Demotix, a new startup coming out of London, is taking a pretty interesting approach to reinventing the newswire and with the wave of news coming out of the Israel/Palestinian conflict right now it is coming into its own. If you ever wanted to know what life and death was like on the ground in the middle of a war, this is it.
The idea is simple: anyone can shoot video or photos at a news event like a protest and upload the content to the site. The site only takes photos right now but text and video are due soon. Everyone who uses Demotix will keep the copyright and the right to remove the images from the website. The non-exclusive images will be sold for anywhere from between $150- $3,000, and videos will be sold by $500-$1,000/minute. Demotix shares 50 percent of the revenue from each sale with the person who contributed the content. Demotix has six-full time staff members and six full-time interns. The site has launched in Beta but in the next fortnight launches a full version, along with an Arabic version.
Founded by Jonathan Tepper and CEO Turi Munthe, the latter is a former journalist who realised that with old media declining in revenues the consequent impact on on-the-spot reporting and investigative journalism is huge. In its place has come what he calls Churnism – re-publishing AP or Reuters-like wire stories and pulling journalists out of the world’s hot-spots because they are just too expensive to run. In 2007, there were only 141 U.S. foreign correspondents in print and broadcast media, and there are currently only four newspapers that maintain foreign bureaus (The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the LA Times). In the UK, The Independent is in the process of cutting more than 60% of its staff, including 60 reporters.
Demotix doesn’t need to maintain a global network of staff reporters and its contributors get paid when it does. However, with many potential contributors living under repressive regimes, Demotix goes to some lengths to protect identities. Metadata inside photographs about the time of day or event or the owner are removed before the image is uploaded to the site. And the site uses a Tor system to scramble IP addresses from where photos are uploaded.
But the history of “UGC photo agencies” is patchy. Kyle MacRae founded a similar UGC picture agency in 2005 called Scoopt after realising that CNN’s coverage of the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami had largely consisted of photographs or videos by people caught up in those horrific events. It also sold pictures direct to newspapers and magazines, splitting the fee 50/50 with the photographer. However the site ran out of steam, largely because the idea was pretty ahead of its time. Camera phones are only now common place in global hotspots. The site was bought by Getty Images last year and MacRae left to pursue other ventures. There are now other similar UGC photo agency sites. For instance, Yahoo runs You Witness News in partnership with Reuters.
However, Demotix might now get traction because the core technology – better cameraphones – is now commonplace.
And the content is pretty raw as you can see from this kind of imagery (warning NSFW) from Gaza, and above.
Munthe, an English-French-Swedish raised in London, has also worked at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies. His research into the radicalization of terrorism lead him to believe that the aggressive approach, such as sanctions and bombs, doesn’t work. He thinks the “civil society approach”, where populations are allowed to vent their frustration via media, works better and takes “the lid off the pressure cooker.” Who knows if social media can actually help, but the idea that the suffering of your community can be communicated to the world may be of some consolation, however limited.
The site’s name, Demotix, is derived from the word ‘demotic‘, meaning ‘of the people’, a description coined by the Greek historian Herodotus in the fifth century BC to describe the form of writing used and most easily understood by the man in the Alexandrian street in 196 BC.
Update: As a commenter below points out there is also a French start-up called CitizenSide (formerly Scooplive).
Update II: This post caused a lot of controversy because in its original form it showed some very graphic pictures from the Israel/Palestinian conflict happening at the moment. Something you’d expect when a war was happening. Unfortunately the detail of the post was lost in the debate about the appropriateness of the imagery, plus I was accused of favouring one side over another. This was profoundly not the intention, but it was clear I had stumbled unwittingly into a political area because the post largely carried pictures of Palestinians under siege and no pictures of Israelis under rocket attacks. Unfortunately this was not done to favour one side – I simply couldn’t find any of the latter kinds of pictures on the site, simply because no Israelis had uploaded any at that time. This is clearly a failing of a picture agency which relies purely on user-generated content, in that it leaves it to “the crowd” to gather the footage – and the crowd is not usually out to be balanced. I’ve now removed the imagery, other than the original, to illustrate the piece.
excellent idea – this is the answer to the parallel universe of online vs the gate keepers where online will win out and the social revolution of the people and by the people will have their own news reporting systems –
“This I hope will be the age of experiments in government, and that their basis will be founded in principles of honesty, not of mere force.” –Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1796
“ We are to guard against ourselves; not against ourselves as we are, but as we may be; for who can imagine what we may become under circumstances not now imaginable – Thomas Jefferson to Jedidiah Morse 1822 ”
“Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.” –Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey, 1816.
“Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it.” — Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, 1786
“Lethargy is the forerunner of death to the public liberty.” – -Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, 1787.
“The art of printing secures us against the retrogradation of reason and information.” –Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Paganel, 1811.
more thomas jefferson quotes can be seen here too
http://emperorsnewclothesproductions.com/jefferson
be well
geo
Mike
Does Demotix have photos of hundreds of Palestinians cheering in Gaza after London’s July 7 bombings? Or after 9/11? Or of the four Israelis who died in the past few days from rockets shot from Gaza (which Israeli withdrew from in 2005)?
I tried but for some reason couldn’t find any photos. Maybe because it’s yet another site with a biased agenda?
I think you should continue to cover the non-existing UK tech scene over sharing with us your biased opinions and sites about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
James
That’s just because the “market” price of that photos and news is lower than the Gaza ones.
And (#Mike Butcher) it’s important to note that other countries and cultures doesn’t give out photos of the dead.
No one cheered when the bombing happened … get ur fing facts right and stop making shit up. Gaza has nothing to do with al Qaeda … Hamas want their land back … al Qaeda r US CIA ops (cold-war … remember?)
Wouldn’t it have been good to actually buy the images for the post instead of stealing them? Considering that Techcrunch makes a lot of money I think its very wrong.
you meant Gaza right (NOT Gazza)
15 seconds
http://sderot.aish.com/SderotPetitions/15Seconds.php
I think this is awesome. I am tired of the official BS from CNN and even the BBC fails to touch or cover. Sometimes I find my beloved Economist staying fine tuned mindset that is biased towards certain govts and friends. Also, hopefully will avoid being excessively slanted one side or the other. Some news organizations will be accused of being non objective as well even though they might have good reporting. Governments may no longer hide behind public releases and statements that conflict with the reality on the ground.
Hopefully this will lead to a different way the public will see/view real events for themselves and actually think and make informed decisions that may affect exactly what they support or they will tolerate.
The power should belong to the citizens of the world rather than rigid govt admins that have agendas that may conflict with peace and prosperity for selected groups they oppose or fail to address.
James – Demotix is a London-based tech startup. I cover UK and European based tech startups for TechCrunch. Since Demotix only just launched it doesn’t have any pictures related to July 7 2005 etc but I’m sure it will take pictures from both sides of any conflict in the future. It is a business, after all.
As a dedicated TechCrunch reader, i find your argument that you “only covered a startup” while more than 75% (!) of this article space is filled by horror pictures of dead kids- *ridiculous and disgusting* . You might think your readers a so naive not to notice the obvious sub-statements in this post. At least don’t try to BS me with this pretending to be “business as usuall” post.
(Disclaimer: yeah, I’m Israeli. no, I most certainly don’t justify the targeting of civilians, and I find the photos in this post tragic. Yeah, I’m very concerned by your aberrant attempt to drag TechCrunch into the political swamp)
I think Mike did a fine job and people like you Effi need to SHUT the F*&K up, quit being a looser and yes Israel your war is immoral and soon when Hamas can stick nukes on their rockets you guys will disappear, so you really need to be playing nice with your arab neighbors. Come to Texas and I’ll show you southern hospitality
Your attempts at feigning innocense are as outrageous as they are pathetic. What a canard this whole post is.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1050421.html
ANTI – SEMITE
Great site and all people hating about the pictures … guess what? Those are babies and they didn’t shoot rockets at “israel”
300 + killed from air strikes while 1 dead from a rocket (HOME MADE ROCKET).
I understand Hamas Is sending thousands of rockets … but they don’t much damage.
