A Test of Your Morality and Ethics

[bamademo]

Excuse the formating. It's cut and paste from email.



A TEST OF YOUR MORALITY AND ETHICS


With all your honour and dignity - what would you do? This test only
has one question, but it's a very important one. Please don't answer
it without giving it some serious thought. By giving an honest answer you will be able to test where you stand morally. The test features an unlikely, completely fictional situation, where you will have to make a decision one way or the other. Remember that your answer needs to be honest, but yet spontaneous.


You're in Florida. In Miami, to be exact. There is a huge chaos going
on around you, caused by a hurricane and all the flooding. There are
huge masses of water all over you.

So, you are a CNN photographer and you are in the middle of this

great disaster. The situation is nearly hopeless. You're trying to
shoot very impressive photos. There are houses and people floating
around you, disappearing into the water masses. Nature is showing

all its destructive power and is ripping everything away with it.

Suddenly you see a man, steering a big van. He is fighting for his

life, trying not to be taken away by the masses of water and mud.

You move closer... Somehow the man looks familiar and important.

Suddenly you know who it is - it's George W. Bush! At the same time

you notice that the raging waters are about to take him away,

forever... You have two options. You can save him or you can take

the best photo of your life.



So you can save the life of George W. Bush, or you can shoot a

Pulitzer prize winning photo. A photo displaying the death of a very

powerful man.



And here's the question: (Please give an honest answer)



















Will you make the photo black and white, or colour?

[Demeter]

1. Color, Definitely

Pulitzer PRize material--although if I get two shots, one of each

[brainshrub]

2. Well, since I live in the USA...I would shoot in color.

Not colour.

Sheesh...no wonder we revolted against the crown! Who wants to use all those extra "U"s?

[bamademo]

4. I didn't notice the British spelling until now

I sorta like British spellings but for some reason I can't think of any right now. :-)

[UrbScotty]

6. LOL! (nt)

[XNASA]

3. The real question here is: Would you risk your own life to try andsave *w?

And my answer is "No".

The bushes have no honor. bush1 bailed on his flight crew during WW2, w* bailed on his National Guard duty.

Make that a color photo.

[DuctapeFatwa]

5. I would save the chimp

He is a human being, and he does not dictate my own position on human rights, or the value of human life versus money.

[Fleshdancer]

9. I agree

I would try to save him. I don't think I have it in me to watch a person die without trying to help him/her.

Not to say I wouldn't be bitching him out the entire time....

[DuctapeFatwa]

7. kick for the hell of it

[foreigncorrespondent]

8. No life is worth less than the next...

...no matter who they are. I would have to try and save him.

The difference between shrub* and me is, I realize the importance of every single life, he doesn't.

[DrWeird]

10. Who cares?

I'd just take a whole bunch of photos rapidly so I could string them together like a cartoon.

[blueraven95]

11. black and white

although, to be honest, whatever type of film I have in the camera is probably what I would go with.

I choose b&w because the light during a hurricane/gale is amazing, and the shadows would be awe-inspiring. I believe at least one beautiful thing should come out of every person's life, and this photograph is that thing for *, then it should be done properly, and that means with the b&w film.

[Catfish]

12. Well, I'd like to give my answer

but I can't get my mind around the concept of Bush driving himself in any circumstances and certainly not in a plebian van. He'd be in a limousine with a driver, whether President or not.

[jmowreader]

13. If the question is "do you risk your life to save Dubya"

you also have to consider the other side: Is the return greater than the risk?

The guy's a mass murderer. Five hundred US troops in Iraq, a hundred in Afghanistan, 15,000-plus foreign nationals, the better part of 200 executees...

Let's change the wording a little. Say Pol Pot was in that van. Or Mao. Stalin. Mussolini. You-know-who. Nixon. Fill in your favorite tinhorn dictator. If You-know-who was at the wheel of the van, would you risk your life to save him? Or would you let his nazi ass drown?

I know what I'd do. And it doesn't involve getting any wetter than I already am, either.

I've either got a roll of Ektapress in my camera or a digital camera, and both of those shoot in color. So color it would have to be.

[beawr]

14. One of each

I would take the time to switch cameras.

[ScholarSeeker]

15. I'd save him, god dammit

[blueraven95]

16. I posted the first time without reading any of the replies

in order to get an honest answer.

Now, I will answer the implied question, which I have thought about a lot, because I got my degree in film from a univeristy specializing in documentary.

I would shoot the picture. If I am a CNN photographer, than I have embraced the lifestyle of the journalist, whose fundamental job is to watch the world. My photograph could be more world altering than saving a life, and its message could make the world a better place. Millions of people have died for lesser causes. A journalist is expected to capture the world as is, not the world as he or she wants it to be. While this is an impossible quest, to strive for images of the world without without inflicting our own biases (and that includes physically changing it) is a noble challenge. So, no I would not save Bush, but I would also not save anyone else either.

Except that I am not a CNN photographer, and have no wish to be, because I would want to throw away the camera and save anyone in that situation, be it Bush or Martin Luther King Jr. Which is why I gravitated toward fiction, and I do not make documentaries.

[WWW]

17. I would take the picture and then save his life

I used to be a reporter, photographer for my state's largest daily. 13 years. Often I would arrive at an accident to witness horrific scenes. You take the pic that tells the story and then put the camera down to aid in the rescue. You hold up the IV, you help to lift the stretcher, you talk to the people trapped inside the car. I've had to look for a guy's tongue in the woods, have scraped pieces of a woman's brain off of my shoe and in one of my last assignments took a little girl in my arms to comfort her after her mother was declared dead at a car accident. (I was the only female at the scene and the EMTs asked me to take care of her while they carted her mother off to the ambulance.
A life is a life....and you do whatever you can to save it. I always had my camera loaded and would have taken Bush's picture walking to the scene which we were trained to do. I would have had plenty of tie to save his life.

[populistmom]

18. If it meant not risking my life, I'd save him

Honestly as the mother of young children, I'd risk my life to save their lives, but not Shrub's (too many people need me and he's not worth that). However, if saving him were of little risk to me, but I'd have to forgo some material gain, my conscience would force me to save him because unlike him, I actually have a heart and a soul.

[teevee99]

19. heeheeheee

color. he already lives in a black and white world.