6 ms·
The image of another tower used in the article is pretty confusing. This <https://apnews.com/article/radio-station-tower-stolen-am-fm-alabama-d16a57daeaf10f473d
by sh79 3y ago
The image of another tower used in the article is pretty confusing. This <https://apnews.com/article/radio-station-tower-stolen-am-fm-alabama-d16a57daeaf10f473df39d628e1fe388 https://apnews.com/article/radio-station-tower-stolen-am-fm-...> one apparently includes the real one, which I think makes the theft appear more within the realms of possibility.
- dang 3y ago("the article" referred to by parent is https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/08/alabama-200ft-radio-tower-stolen https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/08/alabama-200f.... We merged https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39311852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39311852 hither)
- flaminHotSpeedo 3y agoThe caption is infuriating: > "A different radio tower, which has presumably not been stolen"
- cutemonster 3y agoI think it's a good caption? I also think it's probably not been stolen
- brookst 3y agoWhy is that infuriating? It’s accurate, acknowledges the suboptimal photo choice (or availability), and has some humor. As an editor, given this as your only photo choice, what caption would you write?
- 1over137 3y ago>As an editor, given this as your only photo choice, what caption would you write? I would just not include a photo at all.
- fbdab103 3y agoAs a reader, I want to have a sense of scale of the tower.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoYes, and what the wrong photo does is fuck with your sense of scale entirely. The included tower is more of an industrial installation; the real tower is more like something a couple drunk metal thieves could salvage in an evening.
- 1over137 3y agoOf course. The scale is 200 feet, as described in the article. Maybe you want it in football fields?
- dredmorbius 3y agoSmoots.
- fbdab103 3y agoA picture is worth a thousand words. 200 feet tall and how thick are the bars? How many? Could I do it with a hacksaw or would I need a more intense torch? I want to visualize perpetrating the crime.
- ssl-3 3y agoIt's hard to correctly visualize something when the provided visuals are abhorrently wrong, though, isn't it? There's a world of difference between an old free-standing Long Lines tower and the straight-and-narrow guyed tower that actually disappeared, just as there is also a world of difference stature between Roseanne Barr and Gwen Stefani. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but each of those thousand words has negative value when they're simply wrong.
- flaminHotSpeedo 3y agoAnd that photo totally fails to convey the scale. Pictures of the actual radio tower were posted elsewhere here and it's way smaller.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoIt's mocking. It's like a subtle middle finger to those who suspected something here makes no sense and decided to look more carefully at the photo. Like others said, I too would choose to not include any photo at all - there's no way to frame inclusion of a wrong photo as something good.
- wly_cdgr 3y agoQuestion is moot because I would just do my job to the minimum acceptable standard of competence by sourcing a picture of the actual tower
- fbdab103 3y agoSo...a picture of some random sky? Maybe draw an outline of what the tower would look like if it were there?
- 1over137 3y ago'Artist renditions' are used for space news, criminal descriptions, etc. maybe not such a crazy idea here.
- fbdab103 3y agoSure, for high profile things. This is the daily news and a mild curiosity which is hardly worth the resources. Show a picture of a similar model tower, annotate it as such, and I have now have a sense of the difficulty in cutting it down.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoThat's the thing: you don't. The difficulty of cutting it down is what is the major difference between the real tower and the depicted one.
- dageshi 3y agoHow and where would you source it from? The tower is gone, there's likely no public domain images of it, no stock images of it, so where do you get a picture of it?
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- wly_cdgr 3y ago
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- graemep 3y agoOne of my earliest memories of something in the newspapers was, as a teenager, finding out a picture in The Guardian was of any entirely different conflict, more than a decade earlier, albeit in the same country. The media did not really care much about accuracy then, and its even worse now.
- jackfoxy 3y agoThis is more and more a problem, not just with images. Even most of the higher quality (better researched) Youtube channels are fast and loose about using irrelevant stock footage to go along with their narration. Of course the channels with AI voice-over are universally terrible at this. I know a lot of this is content creators have limited access to good visual content. A naval historiographer I follow will show, for instance, ship photos or archival video that is not exactly the ship or event he is describing. He's probably a solo creator and I'm sure constrained by archival access, and frankly time. One notable exception I have found is this channel https://www.youtube.com/@wildwestfaces https://www.youtube.com/@wildwestfaces The narration is often of first person memoirs of historic events and the images are relevant and sync well with the narration.
- sandworm101 3y ago>> A naval historiographer I follow will show, for instance, ship photos or archival video that is not exactly the ship or event he is describing. It isn't about money or resources. Even the biggest budget Hollywood productions regularly pass off incorrect ships in full understanding that most viewers cannot tell a sloop from a brig. Sometimes it is about cost or practicality, but more often it is about which ship comports with audience expectations.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoWhich, in my books, invalidates either as a learning resource. I mean, as a viewer, if I spot a naval historiographer routinely using wrong footage, then how certain can I be they're not also playing fast and loose with what they're saying? After all, the only piece of clear evidence that I have points towards them not caring. As for what "comports with audience expectations", maybe this is an extreme position, but to me, intentionally choosing something incorrect but more recognizable is gaslighting at scale - it reinforces the misconception in those already exposed, and introduces it to those new (usually young) to a topic.
- trbleclef 3y agoThe one in the article looks like a stripped down Long Lines[0] microwave tower, not anything at all like a radio broadcasting tower. [0]https://long-lines.com/ https://long-lines.com/