March 28, 2006
The cautionary tale of a citizen hoaxer
Scoopt Blog points to a citizen reporting hoax story, published in The Guardian.
Ian Mayes, The readers' editor on ... the cautionary tale of a citizen hoaxer.
"On Monday last week the Guardian published a report - accompanied by a dramatic photograph - of a heath fire in Dorset. The report began: "Canford Heath has blazed before, but rarely like this." In fact it has never blazed like that. The photograph showed not the fire in Dorset but a forest fire almost six years ago in Montana, the north-western US state bordering Canada.
How did it get into the Guardian? Seeking to illustrate the story late on Sunday, with no still pictures from the fire in Dorset then available, the picture desk "grabbed" a selection of images from the rolling news coverage on Sky News. The presenter said on air, while this particular image was held on the screen: "We have actually got some pretty dramatic pictures our viewers have sent in".
The Guardian report, addressing the picture, said: "Wild animals, silhouetted by the bright orange inferno in a photograph taken by a local resident, were left to fend for themselves." The wild animals in fact are elk a hoax indexed on Snopes, which, as one of my correspondents later that day put it, are rarely seen in Dorset.
... I tell all this as a cautionary tale of our time. The picture editor said it points up a problem with "citizen" journalism. Picture agencies, such as AP and Reuters - the Guardian too - he reminds us, have draconian rules about altering pictures or passing them off as something they are not - photographers have been sacked for that sort of thing. There are no such rules for the citizen and we do not have the reassurance the rules should bring that seeing is believing.
The Permanent Link to this page is: http://www.textually.org/picturephoning/archives/2006/03/011952.htm
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