The International Photojournalism Industry

Cultural Production and the Making and Selling of News Pictures

Jonathan Ilan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351714372
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Journalism
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

How are events turned into news pictures that define them for the audience? How do events become commodified into pictures that both capture them and reiterate the values of the agencies that sell them? This book looks at every stage of the production of news photographs as they move to and from the ground and are sold around the world. Based on extensive fieldwork at a leading international news agency that includes participant observation with photographers in the field, at the agency's local and global picture desks in Israel, Singapore, and the UK, in-depth interviews with pictures professionals, and observations and in-depth interviews at The Guardian's picture desk in London, the findings in this book point to a wide cultural production infrastructure hidden from – and yet also nurtured and thus very much determined by – the consumer's eye.

1 Introduction

On August 5, 2006, Reuters, one of the three largest international news agencies in the world, was at the center of public, media, scandal. In a Reuters picture distributed a day before, a neighborhood in the city of Beirut appeared to be engulfed in thick plumes of smoke after it was bombarded during the night by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) during the war between the Lebanese Hezbollah and the state of Israel. The picture was taken by Adnan Hajj, a Lebanese freelance photographer who had worked for Reuters for 10 years. Its caption said that it was a picture of smoke coming out of burning buildings in a Beirut suburb after the attack, during which several buildings had been destroyed (Lappin and Bodoni, 2006).

Hajj’s picture was just one among thousands distributed by Reuters during the war in Lebanon. It was certainly not one of those memorable ones engraved as part of some collective memory had it not been for Charles Johnson’s suspicious eye. Johnson’s Little Green Footballs blog had been operated for some time. The thick smoke in the picture seemed too thick for Johnson, who published his suspicions in his blog after a short inquiry. “This Reuters photograph shows blatant evidence of manipulation” said Johnson,

Notice the repeating patterns in the smoke; this is almost certainly caused by using the Photoshop ‘clone’ tool to add more smoke to the image […] smoke simply does not contain repeating symmetrical patterns like this, and you can see the repetition in both plumes of smoke. There’s really no question about it.

(Johnson, 2006)

A picture which Johnson said was the unaltered original was published in his blog. The same buildings appeared, this time under a thinner pall of smoke. The original picture, suggested Johnson, was in fact taken by a photographer named Ben Curtis working for AP, the American International news agency and Reuters’ rival, on the 26th of July, two weeks before Hajj’s picture was even published (Johnson, 2006). Not only that, but Johnson, now fully convinced of his hunch, pointed to additional alterations spotted in the picture in the form of cloned buildings as well.

Soon enough, different websites taking Johnson’s side had emerged, claiming to have proof of other manipulated pictures distributed by Reuters from the past. Particular doubts were also raised about previous Hajj pictures, and he was accused for having a political agenda.¹ A Reuters photographer saw Johnson’s blog, and the next morning Reuters sent an urgent message to all of its clients advising them to stop using Hajj’s picture and that it should be removed immediately from the archives, as there was reason to believe the picture had been altered using a graphic editing software during its editing process. In addition, Reuters said it would sack Hajj and that all of his pictures stored within the company’s archive (920) would be removed immediately. Hajj had tried to save his skin by claiming that he was “[…] merely trying to remove a speck of dust and fix the lighting in the photos […]”, but Reuters’ heavy machinery of crisis control was already in motion (Seelye and Bosman, 2006).

“On Saturday, we published 2,000 photos” said Paul Holmes, a senior Reuters editor responsible for the agency’s standards and ethics at the time. “It was handled by someone on a very busy day at a more junior level than we would wish for in ideal circumstances” he said, adding that it was probably the result of some “human error” rather than malicious intent (Holmes cited in Seelye and Bosman, 2006). And later Reuters global pictures editor at the time, Tom Szlukovenyi, said:

There is no graver breach of Reuters standards for our photographers than the deliberate manipulation of an image. Reuters has zero tolerance for any doctoring of pictures and constantly reminds its photographers – both staff and freelance – of this strict and unalterable policy.

