just mildly disturbing...
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