Mickey H. Osterreicher is an award-winning photojournalist with over forty years' experience in print and broadcast. He currently serves as general councel to the NPPA, and is one of the founding members of Writing with Light. In this interview we talk about the threat of generative AI, authenticity in visual storytelling, and much more.
First of all, thank you for being here Mickey. Could you start off by telling me about yourself and your work?
Sure. I am the general counsel of the National Press Photographers Association. I am of counsel to Finnerty, Osterreicher and Abdulla, here in Buffalo, New York. I was a photojournalist in both print and broadcast for over 40 years and then went back to law school. As general counsel of the National Press Photographers, which has been around since 1946, and is the ”Voice of Visual Journalists,” I deal with First Amendment rights for journalists, copyright for journalists, and use of drones for news gatherings. I deal with a wide variety of subjects, most recently with the challenges of generative AI. This led me to work with Fred Ritchin, Brian Palmer, and a number of other people, in putting together Writing with Light, where we are talking about the importance of visual journalism and the problems that have been created by generative AI. If anything, it truly has been a “disruptor”, in terms of visual literacy.
I am wondering, since you are one of the founding members of Writing with Light, do you feel, with everything going on in the world, amidst all the technological and world developments, that it is becoming increasingly urgent to shed light on these problems?
Absolutely. That sense of urgency was one of the reasons that we came together. We had dealt with other issues over the years, but this one seemed to be just moving at an exponential rate. Especially now with the protests that we have seen, over what is going on in Gaza, with the elections coming up in the United States, the issue of truthful visual journalism is one that is truly crucial. I think it is just so important, because right now, with generative AI, we have the worst of both worlds. We have people that no matter how much you try to tell and inform them that an image was not created by a person with a camera or taken at a real place, even if it has a big watermark across the picture that says AI, they still do not get it. The flip side of it is that you have compelling visual images made by visual journalists, who have risked their health and safety, and sometimes given their lives to make these pictures, and now that you have generative AI that is capable of making similar images, you have people who dismissed anything they did not like as “fake news” armed with a new weapon to make that claim.
People in my generation grew up thinking two things. One, do not believe everything you read. And two, seeing is believing. Seeing is believing is not so true anymore. And it is really unfortunate when you see a truly compelling image that was taken and disseminated to have the impact of telling a story, an important story, and then having people genuinely question it; even I look at images sometimes with a certain eye now, it is like “okay, is this too good to be true? Is it a real image?”. And obviously, I have not gotten anywhere near the point where other people have who just say that an image is fake when indeed it is real.
What especially concerns me about AI, I guess you could say as a citizen of the world, is the unprecedented rate at which it is developing. If I see what is possible nowadays, it is becoming almost indistinguishable of what is real. To emphasize why the authenticity of a photograph is just so important, I am wondering if you could elaborate on the historical importance of photojournalism?
I guess I would go back to the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words”. No matter how much you describe an event to people, it certainly does not convey the same thing as a picture. One of the examples I think of all the time is Nick Ut, who is a member of the National Press Photographers Association. He took a picture, when he was working for the Associated Press back in the 1970s, of a young girl running down a road in Vietnam. Her clothes had been completely burned off her body from a napalm strike on her village. That image not only won the Pulitzer Prize for that year, but it was on almost every front page of every newspaper in the world. It was one of those images, along with so many others, that were taken by photographers who went to Vietnam and risked their lives to cover the war. Many of whom, I believe there were over 50, lost their lives covering that war. That image was one of the images that changed the course of the way the United States government pursued the war; it ultimately led to the U.S. leaving Vietnam.
I think of other images from the Civil Rights Movement, of protesters being sprayed forcefully with fire hoses and being attacked by dogs. More recently we are seeing the demonstrations, think of the Black Lives Matter protests and the protests for Gaza. The reporters can write all they want, but the pictures really tell the story. And I think it is clear to everybody when you go online, what drives page views? It is Images. People do not stop to read a full story, they stop when they see a photo. So, having those images be truthful is very important.
That societal relevance of photography should always be taken into consideration. That is why I want to take it back to the times we live in now. I imagine many people must feel as if the world appears to be on fire, and the ability to capture that fire and give a voice to people who otherwise wouldn't have their voice be heard, is something so important that should not be forgotten or underestimated. Can you touch on the importance of photojournalism in this day and age?
