Depending on where you came in, there are many ways in which you have experienced the dramatic changes in technology, in the practices of journalism, entertainment, and advertising, in the visual environment itself, that together contribute to labeling this the digital age. In the past quarter century, the world of mediated images has undergone transformations that have profound implications for the moral and ethical, as well as the legal and professional, dimensions of image-producing practices. Most notable is the emergence of widely accessible digital manipulation technologies, but the list also includes significant developments in the legal status of ownership rights over images and other forms of “intellectual property”; the worldwide, nearly instantaneous distribution of images via the Internet, unfiltered by editorial professionals; the erosion of privacy under the onslaught of media sensationalism and competition for “live” images of celebrities or private citizens caught up in “newsworthy” events; and the spread of police (and media) surveillance cameras, now common in the United Kingdom and popping up around the United States.

In 1988, when we published a collection of papers under the title Image Ethics: The Moral Rights of Subjects in Photographs, Film, and Television, the digital revolution was still in its infancy. Early warnings were being sounded, as in Howard Bossen’s 1985 account of the “electronic-computer darkrooms” then just beginning to appear in “research departments of corporations, advertising agencies, government, and universities, in the Associated Press headquarters in New York, and in the Deutsche Presse-Agentur offices in Frankfurt”. At that time—so recent and yet so remote—Bossen noted that “the image quality [of the electronic still camera] is not nearly as good as a conventional camera image”, but also warned: “It may only be a matter of time before a visual equivalent of Richard Nixon’s eighteen and one-half minute gap haunts the body politic. It may only be a matter of time before the electronic darkroom falls prey to an electronic equivalent of Janet Cooke, who invents pictures of such power and believability than even the Pulitzer committee is taken in”.

Occasions of Sin
The electronic darkroom that seemed somewhat distant in 1985 now comes packaged with digital cameras and scanners selling for a few hundred dollars. Today, nearly anyone can experience the ethical qualms brought on by what photo editor Hal Buell described to Bossen as the “occasion of sin” provided by digital technologies. For many people engaged with issues of photographic practice, the issue was first joined when the February 1982 cover of the National Geographic carried a photographic image in which two Egyptian pyramids had been nudged a fraction of an inch closer together. The decision by a photo editor to create a more picturesque composition by engaging in a hitherto off-limits manipulation set off a firestorm of criticism within the precincts of photojournalism, although it is doubtful the public was aware of, or concerned about, the transgression. A decade later, when Time magazine ran an image of O. J. Simpson with his skin darkened on its June 27, 1994, cover—a manipulation made obvious by Newsweek’s simultaneous use of the same LAPD photo without alteration—there was a firestorm of media criticism. Photographer Matt Mahurin, who produced the cover image for Time, later recounted, “By the next day, I had calls from ABC, NBC, Dateline, CNN”. Similar, but smaller, furors were aroused when Newsday created an image of figure skaters Tanya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan together on the ice and when Newsweek bestowed digital orthodonture on septuplet mother Bobbi McCaughey for its December 1, 1997, cover.

Public concern over digital retouching, whether for artistic or editorial purposes, often exists in a parallel universe separated from the universe of photojournalists and editors, who have long known full well that all images are manipulated and thus have long engaged in and countenanced a variety of image-altering practices. While citizens of the Free World were amused during the Cold War by the crude brutality with which Soviet officials revised the photographic history of their revolution (see King 1997 for numerous illustrations), image manipulation has never been a Communist monopoly. U.S. examples range from the serious (as when a fake photo purporting to show then Senator Millard Tydings huddling with Communist leader Earl Browder contributed to Tydings’s failure to be reelected in 1952) to the ludicrous (as when TV Guide donated Ann-Margret’s body to Oprah Winfrey for a 1989 cover image). Fortune magazine’s November 2001 cover photo of the “11 smartest corporate leaders” started out as the “12 smartest,” but by the time the issue was ready, the twelfth had been digitally edited out. His name: Ken Lay. Fortune spokeswoman Terry McDevitt told Howard Kurtz (2002) of the Washington Post that the former Enron chief was part of a group photo shoot in August 2001, but by deadline time his company was sinking, and “we didn’t feel like he fit the criteria anymore for being one of the smartest people we know.” The emergence of digital technologies has merely raised the stakes and heightened professional and public concerns by vastly increasing options and lowering technical barriers. One result has been that professional associations and many media organizations have elaborated guidelines concerning digital retouching (see the chapters in this volume by Dona Schwartz and Marguerite Moritz).

