I predict that, in 2020 and beyond, audiences looking at news photographs will be increasingly inclined to make symbolic readings rather than interpreting them literally and denotatively. But that shift will only come about as a result of continued controversies over the veracity of news images.
Some of the most impactful news photographs to circulate in recent years have been those that presented digestible, legible encapsulations of political crises far too expansive to depict within the space of a single frame. The winner of 2019’s World Press Photo of the Year Award is a case in point. It captures two-year-old Yanela Sanchez, who has just arrived at the United States-Mexico border with her mother, in the middle of an anguished wail. Bordered by a law enforcement vehicle on one side and the legs of her mother, who is being patted down by border patrol, on the other, Sanchez is the only figure depicted in full.
Presenting this moment from something like the child’s perspective — with the camera at her eye level, the adults are impossibly large and emotionally inaccessible — the photograph frames its central subject as isolated from the adults who surround her, and terrorized by this isolation.
The circulation of this image, taken by John Moore of Getty Images, was rapid and extensive, and it soon came to function as visual shorthand for a much broader crisis. As it ran on front pages and appeared in innumerable social media feeds, it was often characterized as a representation of the Trump administration’s policy of separating children from their parents at the border. Time’s use of this image in a photo illustration on its cover — which quite literally detached Sanchez from her mother, in order to present her against a photograph of a towering Trump — contributed this interpretation, cementing the photograph’s status as an iconic depiction of the crisis of family separation, though Time did not explicitly claim this particular family had been separated.
When reports emerged that Sanchez had not, in fact, been separated from her mother by border patrol, the backlash was swift. Centrist news sources hurriedly issued corrections, characterizing the image as misleading and Time’s use of it a “major mistake,” while a number of right-wing outlets cast the image’s spread as intentionally deceptive, further evidence of an anti-Trump media conspiracy. The correction, and the purported “debunking” of the image, quickly became the story.
But to view this image and its spread as merely erroneous is to miss a larger point about the ways readers experience and value news photographs now — and the ways they will continue to do so in the 2020s. Although readers rely heavily on photographs as sources of information about the world — and view their absence as suspect, in a cultural context characterized by the ubiquity of cameras and the prevalence of “pics or it didn’t happen” mentalities — many of the world’s most pressing problems fail to lend themselves compellingly to visual depiction.
Drawing on the terminology of the political theorist Ariella Azoulay, the photojournalism scholars Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites have described the representational problems attending the “regime-made disaster.” A mode of violence that is widespread in the 21st century, the regime-made disaster entails the ongoing suppression of a population in a manner that “usually operates below the threshold of demonstrable violence,” Hariman and Lucaites write, resulting in “a comprehensive assault on civil society, but in a manner that is visually banal.”
The crisis at the border is not unrepresentable, but much of the misery it has entailed has been spatially contained and protracted rather than explosive and visually dramatic. For this kind of suffering to become visible, affecting, and “real” to those whose privilege or geographical distance shields them from direct acquaintance with it, photographs that strikingly articulate the stakes of the problem can be highly impactful. Moore’s photograph of Sanchez was an image of this sort. As they circulate, images like these become iconic in a double sense: They both visually represent the event in the minds of spectators, and they come to analogize it, standing in for the broader crisis.
In response to the controversy surrounding this image, Time’s editor-in-chief, Edward Felsenthal, issued a statement calling Moore’s photograph “the most visible symbol of the ongoing immigration debate” and asserting that the cover “capture[s] the stakes of this moment.” While his words might strike some as airy or evasive, they point the discussion about news photographs’ functions in a productive, if contentious, direction.
First, they identify a role for the news photograph that is less rigid and more expansive than the proffering of visual facts. This is a necessary adjustment in the 2020s, amid inexhaustible opportunities for the manipulation of still and moving images. This manipulability — which is not new, of course, but is irreversible and expanding — along with reports concerning the prevalence of staging among photojournalists, suggests that predicating news photographs’ value on their denotative qualities is a tendency whose moment has passed.
Second, and relatedly, Felsenthal’s words prescribe a symbolic function for news photographs, suggesting that they can be tasked with encapsulating and visually performing the broad stakes of issues at hand. This reading of news photographs may seem disconcertingly subjective, given that not everyone will be in agreement about what the broad stakes of a given issue are. However, I’d argue that this statement is a good descriptor of how news photographs actually do operate in practice today — they just don’t tend to be described in terms that acknowledge this degree of ambiguity. This is not to say that news images have no obligation to tell the truth, or no informational value — only that their truthfulness and informational value are necessarily situated and contingent rather than absolute.
