BBC uses lifted Iraq war photo to depict Syrian slaughter

On a practical note

maybe a faint - but clearly identifiable - watermark across the whole of the image ?

The irony here is the BBC puts DOGs on it's content to prevent misattribution ....

Efforts were made ?

Efforts were made overnight to track down the original source of the image ? No need to make efforts, just have a look at the EXIF data. There's everything you need right there unless the media organisation you work for uses content management software which ignores or, worse, actively strips out the metadata.

Efforts were made ? Yeah, to make the Beeboid's excuse sound plausible. FAIL.

Pretending that nothing happened...

So they didn't post about it on Tuesday?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2012/05/houla_massacre_picture_mistake.html

I see an opportunity

There is a lot of money to be made from stock images.

I could knock up a website in about 30 mins and start selling. The only trouble is most of my pictures are either of the moon or birds (feathered variety)

Although all us El Reg commentards could get together and act out some of the news stories and try and sell the them as authentic. It could be a money spinner as the journo's not seem to be able to authenticate them properly.

BBC Is a propaganda tool - no different than any other state-run broadcaster - look in your history books :/

Think the photo is a bad joke? Watch this video - skip to 48 seconds to see the bit about the beeb.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svYIUqYtSEs&feature=g-u-u

Not the most accurate bit of comment

I would dispute a couple of bits of comment in the article. Firstly using tinyeye or Google image search etc does not make the revelation of the parents of an orphan work "Technology can find the long-lost parents of orphan works". It merely finds other examples of the same or similar images. If they equally have no identifying EXIF or watermarks, then you are no closer to finding the true owner of the copyright. Since many photographers deliberately put robots.txt tags on their online galleries, the software described will not always find the true source of the images.

Secondly the article implies that the government has kicked the small claims track into the long grass. Not so. A consultation and call for evidence was concluded in Feb 2012 (http://www.ipo.gov.uk/hargreaves-enforce-c4e-pcc-response.pdf) and plans are in hand to launch the small claims system, within the soon-to-be renamed PCC by the end of the year. Realistically this probably means sometime in 2013, but at least things are moving forward and not stagnating as Andrew suggests. Details of an interesting recent 'small claims' case here: http://www.thefetishistas.com/index.php?menu=7&sub=47&display=697

GIS anyone?

Obviously the BBC haven't noticed you can upload images to google to search against...

Another one?

This after the story about the Halo UNSC logo being used on the news means someone at the BBC needs an ass kicking.

Twice in a week of usign the wrong image and not checking, Fail!

Really?

"The Mail recently overtook the the New York Times as the most read newspaper website in the world...."

O.......M........F.........G..........!

Then again, ISTR that it was the NYT responsible for the "Gordon Brown can't play Obama's DVDs 'cos they're all Region 1" idiocy[1], so maybe it's just that there isn't much to choose between 'em and the Fail has more pics and fewer long words.

[1] 'Cos if my player's multiregion, I'll bet the one in 10 Downing Street is too.

Attribution is everything.

Anyone who has read my posts on copyright, copyright duration, orphaned works, the 1886 Berne Convention etc., etc. will know how vehemently I am opposed to copyright in its present form. They will also know that I support much freer access to works, easier and more reasonable 'fair use' provisions and the notion of 'thin copyright'.

That said however, I consider the 'stealing' of works from the vast orphaned works collection--no matter how old they may be--as unacceptable. Only in the full public domain would there be a free-for-all, and even then attribution still makes sense for a multitude of reasons, historically, authenticity, cultural etc.

It's lazy sleazebags such as the BBC and ilk that fuck it up for everyone. Even if there were absolutely no moral imperative in the way to disclose and or attribute the source, it still makes sense to do so. For, in addition to the abovementioned reasons, we do not need to give the greedy Copyright Industry any additional legroom or excuse to further squeeze politicians on copyright law and or divide-and-rule the copyright debate.

It's very simple really, when there's any doubt as to the source material, then (a) users should be obliged to do a reasonable search, and (b) such works should be attributed as 'unknown, circa date xyz' etc. Moreover, news agencies such as the BBC will have a fair idea of where the image came from and its approximate creation date--otherwise why would they want to use it other than it must have some contextual meaning with or association to the story in which the image is to be used--and they should be forced by law to say so.

"Either the team responsible for this cock-up didn't attend - or those teaching the courses need to be fired."