I think it is more important now than ever. Again, I will refer back to what is happening in Gaza. Unfortunately, we are not seeing that many images on the ground. Most of the Western news media have no photographers there, and they are relying on independent contractors that are there in Gaza. It is just so important to be able to verify the authenticity of the images themselves, making sure they are not manipulated. The whole idea of being a journalist is to be as objective as you can, and not having people not necessarily knowing who you're relying on for those images. I mean, many news organizations do, and they've had long relationships with the people that are there, but everybody seems to be very desperate to see really compelling images made.
Unfortunately, because there was a lack of images, we saw a number of organizations putting up generative AI images. Organizations that either did not have a budget to send somebody, and did not want to risk the health and safety of their employees or freelancers. So, even if you say “photo illustration”, even if you tell somebody that this image was not taken by a photographer who was at a certain time and place of an event, you still have people believing it. This dilutes the real photojournalism that is done. Again, that is to say nothing of pictures being used out of context. We have seen images of people grieving over a long row of bodies wrapped in burlap, where the caption then says “victims of an airstrike”. Yet, maybe when you are able to dig further and do some research, it turns out that those are really victims of an earthquake on the other side of the world, but the image is being used for a completely different purpose.
There are just so many events that need to be documented in the way that visual journalists have documented them since the camera was first invented. When Mathew Brady took big cameras in a covered wagon to go out and photograph the Civil War, it was the first time anyone had seen what a war looked like in pictures, it was not just reading press reports, it was actually being seen for themselves. We saw that certainly during the Second World War, but really even more in Vietnam. When cameras got small enough it was a whole lot easier to cover things rather than carrying big and cumbersome cameras. Again, think about another Pulitzer Prize winning photo taken by Joe Rosenthal of the flag being raised at Iwo Jima. That is another iconic image from the Second World War. You could write a whole book describing that image, but it is still not the same as seeing it.
So, especially in a world that seems dominated with fake news, authenticity in photography can give that much needed verification, making sure that stories and events are not misused or misconstrued. We could then argue that this is only becoming more and more important with time.
Yet the flip side of that is, as it is getting more and more important to be able to have these truthful images, we are also seeing hundreds of millions of images uploaded on the internet every day. That can kind of dilute the importance of it. We have seen newspapers going out of business, photo staffs being cut entirely. For example, the New York Daily News does not have a photo staff anymore, they use freelancers. Sports Illustrated, which is a magazine all about sports images, does not have a photo staff anymore. There is just so much user generated content out there, there are so many images out there, that it is so important to have visual literacy, to have people understand what they are looking at. Just as with reading, where people are being told not to believe everything they read, and to think critically and check sources, the same now needs to be done when seeing images, and that is unfortunate. It would be nice if you saw something and could believe that what you saw actually happened. Unfortunately, that is not true anymore. All of us worry, as we get into this presidential election further, that we are going to see more and more deepfakes. Now, with generative AI, you can still kind of figure out that it is fake, but that is going to get better and soon it is going to be really, really difficult, if not impossible, to figure out what is real and what is fake. The same thing is true with deepfake videos that are able to synthesize somebody's voice. Again, this is going to be a huge disruptor to the reliable information needed in a democracy.
Do you then feel that these platforms, especially these so called “social platforms”, that seem to have a huge impact on the media that people consume, should take responsibility? That it is their duty to let people know, whether it is through an icon or something else, that an image is AI generated, edited or simply not authentic?
Absolutely. They have made billions and billions of dollars off of what they describe as “content”. Obviously, when a visual journalist goes out and risks their life to make an image, it is something more than content. Nonetheless, these platforms have made all that money and continue to make that money, and for the most part, all that they are interested in doing is making money. Until they are actually held accountable in either an ethical, social, or legal way, they continue to do what they do, because they can and they want to.
Images themselves contain metadata information. This could be information about who took the picture and when it was taken. But over the years, social media has stripped out that metadata. That was done to speed things up and to make it this frictionless system of people being able to click and get to see whatever they want instantly. A few milliseconds later would still be instantly, but not instantly enough for the platform. So, trying to get them to not strip out the metadata, and trying to get them to moderate what is posted on the platforms is crucial. Yet, what we are seeing is that they are all embracing AI. There is a place for AI; in searches and in a lot of the cameras that we use. When we use our iPhones, there is a lot of artificial intelligence going on in there to make this little tiny camera create these gorgeous images. That is not the kind of AI that we are talking about here. We are talking about the kind of AI where you type in a few verbal written prompts and get to create a picture, a picture that has been based upon all of these other images that have been ingested and scraped and sucked in like a huge vacuum cleaner. I mean, vacuum cleaner does not even come close to describing the amount of intake that these companies have done. So now we are going to a question of copyright, “I did not give you permission to take and ingest my picture to train it”. You have one side of that, which is a huge battle. And then the other side of that is, at least in the United States, images that are created by generative AI are not allowed federal copyright registration because they were not created by a human being.