(Szlukovenyi cited in BBC News, 2006, August 6)

A thorough internal investigation was launched, fearing that Hajj’s pictures were just the ‘tip of the iceberg’, and several editors along the chain of command were questioned (including a top Reuters photo editor for the Middle East who was advised to take a leave of absence. See Lang, 2007). Hajj, on the other hand, had gone underground and was nowhere to be found. The investigation, however, was of comfort to Reuters; it revealed no further doctored pictures. “We are fully satisfied, as we conclude our extensive investigation that it was unfortunate human error that led to the inadvertent publication of two rogue photographs” wrote David Schlesinger, Reuters editor-in-chief at the time, in the Reuters blog, referring to Hajj’s doctored pictures (Schlesinger, 2007). “There was absolutely no intention on Reuters part to mislead the public […] we were not satisfied with the degree of oversight that we had that allowed these two images to slip through” continued Schlesinger; “we have tightened procedures, taken appropriate disciplinary action and appointed one of our most experienced editors to supervise photo operations in the Middle East” (Schlesinger, 2007). What is more, a set of detailed guidelines for an acceptable use of Adobe’s Photoshop software was posted, and the Reuters photo-editing process was restructured with greater supervision and additional training, using the help of outside experts on digital work environments. Reuters also began to consider technical solutions to recognize doctored pictures in the future. Finally, senior editors were said to deal with “[…] all potentially controversial photographs, and we [Reuters] have ensured that shift leaders are focusing solely on quality issues instead of doing editing themselves” (Schlesinger, 2007).

The Hajj’s controversy became a news event in itself, sparking the imagination of those fascinated with the complex relationship between the ‘real world’ and its various forms of visual representation. Indeed, the technical capacity to doctor pictures and manipulate photographs so as to deceive had long been acknowledged (see e.g., Ritchin, 1999). In fact, it was even discussed by the agency’s pictures managers themselves in the early 1990s with the emergence of Photoshop and its misuse potential. Yet this example seemed to have struck at the core of what was still considered by some (mainly from the news community) as an undisputable form of signification – the news picture. However, the Hujj’s controversy is, in fact, also fascinating from a rather different point of view, as it provides a glimpse inside the institutions who maintain news pictures, their systems, their production processes.

One way of looking at the picture’s history, then, is from the moment it was conceived as an idea and up to its final form as a new born news picture. But then if we also take into consideration its ‘career’ as a successful Reuters picture at first (hence distributed by Reuters to its worldwide clients) and later as a Reuters failure (now in the form of a doctored picture), it then becomes a rare document raising a number of questions: How is a news picture produced? What lies within that mysterious process of production hidden from the spectator’s eye? What are those different moments and sites through which it is transferred until it is stamped as a valid cultural product, branded? Who are those position holders responsible for its transformation from an idea into a product, and what are the different forces governing their daily routines? What are the economic and cultural powers making it so natural to us until we are willing to consider it as the highest form of representation (a picture that is also a news document), trustworthy?

These are the main questions addressed in this book, in the hope that it would shed some light on the international photojournalism industry at large. This is done by way of exploring a rather unique international news organization – a leading international news agency – and its news photos’ systems of manufacturing. Surprisingly, it appears that these queries concerning this powerful news organization and its international competitors were very much ignored in research and their processes of production almost entirely overlooked (more on this later in this chapter). Indeed, with the specific case of the agency that is explored in this book, such lacuna is a surprise in particular, for within the international news flow arena it is perhaps one of the most intriguing and significant players: (1) It is an international news agency and consequently focused on its clients – various news outlets – unlike local news providers that are committed to their audiences. As a result, it is, to an extent, located ‘further up’ the international news information flow. (2) It is a private company which has to make profit, an information industry, and perhaps the most profitable international news agency within the international news market; at its heart it is concentrated on selling information to non-media clients worldwide, and its news products are thus of great cultural importance. (3) Its products are aimed at the international market and are thus designed so as to have an international appeal. At the same time, however, they have also to be tailored to national markets and different domestic demands. They are, put simply, glocal products, much like their processes of production, and both might tell us more about the production processes of international media products.

News pictures are one of the most popular ‘lines’ of products in the agency’s media (apart from its TV products). They hold unique features given their universal and particular characteristics: products designed for a universal meaning (pictures that are also news information), which are also required to widen the company’s circle of clients. And they are meaningful cultural artifacts as well – extraordinary forms of representation taken daily as the ‘true’ mediators of reality, highly trustworthy, and are thus important to the understanding of the meaning of culture.

