Reminder: Images Are an Editorial Choice

Pictures are worth a thousand words, and then some

We live in image-based culture. That’s not a hot take, it’s a fact. I don’t mean that in a “doin’ it for the ‘Gram,” selfie-stick kind of way. I mean that every bit of information we consume these days is either transmitted via images — like a news anchor talking on a TV — or is accompanied by them.

Consider your news feeds for a second. The majority of your Facebook feed is probably videos, and past that, it’s probably photos from family and friends and links from publishers with pictures. Your Twitter feed is more text heavy, but many tweets will have an accompanying image (especially if it’s a link tweeted by a publisher) or even a gif or video. Instagram and Pinterest, of course, are exclusively images with captions or links.

Via Giphy, by Alex Kao.

Overall, text-only posts are most likely in the minority of what you see on social media. That’s because images and videos are literally more eye-catching and thus more users engage with them, so social media algorithms favor posts with images or videos.

Social media’s reliance on images has infiltrated the news, too. Nearly every article you click on will include a featured image at the top of the page meant to illustrate some aspect of the story, and some articles are exclusively image galleries or video clips. News apps like Apple News, The New York Times, and Washington Post prominently feature images alongside headlines.

When savvy news publishers post links to content on Facebook or Twitter, they use “social cards” to make sure it presents as a particular image and headline instead of a plain text hyperlink. That way, it’s best positioned to catch a reader’s eye — or, rather, thumb. (Social cards are just a bit of code placed on a webpage to signal to social platforms which images and text go with each link. This creates a nice little button-link hybrid that stands out from other plain posts. See below.)

Cards from Facebook (left) and Twitter (right).

This is a departure from how most news has been presented, historically speaking. Open any newspaper or book and you’ll know that every bit of text does not require an attached image to make a point — and frankly, space in print is finite, so that would be impractical. The idea that every news article must have an accompanying image is very, very new and arose from the proliferation of the smartphone.

Social media’s reliance on images and publishers’ reliance on social media has made the text-and-image pairing seem inevitable or natural, even. Thus, we often don’t question which images publishers choose to accompany the news we ingest. But just like writing a headline or gathering sources, every image is an editorial choice

Generally speaking, images are chosen to accompany an article based on a few factors:

• Relevance: Of course, the image should be relevant to the story. Perhaps it features a person mentioned or is a picture taken at the event described.
• Quality: For brand purposes (establishing trust, appearing as an authority on the topic), publishers usually want to use the highest quality image they can get. For instance, a professional event photographer’s image of Taylor Swift at a concert will be used over your blurry photo from the arena balcony. (However, there are exceptions. Keep reading.)
• Aesthetics: The perceived visual worth of an image (based on the eye of the beholder, which is the publisher’s brand), is also important. For instance, The New York Times, Vogue, and GQ all have their own aesthetics and would choose different images of the same subject based on the vibe of their brand.
• Newsworthiness: Sometimes, the news value of an image takes precedence over quality and aesthetics. For example, a screenshot of surveillance footage of a bank robber now on the loose would be more appropriate for an article than a pretty shot of that bank. Or, a reader-contributed smart phone photo of an event may be crucial to use because there was no professional photographer there.
• Impact: Will it stop you from scrolling past? And does it fit the tone of the story? For instance, a photo of a politician yelling may be more likely to catch your eye than a posed photo of them at their desk.

Very broadly, there are five types of images a news editor, web producer, or social media manager might select to pair with an image.

• Press Photos: These are images provided by an organization or public figure that they created specifically for this purpose. For instance, when a new restaurant opens or a Broadway show premieres, they may have images made to share with press so that a) they can control the images the public sees and b) it’s easier for them and the press to just share the same photos with all the news outlets.
• Stock Photos: These are images created by a photographer or photo studio with the intention of selling them to publishers who need images on the cheap. They’re very general and often feature commercial models at vague locations. Think: a well-lit coffee cup on a desk, or a group of beautiful “friends” laughing in the park. (Scroll through AwkwardStockPhotos.com for a good laugh.)

This is a lovely stock photo of some women on computers. Credit: #WOCinTech Chat

• News Photos: These are photos taken at an event or of a subject by a photo journalist. This could be anything from a crime scene photo to a gallery of people at a parade. Regardless, these are original images created by an professional photographer.
• User-Contributed Images: For times when there is no appropriate professionally-created image, a newsworthy photo or video may be sent in by a reader, or culled from social media. In the most tragic and well-known instances, this has included footage from police shootings and terrorist attacks.
• Graphics: Pie charts, illustrations, graphs, infographics and more may accompany an article, too.

Next week we’ll take a dive into some photo choices and how to critically read them. But as you can see from these two basic lists, there are many factors that go into how an image is chosen to accompany an article. And they are chosen. An editor, writer, producer, or journalist must create, select, and/or choose these images, and they do so for a bevy of reasons.

And you absorb these images, both well and poorly chosen, with almost all the content you ingest each day. They affect what you read, how you read it, and how you perceive the news, an event or a public figure. Despite how natural and inevitable we feel the pairing of images and news text are, photos are an editorial choice, always.