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Tabloid photography - phenomena of our times

The dwindling media interest in classical photojournalism, which photographers have been complaining about for many years, is caused by several factors. One of the prime factors is tabloid photography, popular with consumers and successfully pushing out other genres. The most extreme form of tabloid, and also the most popular, is voyeuristic photography, which I want to discuss here.

 

Temples of consumerism

We are living at an age when values are measured by profit and the most popular churches around are the temples of consumerism: supermarkets. In the media sphere, the consumer wants tabloids and as a result, the tabloid media are flourishing. During the period of the last fifteen years, without perhaps us even realising it, the Czech media has arrived at a turning point.

 

My small turnaround – My epiphany?

As a photo reporter, I was used to the phone ringing, and a journalist at the other end would want me to photograph the backstage of a rock festival or salmon poachers in Kamchatka. Then about twelve years ago they invited me to join a brand new newspaper. The deputy editor said: “We need you to take some voyeuristic photographs for us, showing a well-known actor throwing up or a famous actress lying in a gutter.” And he added: “I have a contact for a brothel where politicians go... we need pictures of someone famous in action with a prostitute.” 

So I gave up professional photography.

 

Inner limits

Every photographer has his own inner limit beyond which he is not prepared to go. Some are perhaps willing to go to a brothel and secretly take pictures. Some photographers are just the opposite. The Slovak singer, Richard Muller, also an enthusiastic photographer, has his inner limit set at a point where he doesn’t photograph people at all. During an interview for PhotoVideo magazine he said: ”I like people a lot and I am happy to spend hours in a pedestrian street in Munich or somewhere else and just observe. But I feel that if I photographed people, I would be invading their privacy. When you stand in front of a person and press the shutter, you can see that something within him moves. You can sense a question mark: why is someone taking pictures of me, what is so special about me? I feel ashamed when I see pictures of people among my photographs, but mostly it happens only by accident.”

 

Voyeurism = Czech society norm

First lets take a look at Wikipedia to see what exactly voyeurism is: “Voyeurism is a type of sexual deviancy where excitement is reached by spying intimate activities of unaware anonymous people, such as women undressing. A voyeur is a person who likes to watch.”

But a voyeuristic photographer is not watching for his personal satisfaction, he is watching for money.  In the flood of voyeuristic photographs on today’s media market, memories of the old days, when photographers were putting masks in front of their lenses in the shape of a keyhole to take ”secret” photographs of a hired lady taking her corset off, now make us smile. The sense of voyeurism achieved with the help of a keyhole could also be simulated under an enlarger with a template, or when copying old glass plates.

If we ask where the inner limits, allowing photographers to take voyeuristic photography, come from, we would most probably find the answer in the general morality of our society; the same society where private agencies spy on everyone so that the agencies’ owners can sit in government; in the atmosphere of a police state where they can locate you anywhere, as long as you have a mobile phone on you.  Where the police can listen to your conversations and have the right to do it, and where government politicians have power over the police and justice, etc.

Eavesdropping has become the Czech society’s norm and it no longer shocks anyone. George Orwell wrote his utopian novel about Big Brother constantly watching people; now the utopia has become a reality. And paradoxically, the reality now happens in a non-communist state. Big brother is here with us in a free democracy - we buy mobile phones voluntarily, we vote for our politicians with our free will, and we openly support paparazzi by buying and reading the tabloids, which publish their pictures.

 

Voyeuristic photography = the top floor of a paparazzi house

I don’t want to equate tabloids with voyeurism. Tabloid newspapers come in several distinctive categories - from the empathetic and sensitive, all the way to those, which go for the jugular. Within a specific tabloid newspaper we find all sorts of material, from the mild to the scandalous.

If I were to compare tabloid press to a house on four floors, then the first floor would house normal everyday news; on the second floor would be social events, TV competitions, fashion police and interviews with VIPs. The third floor would house social dramas, such as the search for the missing Anicka, and train and air disasters... And finally on the fourth floor we would find voyeuristic photographs, just like a cherry on a cake... also voyeuristic writing, or “smear campaigns” about selected celebrities. Interestingly, the majority of the writers of these stories would be women.

  

Photo reporter’s taboo about tabloid photographers 

Just as the structure of tabloid press is not black and white, the structure of modern publishing houses is not black and white either. Their portfolios, as they are pretentiously called these days – offer a colourful spectrum of society’s consumer interests and markets. And so in one publishing house, side by side, there are serious daily papers and magazines, publications about fashion, kitchens, interiors, publications for children and youth, magazines and websites about science and engineering...and tabloids...or even pornography, to round the portfolio off...