When the temptations of digital manipulation overcome the norms of journalistic practice, there is predictable outrage. In some instances the offense seems trivial, as when ABC News in 1994 was caught posing Cokie Roberts in an overcoat in front of a photo of the Capitol, thus saving her the effort and discomfort of leaving a warm studio to travel across town and stand out in the cold in order to demonstrate her closeness to the events she was reporting. Much less innocent, however, was ABC News’s staging of a scene with an actor passing a briefcase to another man and then manipulating the image so that the actor appeared to be diplomat Felix Bloch, then suspected of, but ultimately never charged with, espionage.

Also disturbing, although in a very different dimension, was an element of the CBS Evening News broadcast on New Year’s Eve in 1999. The news program that night was broadcast live from Times Square in New York City, and viewers might have been impressed by the large billboard in the background advertising CBS News. They would probably also have been impressed, although less favorably, had they known that the image of the billboard was digitally superimposed on the real objects behind Dan Rather: the NBC Astrovision and a Budweiser ad. In this instance, however, there were no official reprimands or public apologies. Quite the contrary: CBS Early Show producer Steve Friedman noted that the network had been using a new technique to place CBS News logos on sides of buildings, on the backs of horse-drawn carriages, and so forth, for several months. “We were looking for some way to brand the neighborhood with the CBS logo,” Friedman told the New York Times. “It’s a great way to do things without ruining the neighborhood. Every day we have a different way of using it, whether it’s logos or outlines. And we haven’t scratched the surface of its uses yet.” He also noted, “It does not distort the content of the news,” and the Times reported that Dan Rather “knew about the use of the virtual technology during the broadcast and did not protest the practice” (Kuczynski 2000). CBS News is not alone in taking advantage of new digital techniques; many sports viewers, for example, see different corporate sponsor logos in the backgrounds of televised playing fields. In time, the particular logo that appears on a viewer’s screen may be determined by the information the viewer’s cable company has gathered about his or her demographic profile and marketing preferences.

Media Unbound
The rapid and often unimpeded intrusion of new digital technologies into the precincts of journalism has been made easier by transformations in the structure of media industries over the past two decades that rival those in information technology. A general trend in the media industries (and adjacent/overlapping territories, such as the Internet) is that of the weakening of boundaries that previously separated arenas, enterprises, institutions, professions, and so on. In some instances, the blurring of boundaries is a direct result of technological innovation (satellite transmission, the Web); in others, it is a result of corporate consolidation that unites previously distinct (even competitive) entities. The “fire wall” that traditionally has stood between news and advertising is eroding. The influence of marketing/advertising considerations on editorial and feature content has increased in recent years. In part because of the corporate consolidation of media enterprises (and the bottom-line, stock-price orientation that generally accompanies these mergers), we can expect that market calculations will continue to influence journalistic practice more rather than less. Commercial influence can also be seen in entertainment media, in both the increasingly prevalent placement of products and brand logos within film and TV settings and the intrusion of sponsors’ preferences in programming decisions. In August 2001, for example, CBS attracted unwelcome media attention when it deferred to the wishes of Procter & Gamble by pulling several episodes of Family Law from its rerun schedule after the major advertiser objected to such hot-button issues as gun ownership, the death penalty, abortion, and interfaith marriage.

In the case of the news media, the weakening of boundaries can be seen in the growing coverage of national (even international) news by local outlets (often competing in news coverage with their network affiliates’ “flagship” news programs). Made possible by the growth and reduced costs of transmission technologies (satellite and cable), this change is diminishing the local versus national distinction. In addition to the sheer number of “sources” and channels, there has also been a marked increase in the speed with which “stories” are disseminated through these various channels. The instantaneity of the transmission and diffusion of images and reports around the world has done much to eliminate the editorial function in journalism (see the chapters in this volume by Marguerite Moritz and David Perlmutter).