The startup is a good idea but rarely anything happens in the UK for me to use it.
Mike,
I think what everyone is trying to say is that you didn’t exercise very good (smart?) judgement in the way you wrote this article.
Even when Mike was covering the pre-election issues for TC, he was always neutral no matter what gaffes or flash stories were popping up on a daily basis.
By zeroing in on the dead Palestinians (which is a tragedy no matter which side you are on) you have taken a small snapshot of a much greater problem. The readers of this blog are here for technology but they will always have a political opinion – this just isn’t the right forum for it.
Gaza is happening now, people are dying on both sides and emotions are very raw. Injecting this angle into a story about a potentially promising business just isn’t good judgement.
Palestinians are also semites
Well as I understand it, the model is very close from the well established French start-up called CitizenSide (formerly Scooplive) which is also based on trading UCG pictures and films, paying authors of pictures and keeping a fee on the price.
They’ve become very famous in France by selling the first and only video of the Societe Generale’s trader Jerome Kerviel :
http://www.editorsweblog.org/web_20/2008/01/france_citizenside_sells_amate.php
More details here:
http://www.citizenside.com/index.aspx?lan=en
Wonderful – a new tool to spread propaganda. Has anyone else noticed there’s no verification of authenticity for any of these photos?
Also, the fact that the bias is spread so widely throughout the site (and also the fact that an Arabic version is planned, but no Hebrew version) shows me that anyone taking images from this site is wide open to a libel lawsuit. Were I a member of the press – I would think twice before using these photos.
One last thing – Mike, do you really think these images are appropriate on this website? Honestly – I could come up with 50 other images that would be much better. I’d appreciate it if you could stop imposing your political opinion on the rest of us.
Yes, they have a habit of doctoring photos, having people pose as wounded in photos, etc. anything they can do to pull the heartstrings of the west.
Oh FFS……… and there’s no genocide happening in Darfur, no rape (as a tool of war) happening in Congo and Sarah Palin was just pretending to be thick.
And Eric Arthur Blair didn’t have a crystal ball.
Right Gayle, and Israel just bombed those babies intentionally.
Wait…they were actually targeting Hamas soldiers and police which is legal under
international law during a conflict. OK, so Israel just went and bombed the Hamas military
establishment out of pure belligerence because that’s what it always does.
Wait…this military operation of Israel’s came after a week of stepped up Hamas rocket and
mortar attacks that target Israeli civilians directly. Oh, and after Hamas unilaterally
called off a 6 month long cease fire (a peaceful act, no doubt.)
Ah, I forget, the death of civilians is only horrific if they happen to be Palestinian.
“Will somebody please think of the babies” sounds awfully shrill when it comes from a
hateful hypocrite like yourself. Or Mark Butcher.
Mike, it’s really a shame you chose to show these images,do you think that it will be fair to criticize a startup without giving it a chance to reply. When Michael writes a post about a technological conflict he always publish the opinions of both sides. when you published the images you only show one side of the story, if you don’t have an image of the Israeli dead just show different images that don’t concern this conflict. Where is your journalist integrity… I’m also very disappointed of Erick that allowed you to publish these images. It doesn’t matter what side are you on you should be able to see what is happening on both ends of the “rope”. Shame on you Mike especially where there is no place for these kind of images on a technological blog.
These images are NSFW.
For a site like Techcrunch, which I regularly check from work, you might want to avoid images of dead children.
ktnxbye
Yep – except those little ones ARE dead!!!
Look away if you choose but asking TC to censor the ugliness of this week’s events when such images legitimately appear via the showcasing of a new media business seems (at best) cheeky.
Right Gayle, and Israel just bombed those babies intentionally.
Wait…they were actually targeting Hamas soldiers and police which is legal under
international law during a conflict. OK, so Israel just went and bombed the Hamas military
establishment out of pure belligerence because that’s what it always does.
Wait…this military operation of Israel’s came after a week of stepped up Hamas rocket and
mortar attacks that target Israeli civilians directly. Oh, and after Hamas unilaterally
called off a 6 month long cease fire (a peaceful act, no doubt.)