When I was preparing this article, I called my photographer colleague from a serious, reputable magazine, to tell me about his colleagues working for a tabloid at the same publishing house. “I am not allowed to speak on this topic, I would lose my job. The publishing house noticed that we bad mouth the tabloids from time to time and so it’s in our contracts now that we are not allowed to comment on colleagues working for our company.”

 

Politics and tabloid media extremism...

Peter Korniss, a long time member of the Czech Press Photo jury, told me in an interview on the subject of voyeuristic tabloid photography: ”Voyeuristic tabloid photography and press are unfortunately a part of democracy. And in a democracy, you have to listen to even the most extreme political parties.  It’s a tragedy, personally it makes me very unhappy but if you vote for democracy, you also have to accept the existence of political extremism, paparazzi and the glossy, gossip magazines full of celebrities.

 

‘Spit’ on the age of the law

The comparison of the tabloid press – the imaginary fourth floor – with extremist political parties has its own logic. There are some common points here, such as the “dance” on the edge of the law, the use of half-truths and provocation. On the web of the Workers Party for Social Justice. (http://www.dsss.cz/ochutnejte-delnicky-spiz-tomase-vandase), we find a photograph of their smiling leader, Tomas Vandas, with a menu from a restaurant in Ostrava, showing a speciality called Tomas Vandas’s Workers Spit for 88 Kc. In neo-Nazi symbolism, the number 88 symbolises the Nazi salute Heil Hitler. The caption to the photograph from the 17th October 2011 reads: ” In case someone is seeing some ‘hidden propaganda’ in the photograph, they are mistaken. The price is a result of a precise calculation. “ And later:  “...the worker’s spit can’t be found easily elsewhere, at least not yet. But there is still time.”

 

In February 2011, Vanda’s Workers Party was banned by a court order - partially for their use of the Nazi symbols (the cog in the party’s sign originated from the Nazi unions’ sign; the party activist, Lucie Slegrova, has a tattoo of the Czech translation of a SS cult slogan, etc). The people from the banned Workers Party added the letters SS at the end of the original party’s name and modified a part of the original cog in the new sign, so now they lunch on their calculated spits. 

Mr Vandas says on the party‘s web that if the sympathisers of the Workers Party SS wish, he will stand for president. That’s also democracy in practice.

Stanislav Krupar won the Czech Press Photo this year with a photograph of racial unrest against the Roma in northern Bohemia, where the Workers Party for Social Justice was making itself noticeable.  At the press conference, the winner of the Czech Press Photo 2011 said that he was surprised how many ordinary people were happy to go along with the neo-Nazis. Unfortunately the nation’s historical memory is very short. One (ordinary) member of the unrests had “Hitler, wake up – Gypsies to the gas” printed on her T-shirt (in the 1940s, the gassing of the Roma, Jews and other nationalities in millions were directed by members of the SS).

 

Tabloid extremism and suicides

Extremism on the edge of the law can be also found on the imaginary fourth floor of the tabloid media. Just like political extremism, it often aims at the lowest human drives. While political extremists bet on racism, xenophobia and hatred of the wealthy, the tabloid’s 4th floor bets on voyeuristic curiosity, thirst for gossip, scandals, poking around people’s private lives, etc. In the written commentary, they use not only speculations  (practically everyone does that anyway) but also half-truths and provocations - making up scandalous activities for celebrities, so that they have something new to write about...  And so the tabloid press can change peoples’ lives and destroy families and relationships.

However, there are countries where it’s different. Peter Korniss from Hungary and a member of the CPP 2011 jury: “it all depends on the culture of the individual countries. For example in Hungary we don’t have paparazzi.”

Lee Yong, jury member CPP 2011 from South Korea: “We don’t have tabloids in South Korea. We did have them but then they disappeared. People were taking the tabloids to court and also committing suicide because they saw their photographs in newspapers. And so the government changed the privacy laws...”

 

The court as an advertising campaign

The common phenomena for political and tabloid extremists are frequent court cases. It could be said that they are de facto advertising campaigns (both negative and positive) because court cases get attention even from the serious media. DSSS based its “advertising” on street appearances, provocations leading to battles (Janov) and court proceedings as a result of their activities. Skirmishes are no strangers to tabloids. One of the last cases was the conflict involving the actor Karel Roden, who confronted tabloid photographer Martin Hurda. We can find many similar cases abroad too. The singer and guitarist of the famous group Metallica, James Hetfield, threw stones at tabloid photographers. He was photographed by paparazzi during his Christmas 2011 holiday at Punta del Este in Uruguay taking his son for an ice cream. Gaston Renis, photographer working for Hola! magazine,  said: ”He was only eating an ice cream. He wasn’t in any compromising situation to react in this manner” (quoted from Blesk newspaper). Nevertheless the situation was unpleasant for Hetfield, precisely because of the photographers. Otherwise he would have been throwing stones. Which one of us would want to spend a holiday with paparazzi on our backs?

