A Blog About Making Culture
AP photo captions suck
December 8, 2002
It's an odd little peeve of mine, but I am constantly mystified by the captions on Associated Press photos that feature young black celebrity males. First, let's look at a list of recent corrections to news photos posted to Yahoo. The usual stuff, fixing spelling errors and sports scores. But take a look at this photo of Bono leading a Chicago event around his usual causes of forgiving debt and fighting AIDS in Africa. He's joined by Ashley Judd and Chris Tucker. Only the photo caption gets all the names right except Tucker's, who is identified as Chris Rock.
I know, I know. It's totally understandable. Though Rock has never done a Jackie Chan film, and Tucker has that super-high voice and has never done HBO, maybe you can mix up these two comedians. But think back to a few weeks ago when singer D'Angelo was arrested. Now, D'Angelo's real name is Michael Archer, and that was on the police report and easy to verify. Yet, when Yahoo's AP news feed posted a photo to accompany the wire story, they ran a picture of DeAngelo Wilson. Wilson is an actor, not a singer; His first name is spelled differently; He's from Ohio, not Virginia; He's taller, got no facial hair, and also hasn't sold a few million albums, but he did appear in Eminem's "8 Mile"
Could it just be coincidence? Yeah, I guess. But it's all over the place. Most photo corrections are spelling fixes, but then you get things like Scottie Pippen being misidentified. At the very least, it's a sign of a remarkable lack of cultural literacy amongst this group of photojournalists.
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wimminandminoritiesdotcom
caption this...: we all look alike to you, don't we? read more »monique
you know how it is anil. all black people look alike. easy mistake(s) to make.
Choire
I have to say “ding ding ding” to Monique. It’s pretty damn odd. These photos are set-ups and press conferences, and available in wide ranging press wire release. It’s not like they have to work backwards to identify subjects from random snapshots of crowd scenes.
tim451
I heard about D’Angelo’s arrest on the radio (down here in Richmond, Virginia, y’all). The radio personnel seemed to have no problems at all reciting D’Angelo’s real name, as well as adding to the story that he followed this woman to the gas station, not that they coincidentally arrived at the same place.
As for me, misidentification of African-Americans can range from ignorance to subversive racism. Who’s to say it doesn’t run the gamut?
Joe Grossberg
Maybe it’s something as simple as black pop culture being a blind spot for whoever does the AP captions.
I’d imagine they’re pretty damn low on the journalism totem pole, relatively speaking.
This reminds me of the time at our student newspaper, at JHU, where Cal Ripken was identified as the Orioles’ third-baseman. (He’s a shortstop, and in the 1990’s he owned that fucking city.) The reason? The layout editor added a caption (that the author didn’t realize would be necessary) and the copy editor was a girl who didn’t follow baseball. Shit happens.
(Yes, I realize the AP are professionals, not unpaid college kids.)
I mean, at least they got the “Chris”, “D[…]Angelo” and “Trailblazer” parts right. It’s not like they put a picture of Shaq above a caption for Beyonce’.
tim451
advocating for the devil, as always…would you percieve any sleight from the media if you were identified in a caption as Josef instead of Joseph, or as Grossburg instead of Grossberg? Grossman? Rosenberg? I would feel sleighted, but of course I can’t speak for Chris Rock or Chris Tucker.
monique
Besides, Scottie Pippen is “black popular culture”. He’s an NBA star. He played with (whom no one seems to have a problem identifyin). Chris Tucker and Chris Rock have two entirely different styles of comedy. They are on two different levels. If you are reporting on this kind of thing you should be able to distinguish between the people you are reporting on.
John W
Oh come on. What do you work for the Village Voice or something?
monique
that should read Scottie is not “black popular culture”.
rschroed
This is really nitpicking but; Cal did play third both at the start and the end of his career.
Joe Grossberg
rschroed — Perhaps that is why the error slipped by, but this story ran when Cal was only a shortstop — i.e. before he was back at third base.
monique and tim451 — Valid points both. And yes, to some extent, I am playing devil’s advocate. But if you go to the corrections page, it doesn’t look like there is an inordinate number of black people. Perhaps it just general sloppiness, and not particularly disrespecting black men?
überchick
No excuses. If one takes the extra 3 seconds to proofread more carefully, as one is wont to do when one does not want to make an embarrassing mistake and potentially a slight, this would not be an issue. Alan Greenspan has never been mistaken in such fashion (at least to my knowledge), and he’s not even a “popular” figure.
Jason
Well to be accurate in regards to the corrections page, there are many corrections to misspellings of names and dates, etc.
However, misidentification of the person in the picture seems to be the domain of black male athletes and celebrities and foreign politicians.
omit
Somewhat related: D’Angelo’s mug shot
Andrew
It was pointed out in a MetaFilter thread on that Judd/Bono/Robinson that Ashley’s name was misspelled (as Ashely), although they did at least identify her correctly.
Having worked the photo desk on my college newspaper almost a decade ago, I have to tell you the inaccuracy in photo captions you’re seeing on the AP photo wire isn’t new. Caption corrections have been been almost as common as photos on the wire for a long, long time. What’s new is that Yahoo is here, spitting out the AP photo wire without any form of filtration. So you’re getting all the corrections along with the content.
When AP solely served newspapers and other more static media, this wasn’t as much of an issue; the caption corrections would most likely come over the wire before the paper was put to bed, the corrections would be made and readers were none the wiser. The Internet has eliminated that time delay, and that in combination with reduced editorial proofing (at least on Yahoo’s part) results in more errors making it to print — or, in this case, to screen.
Anonymous
They just don’t CARE!
justme
It’s a vast right wing/white power conspiracy. Great job uncovering this injustice anil!
m
anil,
please don’t lump us all into the same category. i always tell people that i’m not a photographer, i’m a photojournalist — because i pride myself on being as good of a journalist as my wordy counterparts. unfortunately what you have to understand is that after we get back with our pictures, and write our cpations there are still three or four more people that “check” it. i can’t tell you how often i’ve been right, and someone on the copydesk, or some editor in a glass office, assumes i’m wrong because i’m “just a photographer.”
yes, there is a lot of sloppiness and a lot of laziness and a lot of things that make it into print that never should, but there’s also a lot of really, really good journalism out there that you never get to see.
Anil
Oh, I don’t disagree that there’s terrific work being done in photojournalism all the time. In fact, that’s why this bugs me, because it makes a lot of talented folks seem like they don’t care about their work and their subjects, when nothing could be further from the truth.
Zach
Ya know this is really old - but its funny, cause all the screaming and crying about holding the man down - and two or three up is more the truth - They Just Dont Care. -
Come on now - unless you work for yourself or are very lucky - you goto work, you have good days you have bad days, things happen, but in the end, it can be said the same about most - when its all said and done you just do the job, and not really care about the job - be it you do a good job or bad job, they stop paying you, you stop going, which does prove, you just dont care, you only care about your paycheck and a place to live and food to eat - like everybody else, like editors at newspapers, like taco bell people, like aids in the senators office, etc, etc, etc
Also, you have any clue how many words and photos go through AP a day? They are going to have errors if god himself is doing it.
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