Flickr tagging news event photos - Always truthful?

Update April 19 - I've been arguing with Rebecca Blood over the Flickr "CPE" slideshow , and investigating further, it appears I have been wrong saying the CPE photos were falsely tagged and included pictures from the November riots.

Rebecca Blood writes about "How flickr singlehandedly invented collaborative photojournalism". [via Smart Mobs]

"... I'm beginning to suspect that what citizen reporters lack is the proper tool. Because the Flickr slideshow of photos of the French employment riots amply demonstrates that, on Flickr at least, collaborative photojournalism is thriving. That success is at least as much a product of Flickr itself as it is a product of the contributing photographers."

After looking over Flickr slides however, I wonder if they are really related to the CPE, they depict scenes more reminiscent of the violence that hit the Paris suburbs in November - with few exceptions.

The Flickr slide show mostly pictures depict youth gangs from the suburbs fighting the police and burning cars, rather than university students protesting the CPE, though images are tagged as such.

So caution and good judgment must prevail when dealing with citizen journalism, when there is no process of verification, no checking of sources with automated tools such as Flickr.

In this case, how accurately these photos have been tagged is a valid question.

Check out Libération's slideshow contributed by their readers for another perspective on the CPE demonstrations, or the Student's Union Site itself - both paint a very different story than on Flickr.

All related entries:

-- More on false tagging in Flickr

-- Flickr tagging news event photos - Always truthful?

emily | 9:03 AM | Citizens as Camera Phone Reporters |
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