Perhaps the well-known rule plays a part here – a man will attack when he feels threatened. And as is patently obvious from the artists’ letter to the tabloids (bellow), a number of Czech celebrities really feel threatened by them. Paradoxically, situations can arise when the blame lands on a tabloid photographer by mistake, instead of a colleague, who had targeted a celebrity in the past.

Legal cases can be good for the tabloids. Pavel Novotny, editor-in-chief of the tabloid Super.cz: ” As a tabloid journalist I know that going to court is a fantastic thing. There is nothing better than a legal case. The court attracts attention; even our competitors get interested. It works well, goes on for a long time, takes twists and turns and in the end brings long term publicity.” (Quoted from ForMen magazine). Pavel Novotny studied at the Josef Skvorecky Literary Academy, where he was also taught about tabloid journalism. He did not graduate (source – the school’s study department).

 

Breakdown as a result of voyeuristic photographs 

There was a lot of furore around voyeuristic photographs taken by an anonymous photographer and published in the tabloid AHA! showing the actress Jirina Bohdalova naked. During the celebrity’s trip to Turkey she was secretly photographed on a hotel balcony, allegedly by a reader of AHA! After the pictures were published, the seventy-seven-year old actress suffered a breakdown and had to be taken to RIAPS Crises Centre in Prague 3.

“It’s tragic to see how far people will go. It’s distasteful... I don’t understand how anyone can sink this low,” the actress Simona Stasova said to iDNES.cz, “my mother doesn’t deserve such disgrace...this has completely changed my attitude to journalists...”

Karel Sip talks about this as a sheer depravity. Director Jiri Adamec said to the daily newspaper Blesk: “It makes me feel sick. It has gone beyond the limits of good taste, not to mention respect for our greatest actress. What has happened doesn’t only threaten Jirina’s career but her whole life.”

The author of these voyeuristic photographs walks among us, incognito.... Is he trying to avoid problems by remaining anonymous? Bretislav Olser says in his blog on iDNES: “I would line up the whole editorial team on a public display, strip them naked and tie them to the stakes so that spectators can spit on them and jeer and prevent them from defending or protecting themselves. Just like Mrs Bohdalova wasn’t able to.” Media analyst Daniel Koppl evaluated the case on iDNES: “It is beyond the limits of good taste, but not beyond the media.”

 

Artists against tabloids

In 2009, the actor Marek Vasut and writer Michal Veiwegh initiated a petition:

“Bad taste and lack of tact, vulgarity, half truths and lies paraded as truth, snooping, calculated provocations, planned scandals, cynical photomontages or fictitious “interviews”, using the familiar address regardless of age and status, ruthlessness towards human feelings, lack of respect towards age and death, open journalistic cannibalism – these are the common practices of Blesk, Aha!, Sip, Pestry svet, Rytmus zivota and other tabloid periodicals today. The human rights of our minority are broken on daily basis with the government’s acquiescence. We have been disgusted by it for a long time. Many of us are involved in legal actions with the publishers of tabloids. But the courts always refer us to the so-called public interest, which we, as “celebrities”, are obliged to put up with, although the only real, obvious and visible interest is the financial gain of the already mentioned publishers. 

We are refusing to accept this state of affairs and that’s the reason why we are sending a public message to the tabloids: it’s not true, as you demagogically say, that we need you. We refuse to be associated with those among us who have collaborated with you voluntarily – be it out of fear, calculation or a desire to be famous.  We, the undersigned, despise you and we don’t want and will not collaborate with you in any way!”

Among the signatories were Jirina Bohdalova, Tomas Topfer, Jiri Suchy, Martin Dejdar...

Michal Viewegh adds: “The courts award us one or two hundred thousand while the tabloids make millions.  As long as the courts won’t punish the tabloids with substantial fines, nothing will change. We are disappointed with the courts’ attitude and we don’t just want to watch our friends being scandalised with impunity.”

