Deep Jive Interests

For the second time in recent memory, Reuters has published photos that were clearly erroneous.  The first time was last year when they published doctored photos of the Middle Eastern conflict.  Now, they’ve come clean after a 13 year old boy has spotted more photographic chicanery with some photos of the recent expedition of a Russian submarine trying to claim the arctic.  It turns out that the deep sea photography *isn’t* a dedicated Reuters photographer doing due diligence in the watery depths of the North Artic — its stock footage they already had from taking pictures of the Titanic … 10 years ago.  Was this 13 year old boy some kind of photography geek? Or merely a Titanic geek?  Well, perhaps the latter, if by Titanic you meant, Titanic The Movie, starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio!  It turns out the same stock footage was *also* used in the movie, which is what this boy spotted!

While journalism and the press (and photojournalism is lumped in there too) are supposed to be the fourth estate — that is, an important body in the function of a society “both in its explicit capacity of advocacy and in its implicit ability to frame political issues” — I do wonder if we (and I use the collective “we”) are the Fifth Estate, as a collective body who watches these watchers.  And in the age of social media / new media / continuous partial attention / interwebs I suspect this is a role that we will necessarily evolve, and I think this is a good thing.  I mean, how can thinking critically, and being critical of the media we watch, read, and consume but be a good thing? [tip: digital inspiration]