Is this a conflict of interest?

http://www.post-gazette.com/

This is a link to this morning's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Check out the lead photo.
Picture is of the rescued autistic hiker who was found after being lost four days in the West Virginia wilderness.
The photo was taken inside an ambulance and is credited to Dr. Laura Linger.

Two questions.

1. Is this a conflict of interest? Dr. Linger taking photos of the boy inside an ambulance?
2. Why is she credited as a doctor in the photos? Why not just Laura Linger? Does being a doctor make her more or less credible as a photographer?

 

I don't see any conflict.

She's credited as a doctor because that's the usual honorific. Has nothing to do with her credibility as a photographer.

 

How would it be? I had a professor once who went by Doctor Shumate, but she is not an actual doctor.

 

Maybe Dr. Laura Linger is pissed because the Post-Gazette gave the photo credit to Dr. Linda Linger.

 

Doesn't the P-G have some new policy on using people's titles?

 

KY, are you using blue font?

If you receive a Doctoral degree in a subject, then you are allowed (and should) use Dr. in front of your name. Hopefully the school district you live in has some "doctors" working there. Although, those doctors cannot write a perscription.

If this is an ethics problem, it is in the arena of doctors, and not journalists. If Dr. Linger wants to take a picture where photog is not allowed, the newspaper running the pic is perfectly fine.

Honestly, I do not think a photog should be allowed to get that close to a patient, even with a zoom lens. There is something very personal about having active medical work being done on a victim in an enclosed area. You are hitting the slippery slope with both feet if you choose to take that picture.

With the Dr. taking the pic, the slope is not so slippery.

 

Personally I think people with Phd's who want people to call them "Doctor" are full of themselves.

But they're allowed, as 93D says.

 

The real Dr. Laura knows something about photography, does she not?

 

That was the exact thing one of my English profs said. He has a Ph.D. and yet he didn't have anyone call him Doctor.

Some of my interns call me Mr. [Last name]. I don't even like that.

 

There's nothing wrong with Mister.

"Old man" is quite another thing.