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Tags : google, journalism, street view
Did Google Cross a Moral Line?
There’s been a lot of talk in the blogosphere today about the role of PR in the modern tech world. Well, here’s a case where a company may need it — albeit, in a very different sense.
A Google Street View driver snapped a shot of a drunken man passed out in the street in Australia. The photo made its way onto the service, and now the story is making its way around the Internet.
In a nutshell, the driver didn’t stop.
He passed a man lying in the street, not moving — snapped a photo, and kept going.
Ouch.
Thankfully, the guy’s okay. But it sure didn’t look like he was when that photo was snapped.
For what it’s worth, the man tells the UK’s Daily Mail his friend had just died, and he had had too much to drink as a result. He’s not planning to file an official complaint.
The scenario raises an interesting question that comes up often in the world of journalism: Did the driver have a responsibility to get involved? If we consider the driver a “photojournalist” of sorts, should he have stopped his job and stepped in? It’s something I’ve heard discussed in plenty of newsrooms over the years.
Sure, the general mantra is that a journalist never gets involved — he’s an invisible party, just observing and reporting the facts. Getting involved could change the story.
With that being said, any reasonable journalist will tell you that if a person’s life is in danger, and they’re in a unique position to help, they would drop their camera and do it in a heartbeat. Now, I’m not talking about being at a fire where rescuers are doing the job. I’m talking about being — well, on an empty street where a guy is lying in the road helpless and potentially in grave danger. That man could have died from alcohol poisoning or been hit by a car.
I, for one, am shocked to see that Google’s Street View driver didn’t stop to help — or, at the very least, make a quick call to 911 to get someone there who could. It’s immoral, and just plain embarrassing. Forget whether the driver was a photojournalist, a technician, or a graphic artist. He was also a human being — and sometimes, that has to come first.
(Image: Daily Mail Online)
On FriendFeed, this post was liked by 1 person and commented on 12 times hide-
"Sure, the general mantra is that a journalist never gets involved — he’s an invisible party, just observing and reporting the facts. Getting involved could change the story." -- Interesting contrast to another story a few days ago where you took the opposite side.
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Jason, I was just talking general mantras in that section you quoted -- not personal philosophies. But which story from a few days ago came to mind?
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@JR The "Thomas Hawk" vs. SFMOMA story
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It's possible - however unlikely - that the driver didn't even notice the guy. It's not like he's manually snapping pictures as he goes along. The unit automatically takes panoramic photos and the guy driving it just keeps on moving.
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@Jason -- gotcha...that was actually Duncan's post, not mine. Still, curious to hear your take on the whole thing. Personally, I think *most* people tend to lean more toward the human side of things and insert some level of involvement, even if they're on a journalistic mission. It's hard to separate yourself as a person -- whether the act in question is stepping in to help, showing a level of emotion, or whatever else. All of us are human, after all. Or most of us, anyway. :)
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Oh, I agree in this case that if they driver saw the guy (and I agree with Nathaniel that he may not have) then he should have seen if he needed help. In the TH case, though, TH has a habit of making himself the story to try to become the martyr of photography.
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FriendFeed really needs to do something about multi-author blogs and by-lines... Everything from The Inquistr comes in under Duncan Riley's account....
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FriendFeed has a way to handle multi-author blogs. Perhaps Duncan just screwed it up? :)
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Jason -- agreed...they're two interesting contrasts. In this case, I'd love to hear from the Google driver -- though I can't imagine that we will. I think things get trickier in more gray situations as far as journalistic involvement. Say, for example, you're a photojournalist and you're shooting video of someone's possessions being washed away by floodwater. Do you get the shot, or do you help them get their stuff back?
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Those types of scenarios always make for great newsroom discussions...largely because there's really not necessarily a "right" answer in every instance.
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That's not FriendFeed... that's Duncan. You can set up your feeds as mutli-author blogs and then pull by name, which is why only my content comes up from The Standard instead of everything.
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Reminds me of the great Frontline (http://pastoid.com/3c+) episode Basic Instincts where the cameraman captures a brutal beating on film and it doesn't occur to him until hours later that maybe he could have done something.
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