Your contributions
A correspondent to the debate on the doctored photographs asks an interesting question about how the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ is countering images from the public showing 'posed or inaccurate images'.
We now receive around 300 images a week to our . Most of these are interesting snaps taken of people’s families, holidays or lives in general. A fair proportion on a busy week are from news events, ie from Lebanon, or Britain during the heatwave.
Of course, we are aware that some people will use this system to try and hoax us, to send something which is not quite as it seems. It’s something we are on the look out for as we go through the images, and to date we’ve not published anything which has been problematic. But that doesn’t make us complacent. You do get a second sense with these images, and the team which are looking at them are doing so day in day out.
You can obviously follow all the usual journalistic paths; you can email or ring the photographer back and check are they were they say they are, does their number appear to be the code of the area they say, it is their photograph. If you get multiple photographs of the same image you would think that maybe they have been picked up from an agency or sharing site and don’t belong to the person sending them.
If they appear 'photoshopped', or almost too good, you would double check.
Some people take grabs off a television - these you can spot. You can do a quick technical check to see when the image was taken and with what device. You can compare with other photos from the same area, from TV images you may have of the place, you can check other photo agency wires to see if the image crops up elsewhere.
Most genuine emailers will add text, a plausible story, which can be checked out. You take care, and always use your professional judgement. No matter how pressing the need is to get that image up on the web or on the tv screen, the verification process must be gone through.
However I would say that the vast majority of people don’t want to hoax you, they want to get their image published and so share their story with the world, and that for our journalism and reflecting what is really going on in the world, can only be a good thing.
While I’m here... I wanted to add a note about the sheer volume of comments we’ve received on the crisis in Lebanon.
Since it began the Have Your Say debates have received well over 100,000 comments - and had 3.5 million page impressions. It has been consistently the only story people want to talk about or read people’s views on. On one day - 26 July - we received over 6,000 emails.
But that of course means that many people who do send their views may not get them published. There is no agenda here. On massive stories like this we do try to pick a range of views expressed differently - it would be no good if every one said more or less the same thing in the same way. We do try and pick comments from people actually living through or with direct experience of the event - on either side.
We know how frustrating it can be not to get a view which is held very deeply on the pages, but I can assure all those in this position, we are working flat out to get through as many as we can. Thank you all for your contributions.
Comments
Thanks for answering the question Vicky.
I don't agree with your comments re HYS. The same people post their views time and again - and get published, yet if you try to refute or debate their views nothing happens. I know the world isn't waiting to hear my comments, but why should one or two people have a monopoly on this site?
To Gina (comment #2): I would imagine that the people who post most on the Have your Say pages are the type that also ring local radio stations in order to broadcast their extreme and often idiotic views. The only way to beat them is to join them in not actually having a life of your own. But why would you want to do that?
I've never noticed any of my comments not being accepted or any bias as to what is for others - I've not really been looking for it though.
Surely doctored holiday snaps are of no consequence and of little concern to anyone. One can hardly argue the same for altered images issued by so called trustworthy news sources such as Reuters and the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ.
We do not neeed editorial intervention. If you cannot issue all the comments at least give us a random sample without interference.
The beauty of taking our news from the net is that we can for once determine the facts and the truth ourselves without editorial bias. At long last!!
Regards,
"Doctored" holiday snaps are more likely to cause problems than "official" photos are - people were suspicious of media outlets editing and airbrushing images before this current incident, but the idea of some harmless guy with a knotted hankie on his head that managed to whip out his phone and grab a pic of (insert momentous calamity here) has inherently less suspicion.
Everyone believes the media will lie through its teeth. But uncle George? Nah, no way, whatever he sent in must be true!
Some self-proclaimed David Bailey is going to come along at -some- point and try for their 15 minutes of fame, or to get one picture on the Beeb's site so they can try and sell the rest to tne Sun or some other supposed media outlet, or even just try to see if they can get a faked pic past the Beeb.
Even though I know the HYS moderators don't publish my HYS comments, because they can't pronounce my name or find it in a dictionary, and so it's too foreign for them (I know this cos they told me so in so many words :P), given the way everything else seems to never stay all that on topic, HYS probably needs to remain editorially controlled.
Hopefully, the blog comments won't need quite as stringent monitoring, even when a thread about the web site's comments system ends up with hordes of comments about the war in the Lebanon instead of about the comments *rolls eyes*
It's a good job we all know you're lying when you say you try not to publish "repetitive" comments, because otherwise we'd get annoyed when you publish the tired old debunked "Israel doesn't comply with Resolution 242" whine over and over again
I'm impressed to read that the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ staff have a "second sense" when it comes to publishing photos. I'd be more impressed if one of them knew how to read Hebrew. The picture series about Lebanese returning to their homes included a picture of an object described as an "anti-personnel mine." The writing on the object itself described it as lithium battery issued by the Department of Communications, Electronics and Computers. I can understand local Lebanese being careful about what they find in homes used by Israeli troops but I would expect the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ to confirm suspicions before they print them.