Credits to the author
Ethics, journalism, and crediting the source. A life lesson to mind my own business.
Some weeks ago I noticed that a rather famous and recognized food and beverage photographer operating in Europe started complaining about media outlets using several of her pictures, uncredited.
Although I was personally surprised, this is nothing out of the ordinary, unfortunately.
Luckily, it is something that could easily be solved, suggests Gareth Penrose for LinkedIn, as “in many cases, the people who took the picture will simply like to see their name beside their work.”
So I said to myself that, perhaps, it was worth sending a message to one of the page directors to alert them that this was happening (on their news outlet more than others, incidentally) and that this was not really good publicity for them - having an artist complaining systematically that they used their pictures, always uncredited over and over again.
As you might imagine, I should know better: as they say in Italy “chi si fa gli affari suoi campa cent’anni”, or in English, mind your business for a peaceful life.
And this is the story of how it went.
Because my interaction with this journalist went really, really, bad.
For journalism, not for me.
This is how I had imagined this to go:
Me: Hi, I saw a photogrtapher complaining already for several weeks that in your (and other) newspaper her pictures are posted without credits. I think its bad and also unethical, do you think you can do something for her credits?
Journalist: Oh, shoot! Thank you for bringing this to our attention. I’ll see what the situation is and what we can do.
Journalist: Look, it was a mistake her agency did, I’ll get back to them and rectify what happened. This was a mistake, I hope it will not happen again. She has the door open to discuss with us though! I’ll reach out to her. Thanks for flagging it.
Me: nevermind :)
A civilized exchange of information.
This is, instead and to my dismay, how it went - the dialogue is original, and translated into English by Google Translate (any semantic error, it’s of the machine):
Me: This is a bout a photographer, and for weeks she came to notice that her photographs of her were used without credit in yous newspaper (not only in yours!). I think this is a bit bad, besides from the ethics of journalists and writers - and artists! Maybe you can do something to recognize the work of photographers like her?
Journalist: First of all, let's take it easy with the accusations, okay?
Me: Hello! I don't think it's an accusation. She noticed that for several weeks now her photos have been appearing in the media (also on yours) without credits, and I thought it was important to let you know.
Journalist: You can address the issue without accusations of lack of ethics. And why didn't she talk to us directly? No one on our team received anything. Our emails are public.
Me: It's not a lack of ethics, perhaps, just inattention. I don't know that, that's why I thought it was important that someone from your news outlet (a magazine that I like, for now) knew - it's not great publicity for the magazine to have this on the networks. That's all, I'm going on with my life :)
Journalist: The error was the agency's and hers. Her name is only mentioned in the photo description. The agency ddid not credit them. And she didn't make the automatic info file. Again, it would be nice that when these questions were asked, it was in a non-accusatory and defamatory manner.
Me: I'll mind my business next time…
Journalist: It's not mind my own business. It's talking without attacking. Nor do we assume that the error was ours. It's really bad what she did. Defaming us without contacting us. In fact, that's what you did, assuming that there had been an intentional error on our part. The only effort she made was sending a message on Instagram. Didn't speak to the agency he works with, didn't send an email, didn't try to resolve things well.
Me: I think you read something in my words that wasn't there. Frankly, I was expecting another reaction. I imagined an "oops"
Journalist: Read what you wrote carefully. You immediately assumed that it was a lack of ethics
Me: This is not my language, maybe I expressed it poorly. I'm sorry that you have perceived an accusation ad personam, I still think that not believing (due to the error of one, of both, of the god of bad luck) is not correct, whoever is to blame.
Journalist: It's a mistake, yes. But there is a huge difference between a mistake and a lack of ethics. An accusation is an accusation, whether in Portuguese, Italian or Chinese.
Me: I always thought that crediting was one of the most important things in publishing. Credit, always, my service manager said in the newspaper.
Journalist: I'm not going to continue this conversation because this already has a little smell that I don't like. Respect if you want to be respected.
I also did not really like the smell of that conversation, especially because to me sloppiness is as bad as being unethical.
Also, because there is a general tolerance, I would say, for things that are at odds with my own journalism ethics and tolerance, it seems, for plagiarism, and for copying someone else’s work in journalism, I am afraid.
In this twisted narrative, the onus of the guilt was on her, the photographer. Not on the media outlet that reused her pictures without crediting her.
It makes me think a lot about the ethics in this specific news outlet, for instance - and let me tell you, I decided I stopped reading it altogether, and I will not recommend it further to my circle.
De-influencing is a thing.
Dura lex, sed lex - even if in this case, more than law, is ethical thinking and behaviour.
However, as I am very pesky when I want to, I started digging into that media outlet. Browsing their articles and sampling their way of working.
What I did find out is reeking (not smelling, dear offended journalist, reeking - and go look up the difference) of journalistic sloppiness if not weak ethics.
What do they do as a matter of habit?
They do credit the pictures they found yes. But - let’s say they found the picture on Instagram, they credit (yes, seriously) as “Instagram”.
They just type out “Instagram”.