You just briefly touched upon copyright in the digital age, and we already concisely discussed disinformation and the rise of AI. Could we say that these issues are all part of the same problem?
Yes, in certain ways. It is not really different sides of a coin, because in this case, it is not just two sides, it is multifaceted. There are so many things to look at when you are talking about this. It is not just the use or the misuse, the information or the disinformation, the intellectual property rights of the people whose images are being used or what intellectual property rights might be vested in the images that are going to be created. It is something the courts are obviously struggling with.
In the late eighteen-hundreds, when George Eastman invented the Brownie and started the Kodak company, it was the first time that somebody could buy a camera that they could hold in their hand; it was not some big view camera that was hundreds of pounds and needed a tripod. Now you could actually go out in the street and take pictures. There was this hue and cry by the public of “oh my God, the right to privacy as we know it is over”. A few years later, Louis Brandeis, who was a Harvard law student back then, later to become a Supreme Court Justice in the United States Supreme Court, wrote a treatise called The Right to Privacy. If you read it, you would think that he was writing about today because he talks about the nosy neighbors and the snooping press. So, certain things have not changed. Images have always been able to be manipulated, but you could see when they were, and it was a really long and tedious process, and no matter what you did, they looked phony. That is not true anymore, and that is really a problem which relates back to the whole idea of visual literacy.
How do you then see the future of nonfiction photography evolving?
I truly worry about it. I worry about it because I am not so sure that other than people like you and myself and Fred, and others who have been both journalists and professional photographers, photojournalists, and visual journalists, actually care about all the things that we are talking about. They just want to see pretty pictures. They want to see pictures that might tell a story. Might not tell a story. It could be a fictional story, it could be a nonfictional story. Again, that is the whole idea. If you write a fictional story, people need to understand that it did not happen. It might be from my life experiences, it might be from something I saw, but I made it up. As opposed to nonfiction, which is like a newspaper. What is in there is supposed to be relating to what actually happened, either by the journalist gathering facts or being there as a witness themselves, but not just by making it up. We have seen journalists who made up quotes or made up subjects that they interviewed. Even though it was supposed to be a factual story, it was somewhat a work of fiction. They got fired because that is not what journalists and reporters are supposed to do. It should be the same for photographs, except that it is so easy to do now, and it is getting harder and harder to recognize. Even if you put an icon on there, it is almost like warfare. You develop this thing to try and help people, and then somebody just figures out how to counterfeit that icon and sticks it on a generative AI image. If it could be counterfeited in some way it is only going to create more disinformation, more confusion: “it had that thing on it, so it must be real?”. Then it turns out it isn't.
Frankly, all these developments are extremely worrisome.
Yes, I mean, it is more than worrisome, this is a nightmare. It is truly a nightmare. I have grandchildren and I look at them and think about what the world is going to be like for them. Are they going to be able to have a life? Obviously there is more to life than just images, but it is kind of the tip of the iceberg because it is part of information, misinformation and disinformation, that whole disruptive process. Do you have a democracy? Can you have a democracy? Can you have free elections if people are going to the polls relying on the information that they have received, the images that they have seen? And yet a good portion of those are lies. Then what do we have?
I do like to believe that people would care about these issues if only they were aware of the importance of it. That is where I think many of the difficulties lay. It is really hard in this day and age to become aware of something without there immediately being something or someone that argues the complete opposite. I guess it is really hard for people to navigate their way online, what is reliable and what is not?
I think you touch on a really important point there. It seems to me that people are in their own echo chambers. They only want to read and look at what reinforces what they already believe. If they happen to see or read something else, they are very likely to dismiss it rather than being open to new ideas, new concepts, and critical thinking. We have seen this happen time and time again over the centuries, where people are provided propaganda and they buy into it. Fortunately, in the past, eventually the truth prevailed. Now we are in an age where there is so much disinformation out there, at a level that no human has ever seen before. Trying to overcome that is a huge challenge, if not impossible. We shall see whether the truth prevails or whether it just all falls apart.