The boundaries between mainstream journalism and the “fringes” have been seriously weakened. The triumph of “entertainment” and, in particular, of “personality”-fixated, gossip-oriented journalism has transformed the media landscape and shifted (if not, in some instances, erased) the boundary between the private and the public lives of almost anyone caught up in the media’s net (see the chapter in this volume by Larry Gross). Key gatekeepers and opinion leaders still play important roles—especially in the later stages of a story’s career—but they are often outpaced by the faster cycles of frenzied feeding now common in journalism, especially the rapidly expanding domain of cable-carried 24/7 news channels. Ever since the nation’s seemingly insatiable feasting on O. J. coverage, it seems that we are never left waiting long for the next banquet. In between full-scale orgies such as Monica or Elián, the public’s appetite is appeased with smaller offerings such as JonBenet Ramsey or Chandra Levy. And, of course, there is the seemingly inexhaustible pool of those willing to engage in private conflict on the public stages supplied by Jerry Springer and his competitors (see the chapter in this volume by Laura Grindstaff).

Caught in the Webcam
Digital technologies and the Internet have combined to satisfy our collective voyeuristic urges in formats less focused on crime or even family feuding. Although it is always artificial to fix a starting point for such things, MTV’s 1992 launching of The Real World—which itself might be considered an offshoot of An American Family, PBS’s early-1970s experiment in cinema verité—may qualify for the honor of having initiated the recent flood of “reality” programming. Putting a group of photogenic twentysomethings together in an overdecorated urban “dorm” for several months of self-exploration, angst, romance, and other late-adolescent preoccupations yielded a season’s worth of edited-down “documentary” drama. The success of the series—the ratings have grown steadily over the years, and the producers now receive thousands of requests to audition—was a major impetus to the emergence of a new genre of television. One of the first of these was Road Rules, made for MTV by Jonathan Murray and Mary-Ellis Bunim, the creators of The Real World, which takes the format on the road, sending the participants around the country in a recreational vehicle, performing “missions” set by the producers. The next stages in the evolution of the genre occurred in Europe, where producers in Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, and Sweden initiated two new formats: the Survivor game, which plops a disparate cast of volunteers in some remote and picturesque spot, where they contend with deprivation, exotic foods (i.e., rats, insects), and summer camp games until all but the winner have been “voted off the island” by their peers; and Big Brother, which substitutes an indoor stripped-down dorm for the wilderness setting, while audiences witness the silly games and scheming intrigues that occupy the players as their numbers are whittled down to the final winner. In the case of Big Brother—much less successful in the United States than Survivor, although both formats have been smash hits in Europe—audiences unsatisfied with thrice-weekly edited programs can check out the action on the program’s Webcams twenty-four hours a day.

The Webcam is among the more flexible instruments of the digital age, as it has permitted amateur as well as commercialized exhibitionism and growing amounts of official and semiofficial surveillance. Here, too, there is a candidate for trend initiator. In 1996, Dickinson College student Jennifer Ringley set a camera up on her dorm room computer and began placing photos of the room—showing whatever the camera caught—on a Web site, a new picture every three minutes, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. After a few years, Ringley graduated and moved to Washington, D.C., and her Web site (www.jennicam.org) became semicommercial, offering three-month memberships for fifteen dollars. Members have access to a new picture every minute (nonpaying guests get only one every fifteen minutes), as well as a complete archive of images since 1997, a chat room, and much, much more. Here is how Ringley herself explains JenniCam on the site:

JenniCam is, to put it most simply, a sort of window into a virtual human zoo. My name is Jennifer Ringley, and I am not an actor or dancer or entertainer. I am a computer geek and recent entrant into the field of social service. I design, code, and administer this website and manage the company that keeps the site alive. I also do occasional freelance website design when I’ve got time. This is my website, and JenniCam is a part of it.