More specifically, this research focus, therefore, is on the making of distinct pictures observed as products at the end (or the starting point) of an exceptional news production process – the production of news pictures in an international news agency. This research, however, is not about the very ontology of news pictures. Rather, it is focused on the routines of their making whereby they become ‘unordinary’, arresting, forcing their spectators not to look away.² Their unusual status, I would argue, results of a wide cultural production infrastructure hidden from – and yet also nurtured by – the consumer’s eye: from the camera’s lens to the daily work of the photographer; the editor; the producer; the chief of the department; administrators; graphic designers; sales and marketing; the international news agency; the different news outlets; different media and other organizations; and their audiences, who are all responsible for the representation of one reality and the production of another (Carey, 1989).

In the following chapters I will analyze the complex international production process of news pictures, in the hope to shed some light on the overall production of newsworthiness. I hope to demonstrate that by entering into what Lutz and Collins (1993) described as “The Great Machinery of Desire”, we might have a better understanding of the meaning of news pictures as cultural products and the reasons for their privileged status (as opposed other forms of signification) in our everyday lives. By exploring news pictures’ processes of production, we might have a better understanding of how we put a cultural economy into work and how it works on us.

The Methods

I mostly used ethnographic research methods: I tried to understand the process, its particular characteristics, and get as close as I could to the social world of the pictures professionals whose work routine I had followed – to ‘go native’.

I divided this project in two central stages carried out along two different periods of time and spread over a number of countries, a process that very much resembles what Hannerz (2003, 2004) described as a multisite ethnography:

1. In the first stage, I conducted participant observations taking place from the end of 2005 during a period of almost a year in two steps:
   • I Observing one of the agency’s most experienced Israeli staff photographers at the time, located in Israel. In my observations I managed to take part in a variety of more than 30 different news events (sometimes in several different events in a single day) that were observed – on and off – for almost a year.
   • II Conducting approximately 20 observations of the daily work of the pictures department of the agency’s local bureau located in Jerusalem for three weeks.
2. In the second stage, I conducted participant observations during the first months of 2010 in different locations and in three steps:
   • I Observing the daily work of several pictures editors in the pictures department of the agency’s local bureau located in London for one week.
   • II Conducting extensive observations of the daily work of several subeditors, senior editors, and editors-in-charge in the agency’s global pictures desk, which was located in Singapore, for two weeks.
   • III Conducting several observations of the pictures operation of the British newspaper The Guardian, located in London, for two days.³

In addition to participant observations, I had about 30 in-depth interviews with key figures along the production processes of news pictures at the agency and at The Guardian, cultural mediators, conducted as followed: (1) A number of extensive interviews were conducted with the agency’s staff Israeli photographer and two pictures editors working in the Jerusalem local bureau. (2) In-depth interviews were conducted with a senior editor and a senior editor-in-charge working in the pictures department of the agency’s international desk located in London, and with the agency’s head of pictures sales of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. (3) Interviews were conducted with several subeditors, senior editors, editors-in-charge, and the deputy editor of the agency’s global pictures desk, with editors and editors-in-charge from the magazine desk and keyword team and the desk’s administrator; they were all working at the agency’s global pictures desk in Singapore. (4) In-depth interviews were conducted with a graphic journalist working at the agency’s global graphics desk in Singapore; with the assistant manager of the agency’s pictures service; and with the head of its Brussels’ picture desk, both had worked in the agency’s pictures service in 1985. (5) Several interviews were conducted with The Guardian’s head of photography; the website’s senior pictures editor; the feature pictures editor; an assistant picture editor; and with the head of its subeditors.

Furthermore, an interpretive analysis of four different events covered by the agency’s photographer, which took place between the end of 2005 and during 2006 in Israel, was also conducted. However, and as somewhat of an unorthodox research method, the analysis was focused on the biography of the pictures taken within those events. This unique method of analysis was used for two main reasons: First, since the production of news pictures, as I hope to make clear in the following chapters, begins way before the pictures are taken by a photographer in the field. Therefore, I came to realize the analysis of the events whereby the pictures were conceived (even though not all pictures are the outcome of ‘real occurrences’ as well) are highly significant, thereby adding additional meanings to news photos before they turn into photographic news texts in their ‘final’ form. Second, the entire process of production, as I demonstrate later on, is analyzed in this project not as a simple linear process maintained in a closed field of production and operated only by the privileged ‘producers’ ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Production Process I: From Story to Product
• 3 The Production Process II: From Product to Story
• 4 An Analysis of Significant Events and their Coverage
• Conclusion
• Index