Whitney Shefte, an award-winning video journalist at Forging a Better Line: Understanding the Police-Photojournalist Relationship
Workshop Date: Thursday, March 08, 2012 - 1:30 PM
Workshop Speaker: J. David Ake, Corinne Geller, Mary Ann Jennings and Mickey Osterreicher
The last 18 months have seen an explosion in incidents between news photographers and police officers. From New York to California, Milwaukee to Miami, law enforcement officers have been pushing back on access - and the results have gone viral. What's going on? Are there more incidents now and, if so, why? Is it budget cuts in newsrooms and police departments leading to higher levels of stress? Is it a fear of being observed? A distrust of the media?
The aggressiveness of news coverage in a 24/7 world? Or is it just easier to publicize these incidents now? NPPA General Counsel Mickey Osterreicher, Virginia State Police Public Relations Manager Corinne Geller and Fairfax County Police Public Information Officer Mary Ann Jennings will talk about what's happening and what we, on both sides of the yellow tape, can do to improve the atmosphere.
J. David Ake- Ake is Assistant Chief of Bureau for The Associated Press in Washington DC. He directs a group of 15 photographers and photo editors who cover the Federal government from the White House to the Supreme Court and everything in-between. Ake also manages AP's national election and campaign coverage.
In his 15 years with AP he has worn many hats including, deputy director of photography, senior national photo editor and picture editor in charge of the Chicago Bureau.
A veteran wire service photographer of the world’s leading news agencies, Ake covered the White House for Agence France-Presse. He documented the presidencies of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
During his Washington years, Ake has traveled to more than two dozen countries and six continents from the deserts of Somalia to the halls of the Kremlin to the beaches of Normandy. He spent several months in Saudi Arabia covering “Operation Desert Shield.” Ake followed every mile of Bob Dole’s race for the White House in 1996.
During his years at AFP, Reuters and UPI, Ake captured the destruction of Florida’s Hurricane Andrew, the San Francisco earthquake, and the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.
His sports credits include seven Olympics, over 20 Super Bowls, seven World Series, eight NBA Championships, five Masters Golf Tournaments, the Indianapolis 500, the NCAA Final Four, World Cup Soccer, World Cup skiing and many more.
As the Picture Editor in charge of the AP’s Chicago bureau, he directed coverage of numerous national stories including the Columbine school massacre, the 2000 Presidential recount, the plane crashes of Swiss Air off Nova Scotia and Alaskan Airlines near Los Angeles.
His work has been honored by The White House News Photographers Association.
Corinne Geller For the past decade, Corinne Geller has served as a civilian public and media relations officer for the Virginia State Police. As the Public Relations Director, she currently oversees the Department's statewide media relations program and has worked with media at such high-profile incidents as the I-95 sniper shootings, Virginia Tech massacre, Appomattox County mass murders, and several weather-related disasters (tornadoes, hurricanes, blizzards, etc.). A graduate of the Ohio University E.W. Scripps School of Journalism with a degree in broadcast journalism, Corinne also worked at TV stations in Johnson City, Tennessee, and Richmond, Virginia, as a news photographer and reporter. Over the years her work on both sides of the camera have earned her two AP awards and a national Public Relations Society of America award. She
currently resides with her family in Richmond.
Mickey H. Osterreicher is general counsel to the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA). He is a member of the New York State Bar Association Media Law Committee and the American Bar Association Communications Law Forum. He has been a photojournalist almost forty years, working first for the Buffalo Courier-Express as a still photographer and then at WKBW-TV, the ABC affiliate in Buffalo, NY, shooting, editing and producing video. His work has appeared in such publications as the New York Times, Time, Newsweek and USA Today as well as on ABC World News Tonight,
Nightline, Good Morning America, NBC Nightly News and ESPN.
As a lawyer, Mr. Osterreicher has been actively involved in such issues as: cameras in the courtroom, the federal shield law, media access, public photography and copyright infringement. He helped to draft the revised photography guidelines for Amtrak and police-press guidelines for the Toledo, OH; Miami Beach, FL; Suffolk County, NY; and Rochester, NY Police Departments. Mr. Osterreicher also rewrote the Fair Trial/Free Press and Cameras in the Courtroom section of the New York State Bar Association Journalists’ Handbook.
Mr. Osterreicher graduated cum laude in 1973 from SUNY at Buffalo with a Bachelor of Science degree in Photojournalism/Photography and received his Juris Doctor, cum laude from the University of Buffalo Law School in 1998.