  

Tabloids against artists

The artist spread the petition through advertisements in newspapers, they started a website www.protibulvaru.cz, where the petition is still posted with the possibility of further electronic signatures. To date, the petition was signed by 3,075 people. There was a small reaction from the tabloids but it wasn’t earthmoving. The tabloid media either ridiculed the petition, ignored it or turned the problem upside down. The former editor of AHA!, Frantisek Nachtigall, regarded the artists’ action as a “theatrical gesture” and “hot air”.  “We make mistakes from time to time but we are prepared to apologise.” (Quoted from tyden.cz). The Ringier Czech Republic spokesperson, Katerina Kucharova: “...We won’t comment, we regard the petition a useless gesture”, she said to an on-line daily TYDEN.CZ (Ringier is the publisher of Blesk). The former editor of Blesk, Vladimir Muzik: “I have nothing to say” (quoted from tyden.cz). The editor of the weekly Sip PLUS, Michal Broz, said for iDNES that the artists themselves offer their stories to the tabloids, and not all of the artists are necessarily second rate starlets. “I can assure you that there are some A-list stars among them. They also need to keep the awareness about themselves going, even though none of those who so far signed the letter are among them.” 

 

What do experts say?

According to the media expert Daniel Koppl, the petition didn’t have much chance to change anything. On the contrary, it was a welcome advertising for the tabloids.

Daniel Koppl said to iDNES: “It’s all about society’s culture, which either exists or doesn’t, and about tabloid consumerism, which you can’t do anything about. On the other hand I am behind every demonstration against the lack of culture... including a collective spirit and movement. It would be an illusion to state that artists don’t need tabloids, and that goes for both Vieweg and Topfer. I think that they exhibit a kind of lack of awareness of how things function.”

According to Daniel Koppl, similar actions also take place abroad. 

“Sometimes a foreign celebrity draws attention to the unacceptable behaviour of the tabloids which creates a discussion, and at times leads to certain restrictions. Perhaps the tabloid media agree not to use pictures from paparazzi. Usually they keep it up for a maximum of six months and then it all starts again.”  (Source iDNES).

 

Aggression creates more aggression

It is most certainly true that some celebrities court the tabloids, as Michal Broz from Sip newspaper says. It’s their right. But then there is a whole group of other celebrities who don’t like the prying ubiquitous presence of tabloid photographers, just like they don’t like the fact that it spreads harmful half-truths and speculations. Is this conversely the right of the tabloids? Fighting through the courts and with petitions against the part the tabloid media, which is based on journalistic extremism, requires a gigantic effort. It is slow; the tabloids have good lawyers and justice believes “in the public interest” argument to follow (but in practice to persecute) celebrities. Is it then surprising that the celebrity in question settles it with the photographer personally, man to man, physically?  It is quick and the photographer in question will forever remember the slap. Just as the celebrity will forever remember the moral slaps received from the extremist branch of the tabloid.

Unfortunately, aggression creates more aggression. I amuse myself with the vision of all celebrities agreeing to settling their bills with extremist photographers and editors personally, starting with the New Year... Oh, that would be many slaps! And many mistakes made in the process.... I would be the first mistake to get his nose punched, only because I just happen to carry a camera! I wouldn’t even be able to explain to a celebrity I’d come across in the street that I am not an extremist, that I am only taking pictures of a shop window displaying new books five metres away.

 

 All in the same bag?

Even though my imagination may seem over the top, there is a bit of truth in it. There is a collective guilt involving journalists and photographers... Many people outside the media don’t have the necessary discerning abilities. For many of them, all photographers and journalists are a bunch that spies, tarnishes and slanders...”. Sometimes it is difficult to explain that you don’t belong to the small percentage of your extremist colleagues. And that the camera you have in your hands is not for spying, and that your colleague’s recorder is not meant to catch them out and twist their words.

Just as the small number of ‘bandit’ Prague taxi drivers are throwing a bad light on their business, so the few extremist tabloid photographers and journalists throw a bad light on all their media colleagues. Or perhaps it isn’t that important?

But remember the line Simona Staskova said about the voyeuristic photographs and stories going around in connection with her mother, Jirina Bohdalova: “It’s completely changing my attitude to journalists.”

 

Privacy only for some?

The right to privacy is not a very clear issue ethically. According to current practice, on the one hand you are not allowed to photograph a person without their consent, on the other hand it is common to snatch pictures of celebrities without their agreement and often without them even knowing it. Does it mean that there are two categories of citizens in our society with two different sets of rights?

In practice it leads to paradoxes. For example Patrik Banga from iDNES was taking photographs during the racial unrest in northern Bohemia and was detained by the police. In his blog from

27th August 2011 he writes: “I kept asking why they were detaining us. Their explanation was almost laughable: “You are taking pictures of people here”. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.”

