Pictures

DY

“Ubiquitin: how do you define “faltche frumkeit”, anything further to the right than your hashkafos? Or maybe only if it’s a certain degree further to the right?”

Neither! It is when it is based on silliness. And more so when it is done as a way to show how frum you are. None of these publishers really beleive their is something wrong with pictures of women, it is just an act to show how “frum” they are. That is what I call Faltche

An even bigger Chilul Hashem is trolling a person on the internet

I didnt call it a Chilul Hashem because I didnt like it, I called it because I saw what other people thought of it.

One should always try to protray Yiddishkeit in a positive light that people will say, Look at those Yidden, they are truly a holy people.

That did not happen in this story and the total opposite occured.

How many people on the right have “Religious tolerance” for Orthodox Rebbein more to the left

How many times here have I seen disparging remarks made about Rav Kook, Rav Yosef Ber Solevichik , Rav Stav or Rav Druckman

I do not wish to debate Milah issue, but one needs to seperate the issue of Bris Milah from Meziah B’Peh.

Nobody says you cant avoid a Bris, there are many who say you dont need Metizah B’Peh and even the same Mohels will do the Bris either way depending on the parents wishes.

The backlash against Milah is not the same, its mostly a few crazies

One does need to seperate between constructive critism and spiteful critism out of hate. Not all critism aimed at charedi communities is spiteful and hateful. Some is constructive. Its not that hard to figure out which is which

The word is criticism, ZD

You’re defining crazy based on what you personally disagree with. I have no idea which is more common, but I can assure you that the anti milah lobby has made a lot of noise.

I doubt ZD has even ever seen Hamevaser, nor would he even know where to get it.

They are printing their magazine for a specific audience which prefers that there are no women in the picture and want pictures edited for that.

Vos art dir? No one is insisting you look at it, and they do not tout themselves as the paper of record.

It is clearly not a chillul Hashem. The commenters formenting hate against other yidden (whole scads of them) are definitely mechallelei hashem. Bfarhesiah. L”A.

In the course of this conversation their is something that is being overlooked.

If it is halacha, minhag or even a legitimate chumra. I dont think we should care about what Others think. This goes for milah, metzitza, and not printing pictures of women. (of course there is a (relevant) side discussion whether some of these are legitamte hakpadahs However this shouldnt detract from the main issue at hand)

Hamevaser never prints pictures of women, Haaretz didnt have a story last month that there were no women. That isnt the issue. I dont know if Z-Dad agrees, but it should go without saying that any paper has every right to come out with any fardreita chumra they want they can avoid pictures of women, reshaim, all goyim, all animals, treif animals, fruits or apples

(BTW Trust 789, When I see pictures of apples in frum newspapers, I cringe. Ditto, frum websites. It isn’t “faltche frumkeit”. I don’t cringe for myself, since I love apples).

That is not what happened in this instance. They could have easily avoided pictures of women. Ami, Mishpacha Yated and Hamodia all managed to report on the story without pictures of women and without raising the world’s ire. The literal editing women out of history is what the issue at hand is

something that is being overlooked

No, it’s not overlooked, this is how it started.

http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/coffeeroom/topic/firestorm-after-%e2%80%98der-zeitung%e2%80%99-deletes-hillary-clinton-from-iconic-photo/page/5#post-553469

The literal editing women out of history is what the issue at hand is

If they literally edited them out of history, it’s l’mafreia not a falsehood.

You tried the falsehood argument before. It’s wrong. So you tried the faltche frumkeit argument, which was also wrong. So now you’re going back to the falsehood argument, but it’s still wrong.

They edited out women from a picture because they have a policy not to print pictures of women. They should have either not published it, or at the least, possibly, had a caption reading “edited as per editorial policy not to publish pictures of females”, to avoid the predictable criticism. They didn’t. That’s all.

DY, of course thats how it started but the conversation has shifted to side issues that are completely irrelevant to the main issue, case in point: metzitza.

“You tried the falsehood argument before. It’s wrong.”

Um no, editing a picture to depict events that they didnt happen is false. You can argue that tznius trumps falsehood but it is sheker.

“So you tried the faltche frumkeit argument, which was also wrong. “

This wasn’t an argument on the main issue. (See told you, the main issue got overlooked) This is regarding the side issue of Not printing pictures of women at all. Which though based on faltche frumkeit (granted a notion I cannot prove, it is purely based on persoinal experience) is without question their right, and we shouldn’t care what anybody says, bizarre as the policy end up being (Times of Israel has pictures from children’s books depicting “families” in the park led by 2 men and weddings with only men under the chupa.)