Ah, I forget, the death of civilians is only horrific if they happen to be Palestinian.
“Will somebody please think of the babies” sounds awfully shrill when it comes from a
hateful hypocrite like yourself. Or Mark Butcher.
“Detachment” needed for long time surive.
I think this is wrong, how can you be showing, no selling images of the dead. Is there no respect, thats why some cultures do not publicize this because we have respect.
Everyone should have a look at : http://www.sderotmedia.com
For a true coverage and videos from the Hamas attacks on Israel !
That is UGC, a joint citizen journalism website
This is amazing how you people trading blood! you should change your name so ‘blood 2.0″. Techcrunch, you will loose a lot of readers because of it. but i can understand you. what moves you it’s money, not justice or education.
Mike, you’re a gullible nitwit.
The images of dead babies describe real events. If people don’t want to know what’s going on in the real world perhaps they should stick to reading stories about Twitter? I think you guys are right about balance, so I’m adding some pictures to reflect that.
Mike – I just replied to “Shay” and then saw this post by you.
There was absolutely nothing out of balance about the original post….. ?!?!?!
“If people don’t want to know what’s going on in the real world perhaps they should stick to reading stories about Twitter?”
I was thinking TechCrunch was about technology, there exists zillion of sites to discuss about politics before Twitt…
So you want to know how the real world is? Go Fight! instead of write. You have time to go to Gaza and speak with Hamas instead of writing from your comfortable office.
I have not seen your photos from the Mumbai Attack in TechCrunch, just an article about Twitter…
I think that this paragraph:
“including an Israeli air strike on one of the mosques in southern Jabalia which caused the death of 5 young sisters of the Al Balosha family. No one survived but the parents, their elder daughter and son.”
HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE STARTUP!
the most ironic thing about this specific incident is an interview made with one of it’s survivors:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLIdxF-GHWw
Mike, you want praise raw unedited uncensored media? you’ve got it.
This is the ultimate proof of you being a victim of an organized propaganda. I’ll say it again: Using this platform to spread untrue subjective one sided photos in a middle of a conflict – disgraces TechCrunch as a professional blog.
James, I don’t believe you published those photos.
If you don’t notice, you are cooperating with Hamas, The terror organization, propaganda. Those miserable kids died while Israel air force bomb Hamas bases which were located near civilian houses. The hamas shoot from schools while knowing that when Israel will hit back palestenian will be killed and that fantastic pictures they can show in the media.
…and here I thought TechCrunch would be a great place to read stories about twitter, to be frank.
If I wanted to see stories about dead babies, I can surf over to 4chan or something.
Only I don’t do that at work, do I, because it would be pretty inappropriate to the work environment.
You could have chosen images from the conflict that were a bit less gruesome, that’s all I said and all I’m going to say about it.
http://www.internetisfun.com/item.php?ownerid=15&playid=7061
This startup deserves coverage and deserves to be commended.
Stop trying to politicize everything.
Remember, it is the pictures of the holocaust which finally got people to ralise the true horrors of what happened.
Innocent people dying, innocent families dying, innocent children dying and innocent parents dying is an issue beyond politics. It is a human issue.
We are all humans.
Yes, just as it was a human issue with Hamas attacked Israel. I don’t like seeing innocent people hurt in either case, but where was the outcry then?
What pictures of the holocaust caused public outcry? What the hell are you talking about. The holocaust went on uninterrupted until the very bitter end.
I think it’s a good idea that witnesses are now able to take pictures and share them with the rest of the world. For example, I didn’t see any pictures or news on this story – the first death of a Palestinian in the West BanK after the attacks in Gaza – excepts : on this page of Citizenside.com
Effi Fuks – Look, this is a story about a tech startup and it would make zero sense to write about it without mentioning what they do and the kind of stuff they carry, period. What is happening in the Middle East right now is a prime example of what social media is going to do there, and this is a story about that. Please note I have included reference to recent acts of clemency by Israel, a story Demotix covered.
