Are you ready for the visual avalanche?
By Doug Fisher
The caption
accompanying the Feb. 17 photo on The New York Times on
the Web said much more than its mere words: “This
picture of Mr. Zeglis signing the merger agreement in New
York was taken by Joseph McCabe Jr., AT&T Wireless chief
financial officer, using his cellphone’s camera.”
Welcome
to the world of ubiquitous cameras.
Just before
Christmas, one local photo store advertised a key chain
camera with 1.3 megapixels – enough to take decent
photos for the Web, for less than $100. USA Today reports
a projection of 11.3 million cell phones with cameras to
be sold in the United States this year, and Alan Reiter
in his “Camera Phone Report” (www.wirelessmoment.com)
reports work being done on letting cell phone users transmit
larger images, moving them closer to print quality.
In February,
the University of South Carolina’s Newsplex showed
that student reporters with cell-phone cameras can take
us many more places during a primary election than we might
otherwise have gone, and with more voices (see
http://scprimary.textamerica.com). Given the stories
on how camera phones are being banned in locker rooms, nightclubs
and concerts, etc., sometimes that go-anywhere feature is
a problem.
We haven’t
even touched video. It’s not whether you will have
to deal with the issues involved, but when, and it’s
time for us to start thinking hard about it. Ultimately,
editors will have to confront the daily decisions of what
we do under this visual avalanche when our readers and Web
users can be in more places and get more images than we
ever could.
Do we
ignore them, especially if they offer those images to us?
That’s probably not a winning strategy at a time when
evidence points to readers’ expecting greater connections
with their news providers. Yet we also can’t ignore
that digital photos, because of their easy manipulation
and transmission, are fraught with pitfalls.
You need
to be thinking about guidelines. In some cases, that might
mean just updating ones you already have. In other cases,
even if you’re used to using freelancers or handouts,
you’ve got to think things through.
These
are guidelines because the idea is to promote effective
decision-making; rules tend to restrict it. I don’t
pretend any revelations. After all, this column is about
common sense. But here are some suggestions of questions
you should be asking:
In what
cases will we accept photo submissions from a freelancer
or non-staff member? If never, there’s no problem,
except that you’ll likely alienate some valuable stakeholders
and watch good photos show up on the Web or whatever your
competition becomes. If you restrict it to “big”
events, the pressure of those moments increases the chances
of bad decision-making.
From whom
will we accept such photos? Anyone? Known freelancers? Stringers
we keep on contract (with or without company-issued camera
phones)? Each of these has benefits and problems. Accept
from anyone and you need strong guards against being duped.
And there’s that question of how much you’ll
pay, if at all. Keeping it to known freelancers restricts
your universe (some of the Pulitzer Prize winners have been
taken by relative unknowns). Stringers on contract gives
you a bit more oversight, but it further restricts your
horizon, and you must be careful not to turn those people
into employees by violating the wage and hour laws.
The challenge
– and benefit – of using “citizen-photographers”
is that they may not have been steeped in the shared mores
and ethics of our profession. So while the National Press
Photographer’s Association writes on its Web site,
“Accurate representation is the benchmark of our profession,”
the citizen-photographer’s understanding of accurate
representation might not exactly match yours. And what about
PR people or corporate executives like that AT&T Wireless
CFO?
How will
we accept photos? There used to be some reassurance in handling
a roll of film: The images had been captured, and while
the original setup could have been manipulated or faked,
once in silver it was pretty hard to move things around.
No more, of course. And now, once you “publish”
an image in ones and zeros, it can live and spread forever.
So will we accept photos digitally over e-mail, with its
potential for anonymity or misdirection? Would we instead
prefer to use a Web site submission where we could require
additional information, such as a Social Security number
or other identifier that could be more easily checked? (You
also can ask for that in e-mail, of course. But when that
photo of the mayor doing something untoward arrives on deadline
without a proper name or with the e-mail’s true address
masked, that decision-making gets harder.) Of course, the
more information you require, the more you discourage some
people, not all of them shady.
Are there
any cases or times we will restrict our use of such submissions:
Around April 1? Political campaigns? Highly polarized situations?
This is just common sense – there are times the potential
for mischief rises – and is something that everyone
in a newsroom needs reinforced periodically. We’re
always vigilant, just more vigilant some times than others.
The corollary: Don’t suspend disbelief. If it looks
too good to be true …
Are there
any other restrictions? What level of confirmation will
you require for authenticity? And what will you do if you
discover a photo has been faked? In the digital age, the
damage may already have been done and be potentially far
more harmful. Does this obligate us to take extraordinary
steps to mitigate that?
Finally,
how will you politely tell more people you can’t use
their cherished photo?
And smile
for the camera when you say that.
