The power of an image – blog post #1

As an advertising professional, especially one who is a student of design, I’m familiar with the power of an image. An image can inspire you, inform you, create an action or a reaction. It has many facets and is a very powerful tool. It can also be used to mislead. Even in advertising, this is considered unethical and you can be held accountable for false promises. Even with just an image. It is why I’ve decided to start a blog series that showcases examples that I consider an irresponsible use of this power.

My first example is in a news report, which I think is an industry I may be talking about quite often. A while back I saw an article about a girl who was terribly attacked by several dogs. A very unfortunate situation. With a headline reading, “Children Savaged By Escaped Dog Pack,” the article showed a picture of a snarling pit bull. Based on the power of the image, your immediate response is that this child was attacked by a pack of pit bulls. But read on. The image caption says, “A pit bull terrier, similar to the dogs that attacked the children”. SIMILAR to the dogs. Then, if you read in the article it says, “One dog, a mastiff…” and later, “The mastiff and what appeared to be pit bull mixes…”. None of which are even close to giving hard facts about the breeds, or that these dogs were pit bulls. So, why mislead with the image? Where’s this publication’s ethics?

As I said earlier, I work in advertising. Which means I also have the same power to mislead by using images (or text for that matter). But I don’t. Not because I would be held accountable, but because it’s a question of ethics. It’s irresponsible. I think it’s unfortunate that this type of journalism exists, and I would appreciate news reporting that tells the whole truth about an incident and doesn’t sensationalize the facts. Understand the power of your images (and words) and how they affect your audience.

In closing, if you are unaware what a mastiff is, you can read about the breed here. It is a massive dog, but its natural nature is family oriented and very loyal. Over centuries people have used the dog as a guard dog because of its size, but the aggression is a taught response and not the nature of the animal. Also, you can ask ANY dog expert, the same thing can be said of pit bulls or pit bull mixes. It’s all about how the dog is raised. Irresponsible dog owners tend to own irresponsible dogs.