Sorry to interrupt but the Houston Press is really chaffing my hide.
Right so if you recall a while back Houston Press hack Mark C. Austin has a hissy fit because I used on of his photos to inquire about who was playing guitar in a certain snapshot. Austin, clearly not aware of the idea of fair use, objected and threatened this blog with an empty lawsuit for using his hack work to settle a question. Mind you there was full credit to the picture in question.
Here is where I get a bit pissed. This week Chris Gray did a fine article on Bring Back the Guns. Great! Note the lack of credit on the photo? Here is the kicker. Try to link to the photo as I did below. What do you get? Nothing? Why? You see the Houston Press doesn't want it's content "stolen" so they have set it up where you can't directly link to the image.
Hmmm that'c curious. Did the Press ask the photographer for permission? Did the Press credit the photographer or even bother to ask who the photographer was? Was the photographer paid? Is the Press suggesting by controlling the image in such a manner that they have some ownership of this image? I think they are all fair questions with the following answers No. No. No. Yes.
So when you are a big corporate paper you can act with impunity and when you are a small not for profit blog you get raked over the coals for fair use.
My suggestion to the Press. Do like 5 seconds worth of homework and simply credit photographers. It's not hard to do.
Here is where I get a bit pissed. This week Chris Gray did a fine article on Bring Back the Guns. Great! Note the lack of credit on the photo? Here is the kicker. Try to link to the photo as I did below. What do you get? Nothing? Why? You see the Houston Press doesn't want it's content "stolen" so they have set it up where you can't directly link to the image.
Hmmm that'c curious. Did the Press ask the photographer for permission? Did the Press credit the photographer or even bother to ask who the photographer was? Was the photographer paid? Is the Press suggesting by controlling the image in such a manner that they have some ownership of this image? I think they are all fair questions with the following answers No. No. No. Yes.
So when you are a big corporate paper you can act with impunity and when you are a small not for profit blog you get raked over the coals for fair use.
My suggestion to the Press. Do like 5 seconds worth of homework and simply credit photographers. It's not hard to do.
22 Comments:
haha. they used one of my photos unattributed once too.
i just want to point out that this was in the PRINT edition and on the ON-LINE edition of this week's paper (as opposed to their blog).
sadder still (for me) is that this is the third time they've used my photos uncredited. and for the record, the band did in fact give chris gray my name. worse, the first two times it happened i gave the photos directly to 1)the writer and 2) to the subject of the photo (who just happened to be a staff writer).
given that this is not the first time the Press has done this to me, my ONLY conclusion is that the Press does not think that photographers are important. unless they are on staff. or in high school.
for the record i would really REALLY appreciate an apology from them on the errata page next week. a pledge that they clean up their act would be of importance to the larger community though. i'm pretty inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. but still..
as an aside to that, i blame the Press' (and other print journal's) use of "blogstandards". blog standards are much much lower than journal standards because blogs are essentially "journalists" and "writers" talking out their ass. SOMETIMES, there are gem blogs with high(er) standards - like NAP or Skyline Network (ahem, that was my photo of the Dimes in SLN way back when). but i think its a mistake for print journals - like the Press - to lower their journal standards for their accompanying blogs.
now, i realize that it is "the informal version" of the Press and its where the journalists "let their hair down". i LIKE that quality and i read the Press' blogs on a daily basis. it COULD be coincidence but it wasn't long after i called them out on not having by-lines that they started even USING by-lines on their blog, having hidden behind anonymity to do sloppy work before that time.
and not to pick on my friend John Lomax but it was a HUGE gaff on his part to report incorrectly that new orleans musician james kerwin died in houston (he died in new orleans). had he vetted what someone told him in a bar six months earlier, it would not have detracted from the facts. and the facts are very VERY sad. go back and read his article at http://blogs.houstonpress.com/rocks/2007/10/rip_
kerwin_james_and_new_orlea.php. (btw, great story john. it's sad that the monster of "developers and development" has its death grip on NOLA).
and again i'm not picking on JNL and the Press, but print journals neeeeeed to use the same care about certain standards (the barest of facts, by-lines, and photography credits to name three big ones) on their blogs. i do like the informal editorial columns that print journal blogs have become, but i think they need to be careful to not get TOO sloppy, or else that same slopiness might rub off onto the venerable print journal which -to me at least - is the last bastion of old school quality journalism.
The problem is they are really busy, and better still, they use that as an excuse for the real reason:they don't give a shit who took the photo. They ask for images to accompany articles all the time and I can bet you they never ask for permission. Mother fuck that. Go get 'em tiger. Fuck them up and how.