See how the the two issues have become conflated, Since falche frumkeit doesnt address the main issue which is EDITING pictures.

“They edited out women from a picture because they have a policy not to print pictures of women. They should have either not published it, or at the least, possibly, had a caption reading “edited as per editorial policy not to publish pictures of females”, to avoid the predictable criticism. They didn’t. That’s all.”

Completely agreed! This is the main issue. and as I said elsewhere we fundamentally agree. Our only discussion is are they wrong for not doing what you agree they should have done. (And the related point if cutting people out of pictures is sheker.)

Side question: There are some cases of Gedolim pictures without Yarmulkas eg for passport or with wives/dauthers not dressed tznius by today’s standards. OCcasionaly these pictures are edited to make them more in line with the current zeitgeist.

Is this falsheood?

Note: I am not asking whether it is right. YUou can maintain that it is proper to do since it’s disrespectful.

I am only asking if an edited picture is Emes or Sheker?

ubiquitin: It’s no more sheker than when your wedding photographer edits out a cold sore on someone’s face or edits out a stranger who mistakenly walked into the background just before he shot the photo. Or when he adds in the bride’s brother who missed being in the shot. And since they pay the newswire for use of the photo, if the copyright holder has no objection to it being edited (something no one here claims to factually know) then neither should anyone here.

DaMoshe,

I don’t think the caption would be a good idea, as it isn’t their picture to edit.

We haven’t seen any legitimate claims of illegality, have we? Do you similarly have a problem with the parody that was published of only the female world leaders? (It was very funny, actually.)

In context, I don’t think this was more misleading than that, and might not even have been questioned had they printed a disclaimer.

They may still have received criticism for the policy, so I’m not sure just refraining from printing it wouldn’t have been better. They are trying to sell papers, though.

Ubiquitin, that’s not called being overlooked, there’s just not much more to add. As is the derech in the CR, the discussion digressed.

Completely agreed! This is the main issue.

No it isn’t.

(And the related point if cutting people out of pictures is sheker.)

That is (one of) the main issue(s).

There are some cases of Gedolim pictures without Yarmulkas eg for passport or with wives/dauthers not dressed tznius by today’s standards. OCcasionaly these pictures are edited to make them more in line with the current zeitgeist.

Is this falsheood?

It depends on the context (which is my point here as well).

If the representation will be that it is assur to take off your yarmulka for a passport photo, then yes, it would be a falsehood. If it’s airbrushed in out of respect, but no such point is being made, then no. If the context that it was a passport picture was not mentioned, and a representation was made that such and such gadol didn’t regularly wear a yarmulka, then it would actually be a falsehood to publish it as is.

I’ll ask you a question as well: it has become common practice to photoshop pictures of the chosson and kallah into family pictures taken before the chuppah. This saves the guests (and everyone, really) time. Without having to balance sheker/tircha d’tzibbura, would you call this sheker? How about digitally removing a piece of dust from the chosson’s hat?

My answer is no, because, in context, nothing is being misrepresented, unless someone is trying to represent (for example) that the chosson and kallah saw each other before the badek’n, or the hat manufacturer is trying to represent his hat as being dust retardant (can I use that word?).

Editing a picture is not falsehood per se. It depends on whether the idea being represented is false. There was no representation of the three female world leaders being absent or not existing, so there was no falsehood.

DY

I mostly agree with your last post. My only point of contention is regarding “Editing a picture is not falsehood per se. It depends on whether the idea being represented is false.” It depends on what the idea being represented is. In this case the idea being represented is a world unity rally led by world leaders. Pictures in a newspaper are often used to illustrate a story. (After all a picture is worth a thousand words. Many people glance at the picture and skip the article. A headline serves the same purpose. Thus even if the story mentions Merkel being there if the Picture is edited it still conveys a dishonest message. There is a frum website that often has dishonest headlines to pieces for example (not an actual example but they have done very similar headlines) They’ll have a headline Obama says “Attackers are justified” Then in the course of the article they say the full quote “anybody who says the ATTACKERS ARE JUSTIFIED is a terrible person” Obviously this admitedly extreme case would be falsehood. It isnt enough that the story is true. The headline, which to a certain extent summarizes the story has to convey truth as well.

