Poynter on the Record

Photos of a bony Nicole Richie are perpetually splashed over tabloids and magazines alike; headlines scream: "Is she too thin?" and "Wasting away."

Just a few pages later, those same magazines offer up tips on how to "lose weight like the stars," or get bikini-ready bodies in record time.

Teen Vogue's March issue showed both Richie and teen queen Lindsay Lohan looking more like famine victims than young celebrities in the article "Dying to be thin?" But in the June issue, Lohan was named one of the 25 hottest stars under 25. The June issue of Vanity Fair features an extensive article about Richie's struggles with her eating -- alongside stylish photos of her. ...

... With eating disorders skyrocketing -- more than 11 million people in the U.S. are anorexic or bulimic and an additional 25 million struggle with binge eating, according to the National Eating Disorders Association -- is the media perpetuating the problem by mixing messages? Is it the role of journalists to ensure unhealthy-looking girls aren't being glorified? ...

... Vanity Fair's readership tends to be older, and the topics of the articles, more serious. Alongside the Richie story in the June issue there are heavy-hitting articles about Hurricane Katrina. It could be argued that teenage girls aren’t reading Vanity Fair, so there isn’t much worry about posing Richie in her skivvies.

But the magazine's reputation means it has more responsibility than a paparazzi-driven glossy, said Roy Peter Clark, senior scholar at The Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank. It's held to a higher standard.

"When you sell magazines by exploiting the images of an unhealthy female body, you bear some responsibility for the unintended bad affects it may cause. ... "Journalists have a responsibility -- photojournalists as well -- to ask themselves 'What is the purpose of this?' 'What good does this do?' "
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