Now that there are so many mobile phones with cameras news images are increasingly being generated by amateurs. A Dutch newspaper ran a picture of dead filmmaker and columnist Theo van Gogh on its front page recently. Passerby Aron Boskma took a picture with his cell phone at the scene of the crime in Amsterdam. News photographers arrived only after the body had been covered, leaving Boskma’s picture the only one showing knives plunged into Van Gogh’s body.
Newspapers have published amateur photographs for a long time, but previously the practice was restricted to people who just happened to be carrying a camera. Interestingly this latest development can actually create news. “This picture was the story. There was a discussion if we should use it, but everyone who would have had this picture would have published it,” Telegraaf pictures editor Peter Schoonen said. It could also be a good way to get back the cost of the phone…
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