Mike, claiming that a picture about a Palestinian terrorist released by israel from prison is somehow balance shows everybody just how biased you are. Balance would mean showing Israeli civilians killed in Hamas shelling, rocketing and suicide bombings, just as gruesome. Balance would be referring to UGC videos documenting how Israelis live under the constant threat of death with 15 seconds to take shelter, for years now, not just 4 days.
You have an agenda, your post is propaganda, and you’re too much of a weasel to admit it. Simply reporting about a startup, indeed.
This is great site; I see it becoming an instant target for acquisition, within a year.
Great, now techcrunch teams with Aljazeera, what comes next?
There’s a comic I really like in Calvin & Hobbes, where Calvin cleans a small part of his room and takes a picture, so future generations will think he was a neat and organized little boy.
Publishing harsh media without context is not just a bad idea, it’s (in my opinion) criminally irresponsible.
And you will not see Israelis publishing pictures of their dead children to gain a little edge here and there.
Great site and all people hating about the pictures … guess what? Those are babies and they didn’t shoot rockets at “israel”
300 + killed from air strikes while 1 dead from a rocket (HOME MADE ROCKET).
I understand Hamas Is sending thousands of rockets … but they don’t much damage.
The startup is a good idea but rarely anything happens in the UK for me to use it.
Don’t do much damage..? So I guess you wouldn’t mind living in a place where dozens of mortars and rockets are fired at every day? Sounds like a piece of heaven to you? Living in fear? Constantly keeping a lookout for the nearest bomb shelter? Once in a while some kid loses a leg or a sibling? Yeah, you’re right, no biggie.
What about Gaza?
I don’t want to live with rockets and bomb shelter but the air strikes do more damage … more than a leg or a siblings
Ppl in Gaza live in fear and they don’t have the luxury of keeping a lookout for bomb shelter … coz there’s none
This Arab/Jewish thing has been going on since the beginning of time.
Arab/Jewish thing has been going on since the beginning of time is a bunch of BS!
FYI there are ARAB JEWS! In syria/lebanon/egypt and even in guess what PALESTINE!
B4 the creation of the state of ISrael in 1948 what do you think the Jews were called?? Palestinian
They ate arabic food, spoke arabic and even have the same culture.
But guess what happened???? the european jews decided they wanted palestine for themselves and in the early 1900’s with the help of the british started slowly migrating to palestine.
The palestinians are not defined by a religion. These are muslims, christians, druz being oppressed by Israel.
Israel is a racist state, only jews can be citizens. Everyone else must live as a second class citizen.
You should check history b4 u open your mouth.
This seems a pretty tasteless use of these kind of images. Whether Palestintian or Israeli, it seems purposefully insensitive to use imagery like this for the coverage of a small business concern or the promotion of any kind of non-relevant blog.
The thing that seems most upsetting to me is that it probably didn’t even occur to Mike Butcher that using these images would be problematic. With an endless supply of information and imagery we rely on the content generators we respect to extend some sort of self-censorship with regards to an issue like this, but we’ve all been so de-sensitized that it doesn’t even register.
It is so populist and simplistic to boil down a complex conflict into an emotional picture of human suffering. It’s a WAR, people die, including innocents, even when not targeted.
How many civilians have the Americans and Europeans killed in Afghanistan and Iraq? 10,000’s, maybe 100,000’s?
When a terrorist entity uses a civilian area for cover, it is both legally and morally responsible for their deaths. Do you think the Israelis are some kind of Gods with magic weapons that ask everyone “Hey, who are you” before exploding?
Statistically speaking, the amount of ‘civilians’ killed in Gaza (especially considering the population density) is very small, showing much greater care and capability in avoiding civilian deaths than anything the Americans and Europeans are doing in their current wars. Yet, everyone reports the suffering of innocent Palestinians as if they were the targets of the Israelis.
That’s called 2 standards, one for the world and another for Jews. Anti-Semitism in its purest form.
Israel, don’t listen to what the world says… the same world that lets genocide continue unchecked in Sudan, puts countries like Libya on the UN Human Rights Council and has not been a friend to Jews for the last 3000 years. It’s especially fresh to hear Europeans, responsible for the worst crime in the history of mankind (only a few decades ago), lecture you on how to run your affairs.