What is also worrisome is that that this mixture of information and disinformation makes it feel as if people do not want to engage in dialogue anymore. It is either one of two sides, no room for middle ground, and no desire to hear and understand each other's point of view. Which reminds me of a question I had in mind, because I did some research and, correct me if I am wrong, but you have been a uniformed reserve deputy sheriff since 1976?
Correct.
An Interview with Mickey Osterreicher
Your experience in law and photojournalism, alongside being a reserve deputy sheriff, must offer you a unique perspective on rights and responsibilities. Could you elaborate on the significance of this? Being able to see contrasting points of views, and being able to look beyond your own perspective, so to speak?
Absolutely. The fact that I wear these three hats, having been a visual journalist, being a First Amendment lawyer, and having been in law enforcement for so long, has provided me this unique perspective. Over the years, I spent a great deal of my time training journalists about what their rights are, the right to photograph, the right to record, copyright, and more. I soon came to realize that journalists and citizens often know what their rights are. So about 15 years ago I started to think that it would be more helpful to train the police about the first Amendment rights of citizens and journalists. I have been doing it for quite a while now. I have done the training in preparation for the 2012 Democratic and Republican national conventions. I did it again in 2016. I did it in 2020, even though the conventions never really took place. I have trained law enforcement and police departments around the country. Large associations like the International Association of Chiefs of Police had a committee, Public Recording of Police, and I was on that committee and helped develop guidelines and training for police officers. I have done that, and I still continue to do it. When I talk to police officers, I do it with pictures. The pictures we talked about, Nick Ut's picture, the Civil Rights pictures, all kinds of other images. I use those iconic and compelling images, among other things, to help train officers. I am waiting for the day to come until somebody says “no, that is not real”. Yes, it is. If they do not want to believe it, I could tell them it is real until I am blue in the face. When people are entrenched in their own side, instead of having conversations, they have arguments.
So yes, it gives me a unique perspective. Being a lawyer, a journalist, and having the credibility of the law enforcement due to my involvement in it, has allowed me to do the trainings that I have been doing around the country. They give me the benefit of the doubt. I will walk into a room and I love looking at the body language of the officers, sitting with their arms folded, glaring at me with a look on their face like “who is this guy?”, “why am I going to waste my time here?”. Then afterwards, when they could leave to either go home or go back out, they will all come up and ask me more questions. That is why I love the engagement of doing it in person. We can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way, and that is what I tell them. You can listen to what I am telling you and think critically for yourself. You do not have to take everything I say, but think about it and look into it. Or you can do it the hard way, where you get sued. This, unfortunately, does not cost the police officers anything. It does not cost their department anything. It costs the taxpayers millions and millions of dollars to settle these civil rights lawsuits against them. We just settled one in New York after three years. Yet, the other day we had two other photographers in New York taken into custody. One woman was knocked to the ground, her equipment was broken and she was zip tied and taken off the street for hours. They could not shoot any more pictures. They could not transmit the pictures they had already taken. Then, after four hours, they let them go. They did not charge them with anything. I call it “catch and release”. It is what you are supposed to do with fish, not what you are supposed to do with journalists. I could spend 300 lifetimes trying to train people, and it still would only make a drop in the bucket. We asked the New York Police Department to change their policies and they agreed to it, yet we are still seeing this happen. It is kind of like we have said throughout this conversation, everything is interconnected.
Not to deviate all too much from the topic at hand, but you just mentioned that you train the police force on the First Amendment rights. This sounds like a good thing in and of itself. Yet, and perhaps it has to do with my perspective being that of someone who is not a U.S. citizen, it sounds problematic to me that this should even be necessary, that the police force does not know the rights of the people they are facing.
It is. I totally agree with you. During this last lawsuit that I just mentioned in New York, we took depositions where you sit down and have to answer questions under oath. We would ask them questions about the First Amendment, from patrol officers up through deputy commissioners. The answers that we got were so troubling. If they know there is a First Amendment, they are not really sure what it says, and they are even less sure of what it stands for. And they are the ones that are there to enforce the law. It is very troubling.
Well, we can hope for change. Change always starts small.
Exactly.
On the Writing with Light website there is already a lot of information available. There are resources, from AI detection tools to a bibliography, and more. It is a great place to start for anyone that wants to get informed and read up on these topics. However, I am wondering, for the many people out there that want to learn and create change but do not know how to propel or instigate this desire, would you have any other advice?
