When it Comes to Gotchas, These are Biggies

I’m not on Twitter, but I follow what’s happening there as an interested observer. I recently heard of a tag called #cnnfail. It’s a way that Twitterers are tracking stories that CNN hasn’t done its homework on. That’s starting to become an internet meme, appearing on various blogs and other channels. I’ve always expected social networks to take over the job of news media. I thought that reporting would happen from people at ground zero in catastrophes, atrocities and other events. I didn’t envision it would serve to hold the industry’s feet to the fire. Though, having heard of it, I highly approve. I wonder what CNN thinks. (It’s probably the easiest target, but it certainly isn’t the only target.)

In another realm, Chase Jarvis picked up on a story that’s been bubbling out of France. There is a prestigious photojournalism award that is annually awarded to promising photojournalism students. This year’s recipients got up to receive their award, and dropped a rather large bomb. They unveiled that that their compelling photo essay was entirely fabricated. Using their peers as actors, it had been carefully crafted to appeal to the selection panel through trends that they’ve witnessed over the years. This from Horses Think:

The winners claimed that the idea was hatched a year ago when they looked at all the work students were competing with for the 2008 prize. They realized that the “world view of this work was limited and seemed more like vacation photographs as opposed to photojournalism. The photographs depicted small children with big wet eyes in order to illustrate the misery abroad.” Speaking to Le Figaro, Guillaume Chauvin confided that they “wanted to enter the contest in order to show the codes used too often in photojournalism and to prove that something real could be translated into something staged.”

There’s lots of discussion and further links available on Chase’s post.

I think there are rather serious and exciting implications from these efforts. I’m fascinated by where these are going. Will they be a sobering reality check to the mainstream media? Or will they push them one step closer to simply not caring at all anymore — thus, taking another step toward their demise? I’m really curious about this. It has great bearing on how all of us explain the world to each other. Recognising that our media constructs are all houses of cards is a good first step.