Kill the terrorists, keep trying to avoid civilian casualties where possible and end this once and for all. Please, return some sanity to this fucked up world.
This article is A HUGE BLACK SPOT (or whatever describes a very unsuitable event) for techcrunch and just shows that it doesn’t matter if it’s traditional media or internet – human beings will always be biased.
You don’t have a clue what’s going on here in Israel and it wouldn’t help you to show dead children – you will never reach the truth this way.
Daniel Hegarty – Exactly how do you cover a story about a site that carries graphic imagery without illustrating what it does? I think a lot of people here who are annoyed about the images are probably not used to the kind of images that appear in the European media – broadcast, print and online – every day.
Those images, mostly of dead Palestinian civilians, never Israeli ones (lucky if they show Israeli army casualties) appear in European media precisely because of their anti-Israeli bias, not because of their alleged fairness and quality of journalism.
I know that in you’re mind your trying to educate the clueless American public about how awful Israel is and how pure Hamas is, but that simply teaches us that you, and many of your European media cohorts are propagandists with little to know understanding of the principles of journalism.
Tzahi – I just want this post to be a bigger “blackspot”, as you call it, than this:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/11/quite-simply-the-best-commercial-ever-made/
It’s good to have goals in life I think.
So your goal in life is what? being some pathetic imitation of a Guardian propagandist while your day job is covering technology?
It is good to have goals in life. Maybe being honest about your agenda would be a good start.
I don’t understand what all the fuss is about. As Mike has pointed out, he wrote about a new tech startup and he included the pictures that he did because they’re relevant and current – I for one see no political motive behind his choice of pictures.
Let’s not make this an israel vs palestine thread. There are plenty of places on the web for that.
These kids don’t look dead to me.
The color of the skin and the smile on the faces looks suspicious to me.
Did you check the source of these photos?
As for TC is proud for having around 10 million readers, you should be more responsible for what you post.
so true!
I’m not expert in dead bodies but second girl is happily smiling and the first one, the closest to the camera – has bondage with not her blood – note how the blood is only on one side…
it is so badly fake!
spread the images and it will show the truth
WOW you guys need to get your dicks out of ur arse
Everything is fake init … so what if she is smiling? Shes in a better place
Ur guys r sick
3 years they shelled it from the south,
3 years Israel did nothing. Bunch of overeducated hippies.
Retaliation is a bitch.
Hi,
Check this video that made me cry http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oomb-I1JjkA
I find it interesting that many of the comments – certainly those with the most intense reactions – refer to either the content of the imagery or the ability of the images to provide a perceived balance of coverage of the event. Without other context, the imagery is open to any kind of interpretation.
I would hope that sites like Demotix prompt organized discussion and debate. Structuring text and media in a way that presents such charged information without becoming a propaganda tool or simply a huge mess will be an enormous challenge. But even if they don’t succeed, can they be faulted for trying to inform and involve the world?
When you all cover zivity, you don’t put the full nudity pics on the site, why?
My guess, just general good taste, and those photos are not needed to make the points of the post.
Same should apply here I would think.
Showing pics of dead babies/kids is certainly not needed to make the point of this story or startup.
“That’s called 2 standards, one for the world and another for Jews. Anti-Semitism in its purest form. ”
Now that you point it out, that is exactly right. Why is it that jews have their own special category of “anti-semitism” while the rest of the world doesn’t? Unfortunately these days you can not discuss anything related to the actions and policies in Israel without this ridiculous and increasingly useless word being tossed about.
Michael Arrington, you should lay off Mike Butcher.
Another victim of pallywood staged propaganda..
http://www.google.com/search?q=pallywood
How sad to see it on this site..
Mike, I think you can ‘cover a story about a site that carries graphic imagery without illustrating what it does’ if you’re capable of illustrative writing. I think you are capable but in this instance you chose the easy and unimaginative way.
I know some people don’t want these sort of pictures from Gaza shown. The Israeli government doesn’t want them shown – that’s why they are stopping journalists entering Gaza.
Mike covers startups. This is a startup. Do you want to stay in your bubble, not let the real world intervene?
