Sunday, June 14, 2009

The whole world is watching

IranianProtesters
"Iranian protestors, 6/13/09," No attribution

This & hundreds of other photos & videos of protests against the stolen election in Iran went up today on sites like Huffington Post as the protests were happening. I know this is hardly news any more -- it's how we experience history. Still, I'm fascinated. I hope news uploaded to a global audience by ordinary citizens through the internet's million entryways continues to be a tool for unmasking government lies, as it has been so far. I hope it works for the Iranian opposition.

Here's an excellent slideshow of today's Iranian protests.

I'm troubled that no photographers are credited (in a few cases the big newsgathering organizations, AP & Getty, are). Maybe I should just get out of the way & celebrate the multiplying points of view. I do understand the excuses for ignoring credits, particularly the very real urgency of rushing the images to a worldwide audience. And of course many shooters may not want to be credited for fear of reprisal. But still I think photo editors take advantage of these conditions; in the end it's laziness, not deadlines or inability to ID the shooters. It has become accepted practice to ignore the credit-line step in photo editing. This is no doubt abetted by the desire of publishers to avoid payment.

Save time, cut costs. Seemingly, no one in the world today can prevail against these imperatives.

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