Debates surrounding the credibility of news images are highly generative, in that they allow a range of perspectives to be aired and make clear to spectators that there’s more than one way to look at a news photograph. I think that as controversies like the one I have been describing continue to emerge, viewing publics will grow more comfortable with an idea that is both unsettling and necessary: that news photographs can be suggestive and also informative, symbolic as well as truthful.
Annie Rudd is an assistant professor in the University of Calgary’s Department of Communication, Media and Film.
I predict that, in 2020 and beyond, audiences looking at news photographs will be increasingly inclined to make symbolic readings rather than interpreting them literally and denotatively. But that shift will only come about as a result of continued controversies over the veracity of news images.
Some of the most impactful news photographs to circulate in recent years have been those that presented digestible, legible encapsulations of political crises far too expansive to depict within the space of a single frame. The winner of 2019’s World Press Photo of the Year Award is a case in point. It captures two-year-old Yanela Sanchez, who has just arrived at the United States-Mexico border with her mother, in the middle of an anguished wail. Bordered by a law enforcement vehicle on one side and the legs of her mother, who is being patted down by border patrol, on the other, Sanchez is the only figure depicted in full.
Presenting this moment from something like the child’s perspective — with the camera at her eye level, the adults are impossibly large and emotionally inaccessible — the photograph frames its central subject as isolated from the adults who surround her, and terrorized by this isolation.
The circulation of this image, taken by John Moore of Getty Images, was rapid and extensive, and it soon came to function as visual shorthand for a much broader crisis. As it ran on front pages and appeared in innumerable social media feeds, it was often characterized as a representation of the Trump administration’s policy of separating children from their parents at the border. Time’s use of this image in a photo illustration on its cover — which quite literally detached Sanchez from her mother, in order to present her against a photograph of a towering Trump — contributed this interpretation, cementing the photograph’s status as an iconic depiction of the crisis of family separation, though Time did not explicitly claim this particular family had been separated.
When reports emerged that Sanchez had not, in fact, been separated from her mother by border patrol, the backlash was swift. Centrist news sources hurriedly issued corrections, characterizing the image as misleading and Time’s use of it a “major mistake,” while a number of right-wing outlets cast the image’s spread as intentionally deceptive, further evidence of an anti-Trump media conspiracy. The correction, and the purported “debunking” of the image, quickly became the story.
But to view this image and its spread as merely erroneous is to miss a larger point about the ways readers experience and value news photographs now — and the ways they will continue to do so in the 2020s. Although readers rely heavily on photographs as sources of information about the world — and view their absence as suspect, in a cultural context characterized by the ubiquity of cameras and the prevalence of “pics or it didn’t happen” mentalities — many of the world’s most pressing problems fail to lend themselves compellingly to visual depiction.
Drawing on the terminology of the political theorist Ariella Azoulay, the photojournalism scholars Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites have described the representational problems attending the “regime-made disaster.” A mode of violence that is widespread in the 21st century, the regime-made disaster entails the ongoing suppression of a population in a manner that “usually operates below the threshold of demonstrable violence,” Hariman and Lucaites write, resulting in “a comprehensive assault on civil society, but in a manner that is visually banal.”
The crisis at the border is not unrepresentable, but much of the misery it has entailed has been spatially contained and protracted rather than explosive and visually dramatic. For this kind of suffering to become visible, affecting, and “real” to those whose privilege or geographical distance shields them from direct acquaintance with it, photographs that strikingly articulate the stakes of the problem can be highly impactful. Moore’s photograph of Sanchez was an image of this sort. As they circulate, images like these become iconic in a double sense: They both visually represent the event in the minds of spectators, and they come to analogize it, standing in for the broader crisis.
In response to the controversy surrounding this image, Time’s editor-in-chief, Edward Felsenthal, issued a statement calling Moore’s photograph “the most visible symbol of the ongoing immigration debate” and asserting that the cover “capture[s] the stakes of this moment.” While his words might strike some as airy or evasive, they point the discussion about news photographs’ functions in a productive, if contentious, direction.