I can guarantee that there will be pictures from the Israeli side when there are deaths there. I’ve seen plenty of pictures over the years of bits of bodies after suicide bombers.
Seems like a good idea to bring this sort of thing to your attention. Sure, you may have a political view one way or another – but why not let an article on Techcrunch go by without jumping all over it. It’s not exactly the BBC now, is it?
Mike, you have hit a very polar issue here.
I think you are totally right to post about Demotix and illustrate this with the full strength images the company carries.
You’ll see that the Guardian caries a very strong set of images from Gaza today. I am a firm believer that the strongest images from these conflicts should be carried by the media so everyone can see the extent of the conflict. It’s just a shame that Iraq and Afghanistan don’t have the same level of snappers, amateur and pro on the ground. Now perhaps the USA could release the footage of their unmanned drone attacks in Pakistan on YouTube. That would be progress.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2008/dec/28/gaza-attacks-israel-palestine?picture=341149884
Due to the fact that everyone ended up talking about the image of three dead babies and not about the Demotix startup, I have swapped it out with one of the mother and a dead child from the same story. This is less arresting but makes the same point in relation to the kind of imagery Demotix will carry. I am a father myself and I was not out to offend readers, but you must be aware that when you read about a picture agency which carries war photography you are going to see some pretty strong images. Unfortunately we see photos like this every day in the UK and European press. Readers from elsewhere may be less used to this kind of thing.
And frankly, as I have said before, I didn’t see any point in covering this story without illustrating the post in that fashion, and Gaza is the big story in the media right now. A UGC picture agency seems well placed right now, given world events.
So to conclude: So far almost all the comments have been about the images, not about the UGC picture agency, so I’ve decided to change the main picture in an attempt to re-focus this story on the startup.
If you have any salient points to make about the fact that a UGC picture agency will share 50% of its revenue with its users please make them now. If you would like to discuss politics then feel free, that’s your choice.
Mike Butcher
Editor
TechCrunch UK
Thanks for changing the images, Mike.
Despite your European sensibilities, I really can’t see how you’d think images of dead babies would not offend some readers. Obviousy, that’s not just me.
As per the startup itself, I’m a big proponent of sousveillance – subverting cameras for the public good.
However, as others have mentioned, even well established journalists in major media have occasionally blundered on fakes. We put it to good faith and their professional integrity that they do their very best to make sure what they report is true. Even then, more often then we care to admit it, major media fails to report the truth-the-whole-truth-and-nothing-but-the-truth. What kind of trust in authenticity can we have from folks media?
This is the major challenge, as I see it for Demotix.
Of course it’s the UK editor who goes and hijacks techcrunch with the longest post I’ve seen in years to peddle his propaganda under the guise of doing his job (which apparently has something to do with covering tech startups).
I doubt that startup or you would post pictures of Israeli children killed in suicide bombings or rocket attacks that intentionally target civillians (by Hamas’s own declaration) rather than the regretable outcome of Israel attacking Hamas military infrastructure, soldiers and police. You have no problem with Hamas’s war crimes and terrorism, but you’re bothered by the death of Palestinian civillians during Israel’s retaliation against that organization’s military establishment. Typical antisemitic tripe with a tasteless British flavor.
http://www.jcpa.org/text/puzzle1.pdf
Thanks for covering this Mike and braving the inevitable polarised reactions. The real world is a difficult place, and a site like Demotix is worth covering during a time when the whole issue of media coverage and attempts to control it is so central to what the Israeli military machine is doing to Palestinians.
There is some good coverage on the BBC from Jeremy Bowen about the Israeli military’s attempts to ensure there is as little media coverage from Gaza as possible. This is precisely the kind of situation, then, where citizen journalism has a role to play. Good or bad, old notions of balance (e.g. showing 1 photo from each “side” as some commenters have suggested, despite a casualty ratio of about 150:1) and “objectivity” (which has probably never existed) are not as important as they were in the past when media was more tightly controlled.
