President Obama with a long gray beard.
The Pope with a black, rather than a white, robe.
Gymnast Simone Biles performing her routines in a dress.
Ridiculous?
Not with Photoshop.
Rare is the person who does not know at this advanced stage of the computer revolution that any photograph can be electronically altered in any way.
In a photograph, Obama can sport a beard; the Pope, a black robe; and Biles, a 1910 gown.
That a photo is not necessarily a representation of the image that the photographer captured is now a truism. In the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley long ago, Jack Weinberg said, “Don’t trust anyone over 30.” Today, we may say, “Don’t trust any photograph” — unless, that is, you know the ethics of the photographer (and editor).
If the country could carry this truism over to videos, a lot of violence could well be precluded.
Item: Policeman shoots unarmed civilian dead.
“Of course! I saw it on the video.”
“I saw it before my own eyes.”
“It went viral. Everybody knows it.”
“It’s totally public knowledge.”
“What’s there to talk about? It happened.”
True enough, it is not so easy to alter a video as it is to alter a picture, not to mention that the point of capturing moments of violence on video is to dispatch them electronically ASAP. Even so, lessons from Photoshop are in order.
A video can be taken from a certain angle, a fallacious one.
A video can omit certain contextual happenings.
A video can blur certain relevant images.
In sum, a video is not necessarily trustworthy as an accurate, or, at least, a complete image of what happened.
Yet, with a video of violence having gone viral, the burden of proof is wholly removed from the victim of violence. That’s the way videos work.
Was the victim violent before or after the moment captured on video? Were other actors in play, not captured on the video? Were other weapons present, or absent, not captured on the video?
Was the video shot with a bias, similar to the Photoshopper who brings a bias to his alterations of a photograph?
Just like a photograph, a video can be perfectly accurate and can serve as a vital piece of evidence in a criminal case — but not always, and not necessarily. The images on a video must be independently verified, just like virtually every other piece of evidence in a criminal confrontation. Sometimes the verification is easy and quick; sometimes not. The point: Initial skepticism, rather than instant condemnation, is in order.
Our technologically aware society should develop the same — call it what you want: skepticism, cynicism, sophistication — about videos of confrontations between police and civilians that it has developed about photographs.
We might well save ourselves a lot of spontaneous violence, advance the cause of truth and more accurately get the genuine criminals, on both sides of the police-civilian divide, behind bars.
Copyright © 2016 by the Intermountain Jewish News
