Personally I doubt that even those which remain open will have anything worth buying after this weekend.  It didn’t look to me like they were re-stocking in my local store last weekend and I have no doubt this weekend will be even worse.

While Deloitte are promising that the stores will all remain open until after Christmas, I’m not sure there will be much left to sell following the weekend.  Given that Woolworths’ problems began when they were unable to obtain credit insurance and so their suppliers were unwilling to give them credit, I don’t see how they will be able to re-stock.  Unless the Woolworths’ four distribution centres are very well stocked, or the intention is that this sale will provide a cash injection to allow the chain to get their delivery chain up and running again, I doubt they’ll find any suppliers willing to work with them.

One thing is certain – the sale has made people flood back into their stores.  I can’t help feel that if they had managed to get this many people in each shop before now they wouldn’t be in the mess they are in.

Then, this weekend, I spotted a copy of The Daily Telegraph on the train open on an article titled “The Mandy and Osborne Show had us in stitches”, so I had a look.  The article I had initially seen was, in fact, not very interesting at all (some comments by an actress about The Spectator’s Parliamentarian of the Year awards), but the item above it was.  The section I was reading was the comment section, and the piece above related to the current economic climate.  The article is clearly comment – it’s not hard fact, it’s one writer’s opinion on the way Gordon Brown has handled the slow down in the economy.  As good comment should be it’s a very biased article.

The blog post and the article may not be related, but they started me thinking – do these issues of ethics and bias have any impact on the way I work as a photojournalist?

To deviate quickly. Charles Moore’s article begins:

“The credit crunch is not great pictorially. One can tolerate only so many photographs of screens turning red and young traders burying their lavatory-brush haircuts in their hands.”

To some extent I agree – the economy doesn’t lend itself to great photos – but there are some great shots out there which relate to this.  It makes the photographer look for new ways to go about shooting the news and brings up some very artistic work.  It also happens pretty slowly (in photography terms), so there’s plenty of time to set up and get the very best shot you can and you’re not just shooting in bulk in the hope that one image will be worth something.  Put it this way: it’s no riot.

I’m freelance and make my money (when shooting editorial work) by selling my pictures on the wires.  The more outlets that pick up an image the more money I get.  The more images I sell the more money I get.  When I’m in the field shooting a news story I don’t know how writers and editors are going to spin the story, indeed different outlets will spin it different ways.  Therefore it’s in my interest to shoot an as un-biased set as possible.  For example: if I shoot 12 pictures of Gordon Brown with a light above his head which makes it look like he has a halo.  I put them on the wires and one image gets picked up by one newspaper who want to illustrate their story about how Brown is the saviour of the economy.  However, if I shoot 6 pictures like this and another 6 where he’s waving a large knife around looking menacing (during a publicity at a butchers, say), I might well manage to sell two pictures – one halo to the previous paper, and one knife to a paper wanting to paint him as the butcher of the economy.  So now I’ve made twice as much money.  And if I shoot 12 different pictures of him doing a whole range of things I might well sell 12 images to 12 different outlets each with their own agenda.  And now I’ve made 12 times as much money and can take the rest of the week off.

You see, as a freelance, it’s in my interest to not let my own opinion cloud my artistic (and business) mind.  I guess this changes if you’re staff.  Thank god I’m not staff.

And so to Wimbles’ blog post.  He’s being taught the legal and moral boundaries journalists need to work within as part of his course (or, at least with the moral issues, he’s being made aware of the complexities he needs to take into account when choosing his own boundaries).  While I appreciate we work in different areas – he’s studying broadcast journalism while my work as a photographer is generally for print and new media – there are some similarities (the legal framework is the same, for example).  When it comes to moral boundaries I think it’s easier for me to qualify my choices.  If I take a picture of something then the thing I saw was visible to everyone.  I’m not an investigative journalist, I’m simply an observer.  If my camera can see it then anyone could have seen it and by publishing that picture I’m not revealing anything anyone’s tried very hard to keep secret.  There are gray areas – the paparazzi’s treatment of celebrities is an obvious example – but, for me at least, the boundaries are clear here too: as soon as someone courts a press photographer to further their career they have no room to complain if the photographer then uses them to do the same.

Finally I should say that, luckily for me, I’m very rarely in the situation where these issues come into play.  When I’m shooting editorially I’m at events – sporting fixtures, carnivals, concerts, etc. – and I don’t go about making a living from chasing cutting edge news.  It’s encouraging that courses like the one being taken by Wimbles teach the moral side of journalism as well as the legal side.  It’s very reassuring to know that it’s people like him, with apparently a very balanced view on these issues, who are the future of journalism in this country. But I do sometimes fear that, once out of the protected environment of the college situation, this solid grounding and common sense will come a little un-stuck when it meets with the real daily pressures of journalism and, ultimately, the need to make a living from the stories being written.