No links, no further credits, nothing.
In a time and age where hyperlinks are fairly common practice, I felt shocked.
Here is an example:
Is it…ok? I mean, SOMEONE SOMEWHERE took that picture. Why can’t it even be discovered unless we do a reverse image search?
Maybe I was really witnessing something that in this country was a custom, for contemporary journalism.
But…why do we accept it?
Soon after this interaction, the photographer removed her story from Instagram, the story where she complained about said media outlet.
Said media outlet started crediting her pictures - but just hers, leaving unintelligible blurbs and “Insta” pointers everywhere elsewhere.
Was I just witnessing sloppiness, lack of ethics, and all the maladies I witness when these journalists write (or wrap up, more likely, copying from a press release) a “gastronomic review” of something?
Then again, when talking with a former media mogul about this outlet, he dismissed the question saying that whatever this specific media outlet was and has always been doing could not even considered journalism, but some badly executed clockbait.
Ouch.
Let me tell you another story.
It happened very recently in one of the most influential newspapers in Portugal, and as Raquel Varela puts
“Plagiarism is a deliberate expropriation of someone else's work. It is therefore not an error. A journalist from Público copied entire paragraphs from a columnist from El País. What is perhaps more serious is a journalist copying an opinion article – an opinion is something of the subject, a literary creation, what is inside his soul – it can say”
(this and all translations are mine).
“As always, it is more a problem of journalistic culture than of individual responsibility: no Italian newspaper has ever communicated that it has discovered cases of plagiarism or invention by its journalists,”
says Il Post.
Plagiarism of written things is a despicable act that, according to many, is one of the precursors for corruption as well.
Plagiarism, as HuffPost puts it, is way more than simply stealing words. HuffPost fired a journalist for plagiarism, mind you, walking the talk, as you may say. Same as what BuzzFeed did to one of theirs.
It is not plagiarism, for photography.
It is straight out using material without crediting it.
And in the case of photography, the situation is not an if, but instead a when.
Whoever has dabbed into journalism, and whoever has a little sense of giving worth to someone else’s work knows that sites and publications should be bound
“to follow the simple decency of requesting usage of photos from the photographers in question or else stop taking images without permission”
puts it bluntly Gareth Penrose for LinkedIn, saying also:
“The only problem is your image doesn’t seem to be your image anymore. It is now on fifteen other websites, none of which has requested to use your image and not one of them has even included your name. (…) You stare at your screen as a hopeless rage brews up inside. All you seem to be able to do is make a cup of tea, mumbling to your cat about the injustice of it all.”
Ouch.
“While financial retribution might not always be sought by eyewitnesses or photographers for their material, written credit should always be provided. EU copyright law requires the source to be indicated and named at all times, "unless it turns out to be impossible"
reminds us lawyer Adam Rendle in an article by Madalina Ciobanu.
Wait.
In the case we opened with, it was possible and decent to credit the photographer.
Why not point to the artist, after all?
The decision not to do so, and to do a sloppy job of crediting the agency (with something like a two-character blurb, no further links), is of the journalists, and their media outlet.
Could they be sued for sloppiness?
Not really.
Surely, they can be considered sloppy and doing their job - which is finding the truth - badly.
Is this the journalism we want?
Surely, I do not.
Ethics in journalism is paramount.
Crediting - for real, not with “the Agency told us so” means digging deeper into the news.
How can I believe a media outlet is doing a thorough job, if they cannot even be arsed to look up the credits of a picture, or paste a hyperlink?
Why should I have to reverse engineer a picture whose credit lazily is “Instagram”, when I could CLICK on a fucking link?
So there would be my final response to the bewildered journalist if I would believe this could be changing something in the industry, or if I did care:
I apologise for having alluded to being unethical and lacking professional deontology. I retract it all, and I am sorry for it.
However, not hyperlinking, “citing the source” with a two-letter blurb, and not being more explanatory is to me a sign of sloppy and bad journalsim - I do not care if it’s the Industry standard. It’s a shitty way of crediting, and thus a shitty way of doing something that could be easily done better.
Sloppy, in this and many cases, is just a precursod for bad. And for that, all the newspaper should ask for forgiveness to their readers - as well as for the badl-qzoted source materials.
I will not tell who the journalist is, or who the photographer is.
It does not matter, in the end.
As it happens for many of my writings, this was a pretext to create a text about a context.
But you can share this article with your photographers and journalist friends and ask what they think!
I used to work in a high school. Crediting the work done by others was regularly taught, reinforced, and enforced by the faculty. It's basic. It's just something you need to do.
Gosh! What an inept and unprofessional attitude. And unfortunately, one we see too often. It happened to me several times to be plagiarized or seeing my pictures posted somewhere uncredited. Not once I managed to have me credited or saw apologies: the best I got what a silent change of picture without aknowledging me. I even found one of my pictures in a book: in that case the publisher couldn't play dumb, so they apologized and offered me a compensation. But even in that case, it was "someone else's fault". Never they take any responsibility, not even by accident.