3 news outlets, same story but different pictures – the art and smarts of choosing a picture

today 3 news outlets – 2 newspapers, the philippine daily inquirer and the philippine star and the internet news outlet rapper.com carried the same news story about the assets of janet napoles in the US on their respective websites.

the story content is the same – a los angeles california official has started court proceedings to seize the assets of janet napoles in the united states worth $12.5 Million.

all three had the same news story and all three almost had the same headline with two nearly identical but each one had a different picture that accompanied the articles.

philippine daily inquirer headline : “US moves to seize Janet Lim Naples assets worth $12.5M”

philippine star headline : “US wants to seize $12.5M Naples assets”

rappler.com headline : “US wants to seize Napoles assets worth $12.5M”

aside from the very similar headlines, the interesting part are the pictures each chose to accompany the articles. the pictures they used are not exclusive, each news outlet could have used the other pictures or versions of them.

but we think the specific news outlet chose the picture they published based on the personalities of the news outlets. you can actually draw a personality sketch of the news outlets based on the picture they chose to accompany the same article.

rappler.com is the more conservative news outlet. it chose a picture of what appears to be a document that lists the assets. it is to the point but it is boring. the picture will not elicit interest and make the reader want to read the article.

read here: http://www.rappler.com/nation/99381-us-seizure-complaint-napoles-assets

 

 

the philippine star has the picture of a covered up janet napoles on her way to the court for one of the early hearings on the case. this would be more interesting than a picture of the document that rapper.com went with. this choice is factual since the article talks about the assets of janet napoles.

read here :http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2015/07/15/1477242/us-seize-12.5-m-napoles-assets

 

philippine daily inquirer goes for the readership gold on their choice of picture for the article – a posture of Janet Napoles’ young daughter Jeanne with her long legs in full display as she sits inside a car wearing a mini skirt. a picture of the long legs of a mini skirted woman is a much more interesting picture than a portion of a document, the most boring and a hooded janet napoles.

 

read here :http://globalnation.inquirer.net/126095/us-moves-to-seize-janet-lim-napoles-assets-worth-12-5m

rappler.com and the philippine star’s pictures are directly related to the news story while that of PDI was not directly but related to it. these assets are registered under the name of Jeanne but they came from the mother Janet. Jeanne does not have a job for her to be able to afford all those assets but mother Janet has her PDAF scam business to take it from.

the picture of Jeanne with her long legs shown prominently is a picture that was posted by Jeanne in her Facebook account. it could have been used by the other two news outlets.

how did PDI end choosing the sexy picture? PDI has the mentality of a tabloid. it knows how to get readership. it will use pictures that will help it get readers to  go to them. not only does PDI use provocative  pictures, they also use provocative headlines. it knows how to sell newspapers. and i must say they are very good at it.

 

the power of social media – violent man in Makati’s mono bloc incident identified

as many have been, we watched the videos of Mayor Junjun Binay supporters “defending” and assaulting policemen in horror. it was a very violent video of Binay supporters throwing mono bloc chairs at the policemen who stood firm and just covered themselves with their shields from the assault.

there was one man who stood out in that video footage. this man went at it over and over again, picking up the plastic chairs and with all his might struck the police behind their shields. if the policemen did not put up their shields, this man would have inflicted serious injuries to the policemen.

we wondered about two things – who was this man was and when will he get arrested. there were many more men who did what he did, but this man stood out.

to answer those questions, we posted this over twitter.

this man was the most violent at Makati, surely he will be arrested, right? @CIDG_PNP #Binay pic.twitter.com/3xfyys4v5z

— WAWAM (@wawam) July 1, 2015

we did not know who he was. all we got were the pictures that were being posted on social media. traditional media and social media as far as we knew were not asking the question we were asking.

we were surprised that after awhile, this post was made :

https://twitter.com/NoOtherNicky/status/616062816605188096

as far as we can tell, the man in the pictures i posted is Jose “Monoy” Lazaro. we were shocked that in just a short period of time an unidentified man in a random picture can be identified by name at twitter.

other pictures of Lazaro surfaced. he apparently has a Facebook account and voraciously posts pictures on it.  he seem to be a barangay official of Barangay Olympia.

from this experience, we made a few conclusions:

• social media, twitter in particular is very powerful – it has the ability to identify, get the actual name of people in pictures. we do not how it was done, but the experience has clearly shown it.
• being active in social media makes it easier for you to be identified by others. lazaro by the looks of it is very active in Facebook, his numerous posts in Facebook has made it easy for others to get his name and even the things he does.
• we sometimes think the internet is anonymous, it is not entirely correct in this case.
• a  public misbehavior can be attached to all your previous good behavior. for sure lazaro has been posting in Facebook to herald his good deeds. but this one misbehavior with the mono block chairs puts the rest in question.

we do not know what the action is of the police authorities on lazaro. but to us it is clear they need to take action on lazaro. letting him get away with this without any consequences will embolden others to take similar actions against the police. the police needs to assert their authority.

if the arrest is made, has social media helped the police?