Author: William A. Babcock

Editor’s Note: Print media sets regrettable trend on corrections

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by William A. Babcock / My Paris correspondent had trouble walking, chewing gum and correctly using the English language. Heck, he didn’t even have to be meandering with a Dentyne wad in his mouth to muck up his mother tongue. I knew this, as I should, being his state­side editor. So imagine my great joy when I saw I’d be editing three Page 1 stories for the next day’s paper, and knowing that his would be the last one to arrive at my desk, and thus giving me a grand total of 10 minutes, tops, to edit his piece.

The missed photo that wasn’t

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BY WILLIAM A. BABCOCK / Dozens of the United States’ best sports photo journalists are not vying today – Friday – to take the Major League Baseball photo of the year. That photo would have shown Terry Francona, the manager of the Cleveland Indians, walking past the “green monster” wall in Boston’s Fenway Park, wearing the most politically incorrect baseball cap on the planet. That would be the blue cap with a red bill, featuring a horribly stereotyped, toothy red-faced Native American nickname Chief Wahoo, sporting a large feather in his hair.

Good news, bad news from Cleveland

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Cleveland is used to bad press. First there was the water: The Cuyahoga River caught on fire in the1960s and Lake Erie was pronounced “dead.” Then there’s sports: LeBron James flees the city, the Browns fail to win a single Super Bowl and the Indians are the second-worst baseball team on the planet. Then along comes Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight. Theirs should be a happy-ending story to end all happy-ending stories. Held captive in a Cleveland house for some 10 years, they finally escape. Alas, it’s not that simple.

Pointing and clicking is not enough

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AFP photographer Emmanuel Dunard’s photo of a praying Aline Marie at a Newtown, Conn., church brings up an issue where many photojournalists and members of the public disagree. Marie considered her praying outside the St. Rose of Lima church on the night of the shootings to be a private moment. She says she “felt like a zoo animal” when she realized that a number of photographers from across the nation and world were photographing her. In this and other similar circumstances, photojournalists often seem to think that a good photo trumps a person’s privacy. Accordingly, they often hide behind the “I’m shooting from a public space” rationale to justify their actions. But the “public space” position is a legal argument – and one that most members of the public either do not understand or with which they disagree.