Results matching “photographs mean to profess”

Following Getty Images' decision to close its citizen journalism arm Scoopt, the venture's founder Kyle MacRae explained in an interview why "the dedicated cit-j agency model isn't the way forward." His reasoning was that even though many members of the public may well be on a breaking news scene with a camera, it is extremely unlikely that they will be a member of a citizen photojournalism organisation. But has Citizenside, a small, young company based in Paris, found a solution? The Editors Weblog spoke to co-founder Matthieu Stefani and editor-in-chief Aurélien Viers about Citizenside's work and the way they see the future of citizen photojournalism.

Citizenside operates in two different ways. On its own site, it functions in a similar way to other agencies: it gathers photos from its community - 35,000 members, close to 7,000 of which are active - which are published after thorough checking of the photos' validity. Staff receive 500-600 images a day, and those which pass the checking are categorised into sections such as headlines, showbiz, or unusual, or gathered into portfolios with others along the same theme or about the same event. Media outlets can purchase the photos from Citzenside, with up to 75% of the price going to the contributor. Agence France Presse owns a 34% stake of Citizenside, and is currently trialling incorporating the company's amateur images into its image forums, where any of the news agency's 7000 partners would be able to buy them. Content is clearly labelled as amateur, and Citizenside stressed the importance of differentiating the work of 'citizens' from that of professionals.

AFP is currently trialling incorporating Citizenside's amateur pictures into its image forums where any of its 7000 partners can buy them

Staff are proactive about finding images, "we don't just wait for people to send them," explained Stefani. Their kit allows them to locate users within a certain radius of any given spot, so if something happens which they want to know more about, they can send out an email requesting photos. "We send 3 or 4 of these a day," Stefani clarified. The company tries to avoid receiving photographs straight from mobile phones via MMS as the quality is poor and it is much harder to check an image's authenticity. Developers have however released an iPhone application, and are looking at launching similar products for Blackberry and  Google's Android phone. Staff also provide feedback when contributors send in images that cannot be used.

Mainstream Media success through factchecking

Citizenside photos have recently been on the cover of French daily Liberation, and in Le Point magazine and Le Figaro magazine, so the company is making a name for itself. The Liberation photo was of a snow storm, and Viers explained how a storm was a good example of an instance when citizen photo reporting really works: anybody can be a witness and as it might be harder to travel, professional photographers will not necessarily be able to cover the whole storm effectively. He added that Citizenside members were definitely not trying to play the role of reporters, rather they are "news witnesses."

One of the ways in which Citzenside differs from other sites that gather user photos and video, such as self-declared "unedited, unfiltered" CNN's iReport, is that all images are checked for authenticity. The company's developers have created a tool through which users can send photos, and which provides various details to staff about each photo or video that they receive, such as the camera brand and model, the resolution, and the date the photo was taken. Crucially, the programme can also alert staff to whether a photo has been modified online. Using the sender's IP address, the tool also shows from where in the world images have been sent. With this information, Citizenside staff can get a pretty good idea of whether what the contributor has told them about the image is indeed true. "I think at the moment, we are the only company who can offer such a specialised tool for the media," Viers remarked, and Stefani explained that developers would continue to refine the product to make it more and more effective. If staff still have doubts, particularly in the case of major, potentially controversial stories, they will contact the sender directly via telephone or email. "We will double check, triple check, quadruple check if it is a big story," stressed Stefani. "If someone appears to be trying to mislead us, we will expel them from the community," he added.

"We will double check, triple check, quadruple check if it is a big story." 

This emphasis on checking the authenticity of the images significantly increases the value of Citizenside's service, as amateur content with no professional input can be relatively meaningless. Citizen journalism site The Observers offers a similar commitment to fact-checking, a trend which has the potential to bring citizen journalism closer to the mainstream media in terms of respectability. Stefani asserted that he believes it is the company's focus on "quality not quantity" which makes their service so appealing to clients.  "We don't believe in the idea that everybody is a journalist, just because they have a camera and a blog," underlined Viers. Rather what he believes works is a form of professional-amateur collaboration: "an association of bloggers, witnesses, journalists and editors."

A global citizen photo network?