It just pisses me off that they clearly don't give a shit. I mean I felt bad when I did that article for the Free Press on Blades and John Van didn't get credit so on the FP website I put an over the top apology. Why? Because I felt bad about him not getting credit and I immediately tried to figure out how to make sure that doesn't happen again. I just don't get why the Houston Press the big motherfucking new Times corporate behemoth continues to blatantly do that kind of crap and be so utterly hypocritical when it comes to linking to iamges. Fuck that! ...and then that little fuckwad of a hack Mark C. Austin has the nuts to throw his puny dick around like I chose his picture because it was fucking hot shit and not the vacation snapshot hack work it was. Please, it's fucking lazy bullshit and just an example of why the Press needs to fucking move on up to at least high school high school journalism standards.
First of all I feel Rosa's pain because things like this have happened to photographers that worked with my bands and especially because the same has happened to Tricia.
But I don't know, if the band gave them the photoj HP might have seen it as a promo.
I think they don't let people link in big part because they don't want to pay for the bandwidth. You can download the image from their site though.
Isn't Chris Gray the new guy? Don't you want to cut him a little slack?
Anyway it's nothing new. You learn pretty quickly in doing interviews and stuff, that fact checking isn't going to happen in weekly rags. Just another example that you can never trust what you read.
I remember when de Schmog won Band of the Year at the old Public News. PN assigned a photographer to take a band shot but he was a total flake and had us get together twice and then didn't show. So we got Mark Lacy to take the shot and gave that to the News. Bert held that against us for a long time until Brandon became a bartender at Rudz. It's always smart to be nice to your bartender especially when you're a bitter barfly.
Chris Gray did a great job. I meant it when I said great in reference to his article. This has nothing to do with Chris Gray. What I'm talking about is something that isa shitty way to operate.
When I see a promo shot in say, Magnet, the photographer is always credited. Also as rosa pointed out when the photographer hands you the photos personally the least you'd expect is your name there.
What ends up happening is that these images just get taken for granted and the craft, time, and effort put into the images get taken for granted. The images then proliferated over the internet with no attribution and the photographer gets lost. i run into this all the time when I try to credit a photo in a blog. Why because people think that photography is nothing because they can take their digital and shoot pictures at Disneyworld.
whatever, my point is that if the band gives you a credit or if a photographer gives you a credit type the fucking name under the photo. Not that fucking hard unless you are a disrespectful lazy fuck!
Kilian said...
"But I don't know, if the band gave them the photoj HP might have seen it as a promo."
well of course it's promotion. this is a commercial rag. but, there is a tradition specifically in music journalism that part of the mystique of the musician(s) is their image. sometimes, images become synonymous with the band. in the past, those images were taken by working photographers. traditionally, quality print journals (and i count the Press among them) took great care to use by-lines and photo credits. i think this should be an unshakeable standard. the addition of blogs to journal sites is changing this.
oh sure, every photographer has stories about how they've been jipped a credit. for all i know legendary rags didn't print credits. maybe i'll do a little research. but not having photo credits is against the grain of tradition.
"Isn't Chris Gray the new guy? Don't you want to cut him a little slack?"
and i say this without an ounce of sarcasm: did i EVER say anything bad about Chris Gray? i thought my response was very measured. i certainly meant it as a learning lesson for writers and editors. but beyond that i don't give a flying FUCK what the Press thinks about my response. why? because i can't. i have my own standards and codes to which i adhere and rule number one is integrity. if i don't call out commercial print journals that use my photography for not having THE COURTESY of an acknowledgment, then that makes me a commercial-journal ass-kisser. if this means the Press never uses my photography again, so be it. i'll find another way to promote the bands i love and choose to work with.
see that's one of the nice things about working for free (full disclosure: bring back the guns paid for my film and they bought me a beer). you work with who you want, when you want, and on your own timetable.
"Anyway it's nothing new. You learn pretty quickly in doing interviews and stuff, that fact checking isn't going to happen in weekly rags."
i used the standard of getting the "barest" of facts. if i read it in a quality journal (via their blog) i can then repeat that information as having 'vetted out the facts' and still be able to look myself in the mirror if that information is wrong. this is an american tradition that i consider sacred. journalism is sacred. the truth is sacred. mistakes happen, yes. but when a reporter (god, i hate to point it out again because i really like him) doesn't confirm what someone told him in conversation (not during an interview, but shooting the shit over a beer) then that reporters reputation is put jeopardy. now shooting the shit over a beer and getting someone's opinion, i have absolutely have no problem with - in fact i encourage it. but is it just me or does a musician dying during a gig in houston as opposed to dying not at a gig in new orleans constitute a HUGE mistake.
i guess that's the thing, i've had so many "is it just me?" moments over the last few weeks, that i feel like the foundation of western civilization is finally starting to give way. and that foundation is being picked away at by - of all people - nitwits with keyboards (hey! that's us! kill me now!).
what's next? MP3s on the radio?