The wedding question is even less of a sheker than the others because the pictures arent meant to document what occured. IT is more of a souviner or memento. Nobody looks at wedding pictures and says “Remember how we all stood with our backs to a backdrop” If a person edited in some Rosh Yeshiva to show how chashuv he is that so and so attended then it would be sheker, but I think we agree on this that it is all about context.

Regarding edited Gedolim pictures, that is trickier because it depends on the point of the book, Obviously Artscroll “biographies” serve a different purpose than biographies as generally percieved, and arent meant to give an exact history. In which case the context is different regarding editing in yarmulka (you didnt address Tznius) though In a general biography it would be dishonest to edit pictures.

So the discussion is really over what is the context that the picture appeared in the paper. To me it seems it is meant to depict a historical event as it occurred and as further described in the accompanying article.

Every media organization, Jewish, frum or otherwise, should avoid changing pictures or facts to fit their viewpoint. For example, the Yiddish newspaper that edited out Hilary Clinton were right not to show a picture of her, but they should have blurred her out or cropped the photo, as opposed to making it appear as if she was not there. Firstly, this does show a lack of integrity that should be present even in frum publications (not that I believe they had an agenda, as many non-Jewish publications insinuated).

As regards the general issue of not showing any picture of women; It is obvious that most photos should not be shown, even if modestly dressed, as one does not need to be immodestly dressed for it to be a breach of tznius. But when it comes to children or older women (e.g. Rebbitzen Kannievsky), there is more of a question. But omitting even those is understandable. Not in order to be machmir, as others have suggested, but simply making a cut-off point. It is too much to expect from a newspaper or magazine to carefully adjudge each picture as to whether it conforms. it is far simpler, and commendable, to simply not publish them.

Regarding the tznius issue, I don’t know if it’s a falsehood in any context if the way she is portrayed is the way she did sometimes appear. Regardless, it brings up a good point, similar to the Artscroll “biographies” you mentioned. Any frum publication by definition sometimes has a standard higher than telling it as it is or was (by omission), because in many cases it is assur to do so (l”h, bizayon). Since that is the case, though, an omission is not a misrepresentation, because it is the expectation, according to the context. This, I believe, is your point regarding Artscroll biographies (I quote, “though In a general biography it would be dishonest to edit pictures”, implying that it’s not dishonest for Artscroll), which I agree with. Hamevaser never prints pictures of women, so the analogy seems quite apt.

Why is cropping better? Is it important to the story where she was sitting or standing?

Yes. It is rewriting history to present a picture as factual and to alter the picture without informing the audience.

It bothers me just as much when ywn posts pictures of certain events and it’s the same picture every time (ie. obama golfing). Either the picture is as true as the story or don’t include a picture.

No one would have complained if they chose a picture with (a) microscopic women or (b) a picture that happened to have not contained any women.

Altering a picture shows that you cannot be trusted to give over a true unaltered story.

Kudos for that post.

I looked at the Haaretz article to see the picture again. There are people at either edge of the picture, so the implication that there was nobody else present simply doesn’t exist; it’s no different than cropping.

The article is ridiculous; it is so obvious how they are putting their preconceived notions into their reporting. There’s not much of an attempt at presenting a facade of objectivity.

Did they attempt to contact Hamevaser for an explanation? They don’t mention anything of the sort. Talk about falsehood in journalism…

Yes, I later saw that; this makes Haaretz’ coverage all the more blatant in its bias.

I mostly agree with DaasYochid’s position here.

1. It is absolutely ok for a frum publication to have a policy of not publishing pictures of women.

2. The editors of Hamevaser were either unaware or uncaring of the reaction the doctored photo received. I don’t think they did this for attention, shock, or an “in your face” gesture.

3. The negative reaction was primarily engendered by anti-Chareidi Jews in Israel, and was subsequently magnified by global media outlets that seek to equate Israelis and Islamic fanatics in order to maintain their ideas of moral relativism in the Middle East conflict. I don’t think Hamevaser should be totally blamed for this.

All that said, while Hamevaser had no bad intentions and their edits did not change the substance of the photo, I think doctoring photographs for any reason would be regarded as dishonest by most, since there is an expectation that photographs are accurate representations of what the photographer saw through his/her lens. Even if it is not intended to be dishonest, therefore, I think that frum outlets should avoid altering photos based on darchei noam. Especially in the current atmosphere. There surely were other photographs available that suited the magazine’s needs without needing to photoshop.

Here we go again…