First, they identify a role for the news photograph that is less rigid and more expansive than the proffering of visual facts. This is a necessary adjustment in the 2020s, amid inexhaustible opportunities for the manipulation of still and moving images. This manipulability — which is not new, of course, but is irreversible and expanding — along with reports concerning the prevalence of staging among photojournalists, suggests that predicating news photographs’ value on their denotative qualities is a tendency whose moment has passed.
Second, and relatedly, Felsenthal’s words prescribe a symbolic function for news photographs, suggesting that they can be tasked with encapsulating and visually performing the broad stakes of issues at hand. This reading of news photographs may seem disconcertingly subjective, given that not everyone will be in agreement about what the broad stakes of a given issue are. However, I’d argue that this statement is a good descriptor of how news photographs actually do operate in practice today — they just don’t tend to be described in terms that acknowledge this degree of ambiguity. This is not to say that news images have no obligation to tell the truth, or no informational value — only that their truthfulness and informational value are necessarily situated and contingent rather than absolute.
Debates surrounding the credibility of news images are highly generative, in that they allow a range of perspectives to be aired and make clear to spectators that there’s more than one way to look at a news photograph. I think that as controversies like the one I have been describing continue to emerge, viewing publics will grow more comfortable with an idea that is both unsettling and necessary: that news photographs can be suggestive and also informative, symbolic as well as truthful.
Annie Rudd is an assistant professor in the University of Calgary’s Department of Communication, Media and Film.
Steve Henn The dawning audio web
Tanya Cordrey Saying no to more good ideas
Catalina Albeanu Rebuilding journalism, together
Gordon Crovitz Fighting misinformation requires journalism, not secret algorithms
John Garrett It’s the best time in a century to start a local news organization
Errin Haines Race and gender aren’t a 2020 story — they’re the story
Mary Walter-Brown and Tristan Loper Power to the people (on your audience team)
Lucas Graves A smarter conversation about how (and why) fact-checking matters
Sue Robinson Campaign coverage as test bed for engagement experiments
Annie Rudd The expanded ambiguity of the news photograph
Beena Raghavendran The year of the local engagement reporter
Sonali Prasad Climate change storytelling gets multidimensional
Rachel Davis Mersey The business of local TV news will enter its downward slide
Sara K. Baranowski A big year for little newspapers
Matt DeRienzo Local broadcasters begin to fill the gaps left by newspapers
Victor Pickard We reclaim a public good
Tamar Charney From broadcast to bespoke
Jennifer Brandel A love letter from the year 2073
Kerri Hoffman Opening closed systems
Mira Lowe The year of student-powered journalism
Dannagal G. Young Let’s disrupt the logic that’s driving Americans apart
Candis Callison Taking a cue from Indigenous journalists on climate change
Stefanie Murray Charitable giving goes collaborative
Colleen Shalby Journalists become media literacy teachers
Dan Shanoff Sports media enters the Bronny era
Heather Bryant Some kinds of journalism aren’t worth saving
Meredith Artley Stronger solidarity among news organizations
Simon Galperin Journalism becomes more democratic
Felix Salmon Spotify launches a news channel
Mariana Moura Santos The future of journalism is collaborative
Nushin Rashidian Are platforms a bridge or a lifeline?
An Xiao Mina The Forum we wanted, the forum we got
J. Siguru Wahutu Western journalists, learn from your African peers
Seth C. Lewis 20 questions for 2020
Joe Amditis Collaborative journalism takes its rightful place at the table
Raney Aronson-Rath News deserts will proliferate — but so will new solutions
Anthony Nadler Clash of Clans: Election Edition
Jeremy Gilbert and Jarrod Dicker A call for collaboration between storytelling and tech
Helen Havlak Platforms shine a light on original reporting
Peter Bale Lies get further normalized
Don Day Respect the non-paying audience
Logan Molyneux and Shannon McGregor Think twice before turning to Twitter
Greg Emerson News apps fall further behind
Tonya Mosley The neutrality vs. objectivity game ends
Jake Shapiro Podcasting gets listener relationship management
Nico Gendron Make better products if you want to reach Gen Z
Masuma Ahuja Slower, quieter, more measured and thoughtful
Sarah Stonbely More people start caring about news inequality
Rachel Schallom The value of push alerts goes beyond open rates
Bill Adair A Nobel Prize, a Brad Pitt film, and a Taylor Swift song
Zizi Papacharissi A president leads, the press follows, reality fades
Jakob Moll A slow-moving tech backlash among young people
Cory Haik We’re already consuming the future of news — now we have to produce it
Joshua P. Darr All that campaign cash will make the media’s problems worse
Kristen Muller The year we operationalize community engagement
Josh Schwartz Publishers move beyond the metered paywall
Carl Bialik Journalists will try running the whole shop
Christa Scharfenberg It’s time to make journalism a field that supports and respects women
Joanne McNeil A return to blogs (finally? sort of?)
