Staging = wrong

Mo Scarpelli -- It was refreshing to hear an account of a journalist that stands up for "real" journalism. I say "real" because staging is everything but - it creates a fake world of sorts, even if the real event actually happened just moments before and is just being reenacted. Being there at the right time, being prepared is part of the job - some of the best moments captured in photo journalism, for example, are chance moments. I remember seeing a show on Pulitzer Prize winners, and one of them was a man whose camera actually dropped out of his hands as this criminal ran from a house he'd been hiding out in for the past day and a half. The camera took a picture as it hit the ground, getting a shot of the man's frantic face and the police chasing after him - it's a beautiful shot. Was it luck that all of this was captured? The man dropped the camera - he didn't set up the shot or anything. I would say he got pretty lucky. But that's journalism sometimes.
If we could stage anything, that luck aspect of journalism that occures sometimes only once or twice in a career wouldn't be so treasured... it wouldn't be an aspiration for journalists to get out there and put themselves in the position to get the lucky shot. If we could stage anything, we'd be film producers, dramaticists... not journalists.
Wertheimer is right - I commend him for sticking up for that kind of journalism - the lucky kind - even if it can't always be controlled or obtained. Journalism shouldn't be that easy.