Hairstylists never get any credit. They've defined look after look in movies and music, and never get credit. Anyone know who did the cleopatra haircut in the movie? jennifer anniston's hair in friends? the beatle mop tops? Then you have makeup awards, clothing awards, lighting awards, no hairstylist award... not even a 'haircuts by...' on any album liner notes, film credits or even less on any photo on any newspaper or magazine.
It's not just you Rosa, the work of millions in all kinds of industries and artistic endeavors gets used without credit every day.
This is not a boast because I have had some shameful errors on my part but I would put our fact checking up to HP. If somebody wants to do a week by week fact check for this past nap year it would be mildly interesting.
Oh we could also do a taste test and put our top ten Houston songs up against theirs. But seriously I don't want to go there. Because right now I'd want to put Devin the Dude's Doobie Ashtray on top.
For the most part, K, we're not doing all that much reporting here, so we don't need to be accurate.
And keep in mind with fact checking that our Board of Commentators is our fact checking department.
Are weeklies doing all that much reporting? Especially in regards to entertainment and music.
This years Chicago World Music Festival was poorly funded and the roster was, of course, badly affected. The festival gets very little city funding and couldn't get sponsors this year. The Reader told us that but didn't do any reporting to find out why. At least not yet. We can only hope they're working on it now.
Here's a little tip for anybody trying to get a write up about a show. You do the pitch. You write something not too gleaming but clever. You will see your exact words in the paper with no credit (which you don't want in this case).
Has anyone physically called them and balled them out for using the image uncredited?
hs - i VERY nicely pointed it out in the comments to the article's home on the web. and i did it all the while suppressing seething anger. and ur right, i should alert the Press official-like.
i also think the writers here are pretty damn good here when it comes to the facts. and reporting generally.
carlos i'm talking about american tradition. journals credit authors and photographers. not stylists. film credits list stylists but not the photographers who worked on the promotion.
anyways stylists are gaining ground in popular culture. i mean, have you seen a reality show about photographers? now stylists are television celebrities. kudos to them. i just want a goddammed photo credit. ("i'm not crazy! iiiiin-stitutionalized!")
that's a fucking shame about the worldfest, killian. the one here has been a runaway success since its inception. i hope it bounces back. those kind of events are in the civic good.
I spoke with Chris Gray actually and he said he did try ot do due dilligence but the deadline for print came before the response. He was very apologetic and said he'd post Rosa's credit on line at least.
By the way Carlos - I am one of those guys who sits through the credits of films. I cna guarantte yout the hairstylists are credited.
The point aof all this is recognition for people's work. Someone once said that there is a difference between people wanting fame and recognition. The former is a vanity the latter is a reward for hard the hard work involved. I tend to agree and that is all that this is about.
We should encourage and respect any creative endeavor that someone has put their heart towards. I'm not saying you have to kiss someone's ass and pretend to like what they do but at least have an appreciation for the work involved. That is all a credit does. At it's heart it's just good manners.
Also, just to make a point I don't put blogs on the same level as print. I guarantee you I put a lot more work into my Free Press articles than I do here. Maybe it's becasue print still holds some mistique for me or whatever but that's just where I come from. Blogs are casual whereas print is the re4al deal. I'm likely old fashioned or something.
thank you, ramon. i was just about judge myself very hard for taking things too personally. you lifted my spirits.
print journals are the real deal. even web journals can be held to the same standards. blogs aren't/shouldn't be held to the same gold standards. that's why journals should practice safer sex when they fool around with them.
regardless, my expectations have been sufficiently lowered. so i won't play the tiny tempest in the future regarding foto credits. my apologies for those who think i'm overreacting.
So Rosa, just to get this straight... you gave your photos to the band and they gave them to HP?
I don't see how HP can use the photos at all, unless they have your permission. I wonder if you registered your photos with a Creative Commons license, then gave them to the bands...then at the least, HP would *have* to credit you or be in violation of copyright law.
I don't want to pile on HP, but they've always seemed kind of sloppy and lazy to me. They definitely fill a need though, and they do a good job in a lot of areas but you'd think they'd at least cover their asses legally. Makes me wonder how accurate some of their "expose" articles are...
Oh and Rosa you are TOTALLY not overreacting. I'd be pissed too, and for fux sake you are going out there and doing the work of photographing and developing and lugging gear and everything else that comes with it, and no one even bothers to credit you? Bullshit on that. It's not like you are asking to get paid, just to be treated with some respect.
Btw Rosa. It's a nice shot. And HP has updated their site to put your name right on top.
It's also a timely article.
oh i got no beefs regarding permission. or legalities. thanks though clinton. i know what you mean about creative use license - which in essence is what i have with the bands.
killian thanks for the compliment. with all the hoopla i forgot to look closely at the shot. i like that one though i really really think the guys shine through more in the shot i added as my profile pic. i'll take it down shortly just in case they wanted to use it for something else.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home