The “JenniCam” is, in essence, a series of cameras located throughout the house I live in with my amour, Dex. These cameras that take images of this house all day long, every day.

Simply, pictures of us, doing whatever we’re doing. I don’t sing or dance or do tricks (okay, sometimes I do, but not very well and solely for my own amusement, not yours). By the same token, JenniCam is virtually unedited and uncensored. Except for camera shy guests (whose wishes I humbly and happily respect, and hope you will too), and places the cameras can’t reach, nothing is cut.

Consider yourself warned: We are not always at home, sometimes you may see an empty house for hours or longer at a stretch. That’s life. Or I may be working at my computer, watching television, or being intimate. You may see nothing but cats all day long.

I keep JenniCam alive not because I want to be watched, but because I simply don’t mind being watched. It is more than a bit fascinating to me as an experiment, even (especially?) after five years.

So feel free to watch, or not, as you so desire. I am not here to be loved or hated, I am here simply to be me. If that’s not enough, there’s an entire web of other sites for you to visit. Find your happy place. There is enough love and happiness in the world for us all.

In the short period since JenniCam pioneered this electronic frontier, Webcams have proliferated into a worldwide phenomenon. Entering the term Webcam in the Google search engine elicits more than eight million hits, many of them leading to sites such as WebCamWorld and WebCam Central, which are themselves directories of Webcams across the world. Leonard’s Camworld advertises itself as a “Family Oriented Travel, Entertainment and Educational Site Featuring Current Outdoor Views of Cities Across The Globe,” with links to more than seven thousand Webcams. There is another dimension to the Webcam industry that isn’t likely to be featured on a family-oriented site. For that you might instead begin with www.boudoir.com, which at one point hosted JenniCam but now seems entirely devoted to hard-core pornographic image purveyors, helpfully arrayed in categories, from “Amateur Girls” to “Asian Peaches,” “Back Door Boys,” “Black Finger,” through “Upskirt Teenies” and “XXX Asians.” A box on the Web site alerts potentially vulnerable office workers: “does your employer know you’re surfing? internet eraser will protect your privacy!” Some of the sites available pose as JenniCam variants—and some might even be what they claim. “Voyeur Dorm features college-age women living together in a Tampa house rigged with cameras in every room. For a fee, subscribers are able to watch them eating, sleeping, showering, changing clothes and sunbathing—sometimes naked. Dude Dorm offers the same service featuring college-age men, and was meant to appeal to women and gay men” (Reuters, cited in “Dude Dorm” 2001). A Google search for Dude Dorm yields some twenty-three thousand hits, high among them the original: “This site is like Real World but with LIVE naked guys!” According to the Tampa Bay Guardian, “The dudes get free college tuition, free rent and a salary of about $500 a week. In exchange, cameras document their every move for subscribers who pay $34 a month” (Evans 2001). No one familiar with the history of communications technology would be surprised by the prevalence of pornography on the Internet; no one familiar with pornography would be surprised by the prevalence of images of “compliant” Asian beauties within that pornotopia (see the chapter in this volume by Darrell Hamamoto).

Video surveillance may often occur in less voluntary, as well as less commercial, circumstances. New technologies offer far more sophisticated options than those of such old-fashioned gimmicks as the Cambron Super Snooper, which promised, “Now you can photograph everything and everybody you always wanted to shoot if you disguise your camera with the Super Snooper and shoot around the corner.” Miniaturized cameras connected to video recorders or computers now permit parents to keep an eye on their children’s nanny—the so-called nanny cam—or to catch a thieving housekeeper in the act. Such a camera permitted a Massachusetts father to film a teenage baby-sitter showering in his home’s bathroom. Undoubtedly, many other voyeurs who have never been caught have been aided by such cameras as well. Those reminded of Linda Tripp’s tangle with the law in Maryland may be comforted to know that unlike the laws applying to audiotaping, there are few laws prohibiting surreptitious videotaping as long as the subjects are neither nude nor minors (for examples of cases in which local TV news crews have taken hidden cameras into public restrooms, see the chapter in this volume by Larry Gross).