It’s not surprising to us anymore, the immanency and speed in which Twitter creates content for modern journalism. It can give the public an idea of the aftermath of an event and sometimes even gives main stream media something to go on. But with this fast-paced way of gathering news, there are some legal issues journalists must consider…
An accident happens and there was an eye-witness.
They took a photo on their phone and uploaded it to Twitter.
This photo ends up in tomorrow’s paper.
Would you be excited about that? Angry? Or just looking for payment under copyright law from the journalist who took your photo without consent?
Personally I would be looking for the latter.
And then you get nice people in the world. People like Nic Walker who’s photo copyright ‘issue’ didn’t slip under the radar. He took a first-hand photo from the scene of the fatal helicopter crash in London in 2013 and after putting it on Twitter, his photo ended up on the front page of The Evening Standard. Despite pestering from his Twitter followers he didn’t ask for any payment for his photo because it was an event in which people had died.
Here is one of the photo’s he took that was used by the newspaper both in print and online:
Copyright laws for journalists in this situation states that as long as they source the owner of the photo/video who, in every case, is the person who took the photo/video, then they don’t have to ask to use it and if the owner takes issue they can request payment.
Everyone knows if you take a photo, that photo belongs to you.
However, there are many people who wouldn’t know their photo is being used and wouldn’t know what to do if they knew. Journalists are clever and they know that the likelihood of you seeing a photo they’ve effectively stolen from you to use in a low-profile news story is very slim. And even if you did see it, pursuing rights is something we’re less accustomed to in the UK.
UK journalists are very accepting of the rules, with many saying that if they were approached, they would of course pay the owner of the photo. It’s a miracle, the amount of people who get away with using something that isn’t theirs. In fact, over 85% of photos used online are subject of copyright infringement (1). Most journalists don’t ask, they take.
What would you do if you were the victim of this type of theft?
Or are you reading this fully aware that you are the thief?
The other, perhaps softer side to this story is, there is a whole load of people out there who use Twitter for the purpose of getting news out there. The photos they put online are there to be used – citizen journalists who wouldn’t mind if their photograph is shared, distributed and used all in the name of journalism. Is that not after all the premise to which Twitter exists – to share content with others?
Copyright has always been an issue, I don’t think it will ever stop being a challenge for journalists, but it is one of many legal challenges. I have conflicting views; on one hand, photos are put online for people to see and on the other, surely asking is not such a hardship?
Journalizm Speak 