Journalists who have covered the occupation of Palestine tell countless tales of the legal, political and sometimes physical bullying they face when trying to cover the story, and this has resulted in newspapers taking a far more circumscribed line towards Israeli aggression than towards any comparable situation. Sadly, the same forces also marginalise moderate Israeli voices (of which there are many).
Successful startups in this space are all about finding strong use cases for the technology, and I think Demotix have done so here. It would be interesting to learn more about the business model and how they can overcome the problems similar agencies have faced in the past, but for now they are worth watching, I think.
(puts tin hat on)
Wow, Mike’s being so brave for aping what all other British journalists do, that is being an apologist for Palestinian terrorism while simultaneously being outraged at any military response to their actions.
I think it’s the tinfoil hat you’ve been wearing.
Glad you explained that you had swapped the pictures – I was trying to work out what the commenters were referring to.
When I look at the pictures here, the other’s on Demotix or in the Guardian, all I see is people. it matters not which ’side’ they belong to (and children never start off on a side).
A start-up that allows people to show what is happening to other people, especially if the BBC is correct and official journalistic coverage is being reduced is always good, as in most cases photojournalists are not around. I’ve supplied images to UGC news sites before (Yahoo and NowPublic) but there was never any mention of payment. One key risk they face is that there is an expectation of news agencies now that they can get all these images for free – either by asking for them OR just by taking them from sites. Here’s hoping that the idea works.
Thanks for the share mike. great find.
unfortunately, u have to live in america to understand the jews. anything not in their favor is anti-semit. there is no such a thing as free press over here. if it is not in favor of that shit hole israel then it is not worth broadcasting. internet sure is a creepy place isn’t it?
Amen so true, wot happened to freedom of speech?? or that only works one way.
I actually love the idea; I think the time is right for this kind of start-up. Also, any website that uses the power of the internet to (finally) allow people across the world to earn money must be great (if that is by selling pictures of dead children is a totally different story which I don’t want to get into).
If Demotix can stay neutral and avoid becoming a propaganda site, they have a winner on their hands.
Good luck to Demotix. Looks like they’re getting some good footage out of Gaza. However, I’m not convinced there is a truly scalable, financial model for a business like this.
I ended up working with Kyle and Jill on Scoopt some six months or so after they launched it in 2005. Maybe Scoopt were a bit too early on this scene and maybe Demotix have the timing right, but Demotix will need to do more than just sell a few pics to the MSM to make it work.
Lots of lessons to be learned in the UGC space by trawling Kyle’s thoughts post-Getty sale.
http://www.scunnered.com/?cat=9
Although you may want to quickly click through to this one first…
http://www.scunnered.com/?p=45
Interestingly, I made my first Scoopt sale on a pic a few weeks back. So, indeed, maybe the time is right
Members of the UK business community have to realize that public opinion outside of the UK is very different from what they are used to. I work with companies in the US EU Asia and Israel, I try to avoid going into politics as much as I can. remarks that might seem to be acceptable in the Anti Israeli British society, might be regarded as unacceptable and maybe even racist in the US and other places in the EU.
I’m an American who’s been in the UK for nearly 11 years now. I’ve known Mike Butcher for most of that time and he is a lovely and hard-working guy although I can’t say I’ve ever debated politics with him.
However I think Mike hits the nail on the head when he makes this point:
“I think a lot of people here who are annoyed about the images are probably not used to the kind of images that appear in the European media – broadcast, print and online – every day.”
And he’s right. The UK and European media are filled with these kinds of images — more often of Palestinian than of Israeli suffering. Some people would view this as a bias and some people would view it as proportionate to the amount of suffering on the two sides. I tend to view it as a bias myself, particularly in terms of how the causes of suffering are described (no one denies the suffering).
However because this approach is commonplace here I suspect that Mike, being a British journalist, did not perceive anything particularly wrong with this depiction. He may not have fully appreciated what a different view his non-European audience is likely to have.
I happen to think the choice of imagery and description in the article was somewhat biased, not because I think Mike himself is biased or lacks a sense of fairness, but rather because I think he was naturally reflecting the norm of mainstream journalistic coverage here in the UK.
Kind regards,
Evan Rudowski
This is exactly what I tried to explain in my former comment.