Visual Verification for Journalists
Identifying and verifying photos is a challenge in today's hoax-filled internet. Journalists at the Journalism Interactive conference explored techniques for proving what's real and what isn't.
- Images are everywhere. It doesn’t matter what the event;there is probably a picture of it. And if there are originals, there are bound to be fakes. But finding the fake images is not as easy as spotting the inverted logo on a knockoff Coach handbag.
- But fear not, journalists. Visual verification is here to help.
Samaruddin Stewart, a Knight fellow from Stanford, breaks down some tools to help you sift through images trying to pass themselves off as the real deal. These tools are broken down by three categories: content, container, creator - Content
Breaking news has a way of making people image editing experts. From doctored images of the MH17 flight to pictures from the Syrian civil war, it is hard to tell which image is authentic and which isn’t, especially in newsrooms on a time crunch.
Stewart offered reverse image search as the first tool in narrowing down thousands of user-generated submissions to a lower, more workable number.- TinEye and Google Images both reverse search an image to see when, and if, it has appeared online before. If it has, the search engine can tell when and where. Here’s the catch: the image must have been uploaded before. If it was never uploaded before, these search engines would not have indexed it and the image in question will not have passed the test.
#ImageVerification Tool #1: Reverse image search is a simple way to verify if content has appeared or indexed online before.- 1. TinEye
2. Google reverse image search- Container
A container is the file extension of the image: JPEG, PNG,RAW, etc. Most images are saved as JPEGs, which makes verifying its authenticity simpler. Why? Because JPEG files lose some metadata every time the file is opened, even if nothing is done to the file.
Every image-capturing device automatically saves the metadata — data that provides context — of the image within the file itself. And while the metadata itself can also be doctored, there are softwares that can detect if the metadata has been manipulated with. - There are two websites that can help figure out the authenticity of the metadata of the image.
1. Jeffrey’s EXIF Viewer - The website allows you to either upload an image from your computer or URL. A few minutes later, it gives you all the data you need to know if the image has come from where the user said.
Can look at EXIF data and map where it was shot at http://regex.info/exif.cgi #jiconf- Wolfram Alpha stores historical weather data and comes in handy when the image is an outdoor shot.
So, if someone sends an image froma crowded square in the evening while the sun is setting on a cold evening inFebruary, and says it is from Tahrir Square, Wolfram Alpha and EXIF togethercan tell you whether or not that is true.
But, wait. What if the metadata has been tampered with?
Enter Izitru. - Think of Izitru as the Temperance Brennan of image forensics. It will tell you if the metadata has been manipulated with. It will also tell you if the upload location and creation location of the image corroborate.
