Photoshop: In the Name of the Law

For years there have been debates about truth in advertising and whether or not images that have been digitally altered should be labeled as such. Proponents say that digitally altered images used in beauty ads are harmful to consumers, that these ads are misleading, manipulative, and contribute to negative body images. The documentary “Killing Us Softly” by Jean Kilbourne reveals the misogynistic fantasy world of the undernourished, oversexed, and objectified women. Kilbourne makes an excellent case for how difficult it is to be healthy in a toxic cultural environment when the ideal is impossible to achieve.Opponents of labeling claim that this would require warnings on a multitude of advertising materials. For example, the roads used in car advertising are never as serene as they appear. If labeling is required for all digitally altered images, it would extend across a wide range of graphic imagery and require costly and time-consuming measures to enforce it.A recent New York Times article about an altered image used for a lineup highlights the argument taking place in another arena—not just the world of advertising, but in our justice system. Court records and interviews with police departments across the nation show that this has become a regular practice. Some criminal justice experts say that the practice can actually make lineups fairer by adding features to make it harder to distinguish the perpetrator from other suspects.Mat dos Santos, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, thinks otherwise and states, “If you can’t do a good photo lineup, the answer is not to change the photos; the answer is a photo lineup just shouldn’t be done.”What do you think, have we reached a tipping point? Do we need laws in place when law enforcement is using Photoshop to alter evidence?Sources:https://www.pixelz.com/blog/photoshop-models-laws/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/24/us/police-photoshop-tattoos.html?smid=nytcore-ios-sharehttps://uclawreview.org/2017/06/21/truth-in-advertising-should-america-ban-photoshop/