Juleyka Lantigua A changing industry amps up podcasters’ ambitions
A.J. Bauer A fork in the road for conservative media
Eric Nuzum Podcasting finally creates another mega-hit show
Rachel Glickhouse Journalists get left behind in the industry’s decline
Alfred Hermida and Mary Lynn Young The promise of nonprofit journalism
Kevin D. Grant The free press stands against authoritarians’ attacks on truth
Pablo Boczkowski The day after November 4
Heidi Tworek The year of positive pushback
Elizabeth Dunbar Frank talk, and then action
Mario García Think small (screen)
Doris Truong The year of radical salary transparency
Logan Jaffe You don’t need fancy tools to listen
Monique Judge The year to organize, unionize, and fight
Francesco Zaffarano TikTok without generational prejudice
Bill Grueskin Our ethics codes get an overhaul
Sarah Alvarez I’m ready for post-news
Mike Caulfield Native verification tools for the blue checkmark crowd
Julia B. Chan We 👏 take 👏 breaks 👏
Michael W. Wagner Increasingly fractured, but little bit deliberative
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen The business we want, not the business we had
Brian Moritz The end of “stick to sports”
Margarita Noriega The platforms try to figure out what to do with single-subject newsrooms
Jeff Kofman Speed through technology
Sarah Schmalbach Journalist, quantify thyself
Barbara Gray Join local libraries on the frontlines of civic engagement
Whitney Phillips A time to question core beliefs
Craig Newmark Formalizing newsrooms’ battle against disinformation
Meg Marco Everything happens somewhere
Geneva Overholser Death to bothsidesism
Emily Withrow The year we kill the news article
Jonas Kaiser Russian bots are just today’s slacktivists
Monica Drake A renewed focus on misinformation
Alana Levinson Brand-backed media gets another look
Jim Brady We’ll complain about other people living in bubbles while ignoring our own
Nathalie Malinarich Betting on loyalty
Madelyn Sanfilippo and Yafit Lev-Aretz News coverage gets geo-fragmented
John Keefe Journalism gets hacked
Knight Foundation Five generations of journalists, learning from each other
Elizabeth Hansen and Jesse Holcomb Local news initiatives run into a capital shortage
Laura E. Davis Know the context your journalism is operating within
S. Mitra Kalita The race to 2021
Talia Stroud The work of reconnecting starts November 4
Nicholas Jackson What’s left of local gets comfortable with reader support
Ben Werdmuller Use the tools of journalism to save it
Joni Deutsch Podcasting unsilences the silent
Kathleen Searles Pay more attention to attention
Ståle Grut OSINT journalism goes mainstream
Kourtney Bitterly Transparency isn’t just a desire, it’s an expectation
Cristina Kim Public media stops trying to serve “everybody”
Tom Glaisyer Journalism can emerge newly vibrant and powerful
Rick Berke Incoming fire from both left and right
Alexandra Borchardt Get out of the office and talk to people
Hossein Derakhshan AI can’t conjure up an Errol Morris
Imaeyen Ibanga Let’s take it slow
Jeremy Olshan All journalism should be service journalism
Matthew Pressman News consumers divide into haves and have-nots
Carrie Brown-Smith Engaged journalism: It’s finally happening
Moreno Cruz Osório In Brazil, collaboration in a time of state attacks
Richard Tofel A constraint of the reader-revenue model emerges
Jasmine McNealy A call for context
Lauren Duca The rise of the journalistic influencer
Brenda P. Salinas Treating MP3 files like text
Alice Antheaume Trade “politics” for “power”
Irving Washington Leadership isn’t something you learn on the job
M. Scott Havens First-party data becomes media’s most important currency
Linda Solomon Wood Everyone in your organization, moving toward a common goal
Ernie Smith The death of the industry fad
Fiona Spruill The climate crisis gets the coverage it deserves
Sarah Marshall The year to learn about news moments
Cindy Royal Prepare media students for skills, not job titles