‘Stay back for your own safety’: News photographers, interference, and the photographs they are prevented from taking

Abstract

This exploratory, mixed-methods study uses semi-structured interviews to identify the sources of interference that news photographers encounter and then, using survey research, assesses these interferences’ prevalence. It also uses interview and survey data to identify photographs that photographers are prevented from taking and ones taken despite interference. In so doing, the study illuminates how the constraints photojournalists encounter shape their work and, ultimately, the types of images missing from the mass media. Men and women, and freelancers and staff photographers, encounter different types of obstructions. Anxieties about public visibility, and the desire to control images, predict higher rates of interference. News scenes, police activities, accidents, and private spaces were among the most common scenes photographers were prevented from photographing. Taken together, this study contributes to Shoemaker and Reese’s hierarchy of influences model, by explicating the extra-media and individual sources of influence that shape photojournalistic practice.

The Good and the Bad Sides of the Protest: Framing Abortion Rights Protests in Photojournalism

“…Photography has never been exclusively for men. Women were involved in the medium with their own portrait studios and in assisting men (Somerstein, 2020). However, the field has been historically dominated by men, especially for news photography.…”

“…Briscoe (2021) gives the example of women not being assigned to photograph protests because of their shorter height but says that they may be assigned stories that require capturing emotional complexities. Furthermore, women are often assigned lifestyle-related stories, doing more portraits and personal projects (Hadland & Barnett, 2018), while men are more likely to be given assignments that are perceived as risky or dangerous (Darian-Smith, 2016;Lough & Mortensen, 2022;Somerstein, 2020). Studies also show that women photojournalists and racial minorities have fewer bylines on front pages and fewer lead photos compared to white men (Lough & Mortensen, 2022).…”

“…Gender relations are not only present in newsrooms (Lough, 2020); when in the field, women are more likely than men to encounter bureaucratic interferences (Somerstein, 2020); however, men are more prone to having their credentials questioned or denied, to be detained by authorities and to experience physical attacks (Somerstein, 2020). Women photojournalists have also mentioned sexual harassment from sources and co-workers as an obstruction in their work (Capture Magazine, 2018;Estrin, 2017;Somerstein, 2020).…”

“…Researchers and media publications have stated that women photojournalists have better access to certain sources, such as women in patriarchal societies (Estrin, 2017;Hadland & Barnet, 2018a), and are more likely to build intimacy with subjects, which opens new photographic opportunities (Westcott Campbell & Critcher, 2018). Research also suggests that some photojournalists consider their gender an asset for photojournalistic work (Somerstein, 2020).…”

“…If previous research is considered (Darian-Smith, 2016;Hadland & Barnett, 2018a;Hadland & Barnett, 2018a;Westcott Campbell & Critcher, 2018;Somerstein, 2020Somerstein, , 2021, then it is safe to say that having more women photographers doing coverage of abortion rights protests may lead to having diverse narratives, more emotional frames and empathizing with subjects. Furthermore, it would be expected that women photojournalists would have different access than their male counterparts since abortion rights is an issue tightly related to women.…”