If there were a celebrity among the demonstrators, would that have been alright?  World celebrities also have similar problems elsewhere. The American actress Scarlett Johansson; “Just because you are an actor, you make a film or something else, it doesn’t mean that you don’t have the right to privacy. If you are victimised in any way, it’s not right. It is bad.”

 

Definition of a publicly known figure

 Whether we like it or not, in this quagmire of opinions, we have to ask a question: “Who is a public figure? Where do we find the definition, where do we find the legally approved list of citizens of the Czech Republic who are publicly known and who are not? Do we have to ask permission when taking pictures of them, and whose pictures can we publish with or without consent?

In legal disagreements between celebrities and tabloids the courts rely on how each VIP defines his own public space. But is there a difference between a politician paid with money from our taxes and a freelance actor we don’t pay? It is understandable when a voyeur takes pictures of a politician fighting corruption at the very moment he is taking a bribe. But why photograph him secretly at a café while he drinks coffee with a girlfriend? Is that in the public interest? And what has an actor, who has to work hard to make a living, done to be followed by paparazzi everywhere he goes...

And what about a judge? Is he a publicly known figure? How would a judge, who defends public interest, feel if someone photographed him, throwing up by a wall, all over his robes, and then published it in a tabloid.

 

Freedom of the press versus privacy

With reference to the tragic death of Princess Diana in a car crash as she was being hunted by the paparazzi, and the affair surrounding Princess Caroline of Monaco who sued tabloids for publishing her pictures, a few years ago I questioned the jury of CPP about limits of the freedom of the press and its manifestation in confrontation with the right to privacy The answers showed that these two were in conflict. Besides, it was illustrated by the development of the court proceedings - not only in the case of Lady Diana, but especially in the case of Princess Caroline. 

German courts took the side of the tabloids – the “freedom of the press” won over the right to the ”protection of privacy”. Caroline appealed to the European Court, which then took her side and she won the case - the court gave preference to the “protection of privacy” over the “freedom of the press”.

But that wasn’t the end of it! In the end, German justice took the opinion that the decision of the European court was not binding. Probably the most extreme case in the history of the tabloid press was that of the News of the World, owned by the press magnate Rupert Murdoch. In Great Britain the case still continues. The crux of the whole thing is the fact that the journalists eavesdropped on telephone conversations of practically everybody – celebrities, families of the victims of terrorism, families of dead soldiers. But the biggest scandal was caused by a private detective, hired by the newspaper to listen to and manipulate with the telephone voice box of a kidnapped girl to give her parents false hope that she was still alive...and so the tabloid could stretch out the news story. This is how warped some people’s inner limits have become.

But nothing is black and white... the free press is a watchdog for democracy, at least sometimes. And so on the other hand there is the case of last year’s member of the CPP jury, Antonello Zapadu, who is known for his photographs of the former Prime Minister, Mirek Topolanek, taken at Berlusconi’s villa. These pictures were welcomed by the public as a proof of power pompousness paid for by the tax money.

At a lecture on corruption in November 2011, Miroslav Topolanek addressed the journalists in attendance: “I welcome people, not journalists; those are not people as far as I am concerned.”

 

Physical versus spiritual cases

One of the signatories of a petition against the Czech tabloid press is the actor Martin Dejdar. In contrast to Topolanek, he is not and never has been paid with tax money. According to him, journalists who make money from lies, spying and causing harm, are “human monsters”, and the work of tabloid journalist is comparable to theft and murder. Is that an unacceptable opinion or the truth?

Lets fully explore Dejdar’s idea of “murder” and look at two newspapers with a time span of seventy years.

In the protectorate press there were, apart from recipes for Sunday lunch, also lists of Czechs executed by the Nazis. In today’s tabloids  - the extreme variety – you find, next to the recipes for Sunday lunch, a list of celebrities “murdered” by the media. Both are common within the social norm of their respective periods...

 

The retreat of photo reportage = the mirror of the times

If we return to the basic question of photojournalistic photography – the fact that the interest in classical photojournalism is on the decline, we have to be aware that the media is a reflection of the times. And if the business of voyeuristic and paparazzi photographers like Vadim Kramer, Pavel Dvorak and many others is currently flourishing, it is a testimony to us all. Also encouraging is to have our Honza Sibik and Stanislav Krupar in the business of keeping classical photo reportage alive. However, the question is how long can classical photo reportage live in a society where the most popular temples are the supermarkets? The temples of consumerism, which, in the media field, include not only “normal” tabloid photographs from parties full of celebrities but also the extremist, Peeping Tom type photography. 

You will find the answer in the interviews with the jury of CPP 2011 in the news section.. 

 

© Oleg Homola