Was the picture more important than the article in journalism?
"What a picture can say, a book in a thousand words," "Russian writer Ivan Turgenev," Parents and Sons, "cannot say.
“If the image is equivalent to a thousand words, then that phrase applies only to the good image, that which adds to the journalistic topic or explanation provided by the words, and which does not repeat what is inside the text” (1).
“A photo has a meaningful message, just like a linguistic text .. So the recipient can perform a deep analysis of the pictures in order to extract the meaning or message to be conveyed” (2).
Historical sources attribute the beginnings of professional journalistic photography to the work of a number of photographers in the mid-nineteenth century, most notably the American Matthew Brady, dubbed the father of photojournalism (1823-1899). Brady's depictions of the American Civil War attracted attention from the horrors the battlefield was witnessing, and pictures of soldiers in deplorable situations between a dead and wounded (3).
Because of the importance of the image, several forms of related journalistic applications have been named after her, and so-called “Photo Journalism”, “Pictorial Journalism” or “Photographic Journalism” appeared.
Photo from the Battle of Chancellorsville that occurred in the 1863 American Civil War, by Matthew Brady, whose photos attracted attention from the horrors the battlefield was witnessing.
Image properties
Characteristics of the images in terms of form: they are meant to be the characteristics in which the shape is in the service of news material, the most prominent of which are:
1- The appropriate size: the image should not be very small, and to the extent that it does not attract attention to it, and the reader passes on it without stopping at it, because the small size makes the reader uninformed of its details, in addition to that the small size negatively affects the newspaper directors, which leads to Not giving the accompanying news material appropriate spatial importance to it. Also, the appropriate size does not mean that the image accompanying the topic or report is large or very large, to the extent that it can give an impression that is not commensurate with the importance of the report, or that it is crowded with insignificant details, or that its details are not clear.
2- Clarity: The image should be clear in all its aspects, dimensions and details. This clarity is commensurate with its reasonable size and the degree of its importance.
3- Diversity: In the sense that the sizes of the news images accompanying the news materials and the areas they occupy on the pages vary, and they can also vary in terms of color or black and white (4).
- Image properties in terms of content: that is, they are distinguished by the following:
To be closely and closely related to the event, which occurred with all its details, people and results recorded by the camera.
Be in the rank of document attesting to the confirmation of the authenticity and occurrence of the news .
There are a number of functions specific to the image, which we summarize in the following:
Cognitive visual function: That is, it alerts the newspaper reader or site visitor to a specific journalistic topic, as the image - as a prominent component - attracts the eye directly to the journalistic material.
Topographic function: That is, the image represents - in addition to titles, text and other forms - an important element of the page building, whether in the newspaper or the website, then it is a balance and a component of diversity.
Communicative function: That is, the image performs a complementary and complementary communication function to the text by containing what may be considered information.
In the time of the Internet
This is about the image and the strength of its general impact, and its influence in the press, which is the largest and most informative.
The importance of the image in Internet journalism - as in the printed press - comes from considering it a prominent element that attracts the attention of the reader or site visitor and is located before the text. Therefore, the space under it must be exploited in the best exploitation, so that the appropriate comment is written on it. Because the Internet visitor does not read the text word for word, but rather searches for the prominent elements within it as indicated by studies, the comment on the image must include the information or information that is intended to be presented in the specific news or press topic.
