By Chris Daly
Tonight’s coverage of the budget crisis in Wisconsin brings a revealing look into Huffington Post and its approach to other people’s work.
First, look at the photo below, which appeared Thursday evening on the homepage of “Talking Points Memo.” Note that it carries a credit line saying it was taken by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. That is hardly surprising. When news like this breaks, that is where you would expect the best coverage — from the biggest newspaper that covers the subject on a regular basis. Who else is going to know the cops, guards, and custodians in the capitol building? Who else is going to know how to get to that vantage point? It’s going to be the newspaper with the biggest remaining commitment to covering state government (or maybe the Associated Press), and that’s usually it.
I should also say it is a striking image — and a hat-tip to the photog. (From a visit to the Journal Sentinel online, I would guess that it was taken by Tom Lynn.)
Now, look at the photo below.
This photo appeared on the homepage of “The Huffington Post” on Thursday evening. Note that it carries no credit line. I cannot imagine that HuffPo paid a staff photographer (do they even have one?) to fly to Wisconsin to take this photo. Someone else took the photo, and HuffPo took it from them. That shows a rotten disregard for the original work of other people.
Here’s what I am trying to teach my journalism students: Create it, or credit it.
How hard is that to remember?
Prof Chris Daly's Blog 
Hello,
I agree with you that images should always feature a credit. I can’t tell you how many times my images have been used without proper credit. (very annoying and just wrong on their part.)
The images are similar yet not the same. However, in my opinion, the first image is a stronger capture with better exposure and composition than the second anyway. Which kind of clues me in one has more attention to detail and experience than the other.
It looks as though the photographer (s) were standing near each other and got shots that do look very much the same. (that is if the above images were captured by two different photographers)
Why is there an assumption that the Huffington Post would not have a staff photographer or pay for them to capture news worthy events if they do/ did?
Thank you for your post. I am really glad you stress the importance of giving and/ or getting credit where it is due to your students.
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