How Many Words Out of a Thousand Are True?Follow

If you've been following the news, you may have seen reports of doctored photographs, distributed by Reuters, in which additional smoke was digitally added to images of Israeli air strikes. You can see examples of this and other manipulated or potentially staged photographs here.

I'm not claiming that the assertations on that site are true, but present that site to make a larger point.

You've always been able to stage photos. You could even manipulate images carefully with "traditional" means. But today it has become easier than ever to create a false image. And modern communications mean that an image gets out to the public faster than ever and there's less time to confirm things before someone gets the scoop on you. As we continue on, will we be able to safeguard the public from this falsified journalism? Is the answer to rely on bloggers and hobbyists to root out doctored images? The backlash against Reuters will hopefully make them more careful in the future but, at the same time, I think to myself that the internet is also filled with the same nuts who go on about 9/11 conspiracies, Katrina weather machines and other such nonsense. I'm not sure if I trust them to be the eternal vigilance between truth and falsehood.

Thoughts?

I think it's pretty much impossible to get news from an unbiased source. I was listening to a Lebanese-American man in Michigan say that he gets his news about the invasion from Al-Jazeera, and that Fox news and CNN aren't reliable because they don't tell the whole story. Now, obviously, that is true in the sense that no one really tells the whole story, but it doesn't mean one is more accurate than the other. It's impossible to present all aspects of something equitably, because the news isn't being written (or edited, for that matter) by a machine, but rather by a human being with prejudices and slants. I try to take everything with a grain of salt, but it's only natural to seek out news sources with a slant I find I can agree with more. I don't think there is a way to avoid the bias, and sadly, like in anything, people will always turn the dial up on images or stories if they think it will boost the hits on the website, or the ratings.

Edited, Aug 9th 2006 at 11:26am EDT by Atomicflea

Damn, Ryneguy beat me to it.

Internet news needs to have the same standards as print news. Or at least TV news for chistsakes!

This kind of thing does concern me, but I'm hoping this stuff is an exception to the rule and not the beginning of a trend. Maybe market forces alone will keep things somewhat in check (disreputable news sites and unscrupulous image providers won't get much ad revenue or subscriptions/fees).

In the meantime, don't trust any one source for your news, especially on the internet.

Facetiousness aside, what got me started on the topic was that it was a Reuters photo intended for print media.

As for being "suprised", I'm not. I'm asking how it can be safeguarded against in the face of technology. Whether it's part of an effort from one faction to discredit the other or if it's just a photographer looking to punch-up his photo to make it more marketable, it's something that will have to be addressed.

That really depends on that site. If it's an official "news site", then yeah, it's supposed to be held to the same standard as print journalism. However, anyone can technically write *anything* on a site on the internet. There's no laws requiring that they be truthful. This can be problematic when someone equates a story on <somerandomblog>.org and cnn.com for example. CNN is a news source and is legally required to present truthful and factual information. No one else is held to that standard.


I also think that the link Joph provided misses a key component while critisizing Rueters. The problem isn't necessarily deliberate posing or bias, but an institutional process within journalism that lends itself to incredible subjectivity under the guise of "news".

Most people outside of the news business aren't aware that the headlines, captions, and choice of photographs (if any) are *not* written or chosen by the person who writes the article itself. What happens is that the news organization sends photographers (or buys photographs from someone local), and they send reporters. The reporters write stories about specific events. The photographs are often collected separately and end up in a "pool" of photos from the area taken at about the time of the story. When the story goes to print, an editor will pick out a photograph that looks like it goes with the story, and writes a caption for it (or may even have someone else write the caption). The caption is written to match what the photo appears to show and in a way to tie the photo into the story that the photo has been selected for. Finally, yet another person (can't remember the official term for it) will write a headline for the story itself.


This process allows several levels of subjective choices to be inserted into the story. You don't have to be purposefully biased at all. You just have a view towards the story, pluck a photo that expresses that view from a pile of photos, and write a caption that "fits" that view. You're not trying to lie to anyone, but you can easily pick a photo that has nothing to do with either the story, or the caption that's written underneath the photo. It's not like the photographers take notes as they're taking pictures to ensure that those pictures only go with stories accurately representing the facts. They just snap pictures and then send them back to headquarters. The guys at the other end have no way of knowing what was going on outside the frame. They just pick one that looks good and make up a caption that sounds like it matches what the photo appears to be showing.


This is why we're getting so many inconsistencies. A huge part of that is the incredibly questionable manner in which photos are attached to stories in the first place. A component of that (and where the arguments of bias come in), is that those who pick the photos to go with the stories are always going to pick the one that seems the most dramatic. So photos that are staged or doctored have a higher chance of being selected then those that aren't, exactly because they are intentionally made to appear more dramatic then those that aren't.