The most crucial difference of Citizenside, however, is its mission to share its technology. Stefani explained that he and the other Citizenside founders quite quickly understood that, as Kyle MacRae pointed out, one agency alone will never be able to get an image from every breaking story. But what if many different publications all over the world each hosted their own UGC community that was managed by Citizenside? This is what Citizenside is aiming to do by offering its 'Reporter Kit' to traditional publications, sold via AFP. The tool was released in September 2008 and the first client to purchase it was Voici, a French gossip magazine. Citizenside is about to launch the same service for Public, one of Voici's rivals and is also in talks with one of France's biggest daily newspapers, a couple of regionals and one UK paper. The Voici community allows readers of the magazine to upload their images to the site, and if Voici decides to use them in its print magazine or on its main website, then it will pay the contributor, and Citizenside takes commission. If Voici would like to sell an image to another outlet, then Citizenside retains exclusive resell rights, and the profit will be split equally between Citizenside, the magazine and the contributor. Recently, for example, a video showing Hollywood star Lindsey Lohan being showered with flour by animal activists on her way into a Parisian club was sold to US TV channel Extra TV for a considerable sum. Stefani described how he plans for Citizenside's income to be based largely on this reselling of content, rather than on sale of the technology itself. Incidentally, a years' use of the Reporter Kit tool would start at about 13,000 euros, moving to upwards of 20,000 for premium tools and tailor-made development.

What if many different publications all over the world each hosted their own UGC community that was managed by Citizenside? 

Citizenside hopes to make the checking process easier and easier for its clients, for instance by developing a system which would make automatically judge an image's authenticity based on different variables and display a red or green light. Viers stressed that he sees citizen contributions as essential in today's media environment, if news organisations "ignore UGC they are going to make mistakes, and they are going to miss opportunities." Stefani explained that "we had a hard time being understood at first because journalists would just see us as competitors." But he insisted that rather than a competitor, Citizenside aims to be "a new tool, a new source of information." They believe that particularly in a local context, such a community could be extremely valuable to their clients, who would be able to forge better relations with readers, and provide a greater level of coverage. Viers pointed out that hyperlocal news is often incredibly important to people, and it gives citizen witnesses a real chance to flourish.

Dollars for amateurs

So Citizenside believes it has found the solution to the problems raised by Scoopt founder Kyle MacRae. Stefani brought up the example of the man with the first Hudson plane crash photo previously cited by MacRae, who argued that it was the man's instinct to share the photo rather than sell it, and that he was very unlikely to have heard of a citizen photojournalism project that would help him sell it. If Citizenside achieves its goal of establishing popular image sharing community sites for major newspapers, then in the future, a similar witness to an event may well think of sending such a photo to their favourite newspaper, where it would be shared amongst the community, but could also be sold for a significant amount of cash. The project has a great of deal of potential. Obviously, the company is still very small and is yet to break international barriers, though they hope to soon. Stefani admitted that they will need a cash injection if they are to expand beyond Europe into Asian or American markets. There is likely to be some resistance from more traditional media operations to the inclusion of amateur content in their publications, and it might take time to change mindsets.

But the current economic downturn could in fact benefit the rise of citizen journalism as news organisations look for cheaper ways to obtain coverage of events. Editor and Publisher recently ran a story on World Press Photo and Pulitzer prize winning photographer Anthony Suau, who is currently struggling to find work because media outlets do not have enough money to pay him. Using photos from readers is undoubtedly cheaper than employing prize-winning professional. Citizen photojournalism does make sense, if there is a way to prove that the photos are real. A reporter can write a story from afar, but you cannot take a photo from afar. And although many photos will not be of the quality of those taken by experienced photojournalists, professionals cannot be everywhere at once, and taking advantage of the camera-armed public is definitely better than nothing.

Photo credits: Laure Bernard

The Associated Press suspended the use of US military photos on November 14th after the US Government body distributed doctored photographs of General Ann E. Dunwoody, the first female four star General in US history. This is the second hand out photograph that has been altered by the US army in a matter of months. The fact that a government institution would manipulate a photograph begs the question: can we trust what we see?

The Editors Weblog spoke to Santiago Lyon, the Director of Photography at AP about the events surrounding this suspension and the issue of photo manipulation.

First case - flag appears

Lyon reports that when Dunwoody was promoted, the AP searched for an image of the new General on a US military website that gathers photos of armed services personnel. Unable to locate a photograph, the AP contacted the website and requested a photograph and subsequently received a picture of the General by email. This photo showed Dunwoody with a US flag behind her (the photo on the right). The photo was immediately passed to the editing desk (all AP photographs go through at least one editing desk) where it was vetted and examined; it was then released onto the wire.  The San Antonio Express-News, a Texas-based local newspaper, contacted the AP alerting them to the fact that they had found a very similar image of Dunwoody on Google images, but with no US flag behind her (both photos shown above). Lyon and his team immediately investigated and discovered that a member of US military staff had added the US flag background and changed the number of stars on her uniform from three to four. The photograph was then immediately removed from the AP's wire.

