Ethics Corner: Blurring the Lines of PR Photography

By: Allan Wolper Watch the wall between the newsroom and the accounting room come tumbling down. Watch how the AP Wide World Photos public relations empire infiltrates the AP news operation.

Try to guess whether the freelance photographer Wide World assigns to a ground-breaking ceremony on Monday will receive an AP news job on Wednesday. Try to figure out whether Wide World's PR clients are getting special attention from the AP news bureaus?especially since the freelance photographers work for

both branches of the wire service.

Those concerns became real when AP announced on Dec. 8 that Wide World Photos, "a wholly owned subsidiary of The Associated Press," had become a partner of PR Newswire, a United Business Media company. The press release told how "AP's award-winning photojournalists" would bring "corporate/PR photography to the next level" with stories that promoted CEOs and their products. It explained how AP's 1,500 photographers "would meet the needs of PR's global client base."

At first I thought someone was pulling my wire. The press statement announcing the merger was written by Rachel Asche at PR Newswire. I wondered whether AP had approved the release. I later learned that they had. It shouldn't have been a surprise.

AP Wide World has grown from a staid, money-making archive separate from the news division into a PR giant. Its Web site boasts a list of clients that includes Lockheed Martin, Fleet Bank, Raytheon, Pillsbury, and BJ's Wholesale Club.

What a picture. AP Wide World photojournalists jumping into hot spots all over the globe for their PR clients, showing the sunny side of oil spills or shooting a meat-packing CEO munching on a hamburger during a mad-cow crisis.

To explain the conflict: it's like The Washington Post running a PR agency for lobbyists. Then picture some freelance reporters for the newspaper writing Post stories about those lobbyists at the same time that they were writing brochures for them.

The only journalist to pay attention to the AP/PR Newswire marriage was Jerry Walker, a writer for Jack O'Dwyer's Newsletter, a New York City publication devoted to public-relations news.

"I wrote it and waited for AP to demand a correction," said Walker. "But no one from AP has called to complain."

The only protest came from Bob Goldberg, a former AP news photographer who now runs a photo-news promotion agency. Goldberg was worried that AP would cut into his business by using its staff photographers on Wide World PR assignments.

"Back in the '60s, some congressmen got upset because AP photographers would cover them during the day and then show up that night for someone like Coca-Cola," he said. "The congressmen said that was misleading, and AP promised to stop it."

Goldberg called AP Wide World and was assured the wire service would never use news-staff photographers on PR shoots.

I don't know about that. AP news staff photographers went on Wide World assignments well into the '90s. And to this day, wire-service news bureaus use many of the same freelance photojournalists employed by Wide World. Meanwhile, AP news staff photographers contact their own freelancers for Wide World commercial jobs.

But James Wood, director of Wide World, vehemently denied that his PR clients would gain favorable treatment at AP news bureaus.

"I would hear about it if that happened," Wood insisted. "Also, I have been here for four years and none of our staff photographers have gone on commercial shoots. We only use stringers now."

Helen Dowler, PR Newswire's director of Photography Services, conceded Wide World's photojournalists could be doing corporate work at the same time they were covering news. "AP can't restrict what they can do," Dowler pointed out. "They are freelancers. They have a right to make a living."

Dowler's right. But this is about more than jobs. It is about integrity. AP has some of the best journalists in the world. It pains me when it looks like it may be selling its news soul.

"This is why journalism schools and public-relations departments should never be in the same building," said Jane Kirtley, a Silha Professor of Media Ethics and Law at the University of Minnesota's School of Journalism and Mass Communication. "News is about delivering information. Public relations is about spin. News folks have no business getting into the PR trade."