Or someone on the team went on the course, and simply made a stupid or lazy mistake.

I know it isn't permitted to make mistakes these days, let alone admit to them, but it doesn't stop them happening.

© teh inetwebz

Always makes me laugh when on the few occasions I have visited the Daily Mail website for some reason (usually involves me laughing and saying "oh my balls, what a bunch of BS") and I see a picture credited to "The Internet". I mean seriously FFS!

The scary thing is that most of their die hard fans probably think the internet is an actual legal entity - one which is systematically trying to corrupt their kids with extreme porn!

Lolwhut?

"Efforts were made overnight to track down the original source of the image"

Right. And it took them that long because there are of course no handy online tools to quickly search for identical or similar images...

Credibility

I think that theres a worse problem here. If the media use pictures from other incidents to back their stories and do not label them as 'library pictures' or such like (I know the picture in this case was labeled as unverified) then it gives ammo to those that might want to deny the events being reported.

I'm reminded of the troubles in Tibet a few years back; The BBC came in for criticism for labelling a picture of an ambulance with some thing along the lines of 'there's a heavy military presence in Tibet'. Other news outlets had used footage of Nepalese Police Truncheoning rioters claiming that the footage was from Tibet. There was even a picture of a large number of Chinese police changing into civvies that was used to back the claim that police were disguising themselves in order to start the riots in the first place, which actually turned out to be a picture taken on a film set where the police were being used to provide a large number of extras. The worst offender was a German news station that allegedly completely mistranslated an interview with a woman on the street in Tibet.

The result was a whole load of ammo to back the claim that the Western media was misrepresenting events and had some anti Chinese agenda.

I could imagine the Syrian regime using this incident to back a claim that the massacre didn't happen, had they not already blamed it on the opposition forces.

Why risk destroying the credibility of the story for a bit of background checking on an image before publishing and some care with labelling?!

This problem goes much deeper...

And you, El Reg, were fully part of it. What I see in this article is the pot calling the cattle black.

Or have you already forgotten your story where it was allegedly proven that IE users are dumb as a bag of hammers ? You probably tried hard to forget it, but you know; this is the Innernets ;-)

Don't feel too much pained for you were in very good company there. Even local national newspapers (in Holland) prominently carried this story, as if it were a major issue.

Yet that is the underlying issue which symptoms you mention here. Major news companies often do not check sources period. That's /period/.

A development which is very disturbing considering how many people often follow one single news source. Sure, people I'd be tempted to call "less educated" but would be better described as: "much less interested.".

Sure; in the end it /is/ the fault of the masses who will blindly believe a story when it comes from a "reliable source". In the end you should always be very weary when it comes to news credibility and if a story really interests you its a good idea to take some time and read multiple papers with multiple views on the matter.

But as said: this isn't merely about pictures and ownership violation. Its about news agencies who will easily cut corners if a certain story seems so interesting or extreme that they might make a good name with it if they can get it published ASAP.

Don't forget El Reg: you were once full part of that. So lets be a little easy when it comes to criticizing other news agencies, but also dare to put the finger on the sore spot. And you know darn well where that is!

Hint: this isn't about theft or imaging licensing.

Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

So yesterday it was the BBC announcing a critique of the HALO space empire's unwillingness to intervene in Syria. (But in response I must say that the Syria level has not been coded yet!)

Today it is the BBC substituting pictures of the Iraq War in Syrian news coverage.

Tomorrow, maybe the Beeb will announce that they have pictures of Syrian forces attacking the town in question....and then run that part of the first Transformers movie where the scorpion-Decepticon attacks that Arab village!!

After all, Decpticons are no friend of pluralistic politics!!

Found this on the internet, sort of relevant - but who cares, I've got space to fill

I can recommend the TInEye plugin for researchers at the BBC. Scraping social media and Googling to produce content, with tabloidesque disclaimers that may as well say, "An insider said ..." or , "A close friend revealed ..."

Due to the unique way that the BBC is funded, quality control is minimal!

The unspoken false assumption

So there are never any mistakes or careless acts so long as the news organization avoids 'citizen journalism'? <- false assumption

Sorry, similar errors or acts of laziness have happened at other outlets. Even when citizen journalists were not involved. There's not much excuse for this failure by BBC, but if you're trying to make a larger point then you'd need to perform a statistical study.