I have seen almost countless news reports in which they show numerous street shots of overweight people. The camera is held low so as to crop off the subjects heads. Nevertheless, I think it would be possible to ID someone based on the pictures.
Have any dopers ever recognized anyone in these type of stories?
I would think the subjects could just die when they see themselves on the tube.
Yeesh, Lance, I’ve wondered this very thing myself. “America’s Obesity Crisis - our story at 11!” -cut to some anonymous huge belly lumbering by in horizontal stripes.
I’ve seen a number of these shots where part of the person’s face is shown. Totally recognizable. Do the camera crews have to get permission before using this footage, and do they have to tell the person what they’re planning to use it for?
IANAL, but extrapolating from [url"http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_152.html"]this SD column on photographs, it would seem that you don’t need permission to film someone in a public place. It does say that there are “certain restrictions” on publication, so maybe somebody better versed in legal matters can clarify.
Sigh. This column:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_152.html
A couple of years ago, I saw myself in one of those shots. I’m not overweight, but I was very pregnant at the time, and I was with two co-workers, one who was also quite pregnant and another who was slightly overweight but not clinically nor visibly what anyone would consider obese. We were all enjoying an 80 degree New York afternoon with cones of fro yo. We were turned into pigs on an eating rampage by WNBC. To this day, I won’t watch their news.
TeaElle, that is freaking hilarious. I hope you will understand that I’m laughing with you, not at you. I don’t blame you for boycotting WNBC.
Not that you were laughing in the first place.
No, I really wasn’t. 
Ah geez, TeaElle, that sucks. You’d think an editor might look at the footage for a couple seconds and be able to tell the camera crew, “They’re not fat, they’re pregnant, you morons!” How hard is it really to tell the difference? Sheesh.
“America’s Pregnancy Crisis - our story at 11!”
FWIW, most of the footage I recall seeing is usually of guys…
When I go to the State Fair I make sure not to eat anything, sort of because the food is all fatty poison death, but mostly because I’m scared that the minute I wrap my mouth around Deep Fried Item a news crew will show up.
I actually have often wondered what legal recourse one could have, in the event that it causes real emotional distress. Especially if you were a Glamour “Don’t.” That would be so humiliating. Could you sue? Get a settlement? I’m surprised that it hasn’t come up (though I suppose an out-of-court settlement would keep people quiet).
ZJ
I wonder why they even bother to get a new shot for each damn story. There could be a generic clip of nasty fat peoples’ asses walking with a cane.
I admit, while I’ve never seen myself anywhere unexpectedly, there’s always a little frisson of fear when I turn to the Glamour Don’t page. I mean, it could happen.
I should’ve been more clear - we were leaning against a wall in public park eating our fro yo, as were a number of other people, some of whom were larger people. However, my coworkers and I were decidedly not among that number nor were many others leaning on the wall (it was conveniently located just steamy hot NYC steps from the fro yo joint) and we were all slammed onto the news just so that they could show the one or two big people who were there, shamefully jamming a cool confection into their pieholes – during the lunch hour on a hot sunny day.
I should be clear that I really hate this practice. 2/3 of the American population is “overweight” and 1/3 is clinically deemed obese, therefore it should pretty well go without saying that we don’t need the parade of headless “anonymous” bodies to illustrate what fat people look like when the media wants to reel out another story which is as likely to include a big, fat government produced, repeated and promoted lie as it is to include something meaningful. It’s one of the easiest aspects of the vapidity of television “news” media to do away with, and yet the one which seems to be growing in use the fastest.