Second case - superimposing a head
 
This was the second such incident involving the US army in a matter of months. The AP collects headshots of all the US personnel that have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and as part of this effort the AP received a photo that on closer inspection was not what it appeared. The army had the cut out the face of the dead soldier in question from one photo and superimposed it onto an existing mug shot with a uniform and an American flag in the background.

Lyon says, "Because this had been the second incident in as many months, we decided to suspend the use of US military photographs while we examined our own internal policies as well as have a conversation with the US military about what they were doing to these pictures and how this was unacceptable."

Army were, "at a loss to explain it"

Surprisingly when Lyon contacted the military to complain about this incident, it did not appear to accept the gravity of the situation. Lyon reports, "Initially they were a little bit defensive, claiming that this photo did not really alter the substance of the image. Our policy is of course zero tolerance, we do not accept that images be manipulated or that content be added or subtracted more specifically, unless there is a pressing need to for security reasons for example, and in that event we flag this." In further conversations, the army were, "at a loss to explain it." Lyon goes on to say, "I was shocked, but we wanted to deal with it as forcefully as possible and put it behind us."

The Pentagon later told the AP that they would redistribute their guidelines again to staff, which are also firm on the issue of manipulation. Lyon says, "They pretty much admitted that there had been a mistake and that they weren't proud about it, and that they wanted to work with us to try and ensure that this does not happen again."

As a result, the AP has now strengthened its internal policies with regard "hand-out" images (images that it receives from non-AP staff and external bodies). "We have instituted a more rigorous policy of examining those images now, at least two editors have to examine the images closely and if there is any doubt at all, the image is then held pending further examination." Previously, the standard procedure was to examine all images but not in the kind of minute detail that they do now with hand out images. Lyon reports that the AP receives vast numbers of these hand out images from various bodies, including the police, industry and so forth. AP staff know its strict zero tolerance policy for photo manipulation, but is it something that these external organisations adhere to?

In recent weeks not only do we have the AP case, but also the issue of a French Government minister and a disappearing and reappearing diamond ring. A Le Figaro front-page photo of Justice Minister Rachida Dati was doctored to erase a substantial diamond ring she was wearing. The practise of photo manipulation is nothing new: in 1942 Mussolini had a horse handler removed from a photograph of him sitting on a horse in order to make him look more heroic.

As long as there has been photography, there have been photo manipulations. However, with advanced technology and increased use of photo shop, it is now easier to achieve and harder to detect. Lyon says, "It is the click of a mouse and you can add or subtract things from a photo quite easily. What that means for an organisation like ours, whose whole reputation is based on the voracity of the information and telling the truth, is that we have to be ever vigilant." These incidences raise the question of how often these doctored images make it onto our front pages - unintentionally in the case of AP and intentionally in the case of Le Figaro  - as we generally only hear of this when the culprits are caught out. Can we now trust what we see? "You see images that are printed by others and are you always sure of the truthfulness of what you are looking at? It's hard to say. Sometimes you look at an image and you wonder," say's Lyon on the issue.

Lyon says that the Dunwoody image has highlighted the problem to AP. "What this has done is that it has shown us the need to be as vigilant and as careful as possible with hand out images from third parties whose provenance we cannot be 100% sure of. It has heightened our vigilance."

Today's newspaper reader is well aware that anything can be done with an image, even if it is just from their experiences watching the magic of CGI at their local multiplex. However, this is an arena where they expect the full trickery of the camera to be on display, the public does not expect it when they open the newspaper.

Due to the Internet and various other factors, "there has been a huge increase in the number of images that are being sent by international news agencies. 20-years ago we were probably sending 100 images a day in a 24-hour period. Now we are closer to sending 3,000 images in a 24-hour period. When you do the maths, the news agencies are handling close to a million images a year. That's a huge amount of imagery." This increase in distribution and use of photographs highlights the need for there to be strict rules on the doctoring of photographs. The role of a photojournalist is to capture a story for the reader, to bring a story to life, and to tell the truth. Just because we have the technology to do something, it  doesn't mean we should.

Source: AP, Straits Times, National Press Photographers Association, Ethics of Digital Manipulation, Daily Tech

A few weeks ago, El Pais underwent a redesign to emphasize its renewed global reach and connect with a younger readership. In this email Q&A, editor-in-chief Javier Moreno explains everything about the paper's relaunch.

Walter Grolimund and Jann Jenatsch, CEO and COO of photo agency Keystone Switzerland, spoke about the challenges professional photojournalism is facing in the digital age in an interview on Persoenlich.com. The interview focused on the influence of citizen photographs on professional photojournalism, but also dealt with the trend of regionalization in photojournalism.