One week in October we discussed ethics in the field of our profession. We talked about different real-life events that were not really ethical.
One of them was a famous Ram car commercial for the Super Bowl about 4 years ago.
What is unethical (or just wrong) about this ad is that the speech of Martin L. King “The Drum Major Instinct” was used. Not just speech, but the very part, where King was speaking about how advertisements adversely affect society.
We also talked about whether is it ethical to manipulate photos for magazines, or in general. If this is ethical to do manipulation for fashion magazines. We, in our class, had a little argument about this. Some classmates were saying that it is better to show models how they look really, and not manipulate photos (change the weight of the models, for example; or clear their skin from freckles) so as to not offend photographers. I was saying that it is how magazines work – they have to attract their target audience to buy the products, so the clothes and models have to look near perfect. So, it doesn’t matter if the photos are manipulated, this is how it works, it is just a business, nothing personal.