Yes. The Internet is an amazing thing. You pretty much can ask any question you want and get an answer. Again, it is the good side and the bad side. Everything has that duality.
You also need to interact with more people. I think a lot of people interact mainly with other like-minded people. And, as we said before, reinforcing whatever their belief system is and not challenging that. That is why we created Writing with Light. That is why the National Press Photographers Association has a website with all kinds of information and resources. The Society of Professional Journalists is another huge organization. There are all kinds of organizations dealing with these issues.
If you are in school and you are interested in photography, then speak to your professors, ask questions, try and get mentorship. You have to be literate. You have to know what you are talking about. The only way that you are going to know what you are talking about is by putting in the work. You have to put yourself out there: network, get resources, read, look at images. There is just so much out there in the world. That is why we started Writing with Light, that is why I am having this conversation with you; we are doing this to get the word out to people. Take a moment from your crazy day to think about these things, and once you start thinking about them, learn more about them and become literate, because this is just so critical.
It definitely is. When it comes down to it, change can only happen in a community. Of course people can change things on an individual level, but real change happens when there is a collective effort. In that regard, when you look at the current state of the world, do you see those sparks of hope that give you the idea that maybe there will be the change that is needed? Maybe there is hope after all?
I always am hopeful. I am one of those people that expects the worst and hopes for the best. There are always these moments of hope, and not just a little bit of it. Every generation comes along and the older folks worry about the next generation. I am sure my parents looked at me that way; we were out there protesting the war in Vietnam, there was Rock and Roll, there were drugs. The world survived and hopefully it got a little better. There were challenges then, there are challenges now. So I like to remain hopeful, but it is not just going to happen by itself. If people are apathetic, if they do not take personal accountability, then all of these things that we worry about can come to fruition. There are so many other things going on in the world that are all coming together in this perfect storm, we do not have time to just go “yeah, well, you know, we'll get to it”. We are really trying to do something, which is why Writing with Light was created. I think people need to realize that you cannot just sit back and hope for the best, you have to do something about it.
I think knowledge is a really big part in all of that. Also the willingness to gain that knowledge.
Absolutely. It is people that are illiterate in so many ways that are led down the road. It is a real challenge, especially now with the Internet where people can get information, misinformation and disinformation, and they have to choose which one they want to rely on. Unfortunately, we are seeing far too many people relying on the misinformation and disinformation, either because they do not know any better or because they bought into it already, which goes back to the principle of “let's read this to reinforce what I already thought”.
Amidst all of that, what concerns me as well is the rapid pace of it all. It feels as if, especially when it comes to law and legislation, we are always two steps behind.
The law is always lagging behind technology. The problem, as I see it nowadays, is the fact that technology is increasing at this exponential rate. Legislatively, obviously I cannot speak for the rest of the world, but in the United States we have got a congress and an executive branch who cannot agree as to whether it is daytime or nighttime, let alone do something that will pass meaningful legislation and enact it and put it into play. That is a real problem.
Yes it is. We have been touching on some very heavy topics. Interesting but heavy. The final question is intended to end on a lighter note, but before we get to that, is there anything you still want to mention in relation to Writing with Light?
What we are hoping to do is spread the word. The more people that read it, share it and challenge it, all the better. We are open to it. It is just a small group of people, so we would very much like it and appreciate it if people would try their best to inform themselves as to the importance of these issues.
Do you remember the moment that made you passionate about photography? The moment that made you fall in love with photography?
As a kid I was almost never in photographs because I was always the one taking them. This is back when we had some of the early Kodak products with the big flash on it, like a Brownie Starmite. I loved having Polaroids as well because it allowed you to see the picture right away. It was not a conscious thing, I just found myself liking it. I loved to look at pictures. I grew up looking at the New York Daily News, which was a newspaper full of pictures, and I grew up reading Life Magazine. I just thought it was fascinating. When I started college I worked a summer job at a small company, the gentleman there was a very avid amateur photographer and he took me to this camera store in New York City. Here I bought my first 35-millimeter camera. I think I fell in love by taking pictures, because before I had just seen the ones in newspapers and magazines, along with the snapshots that I took of my family, but I never really took any other kind of pictures. Not long after, I started shooting pictures of everything around campus. I ended up working for the school newspaper and I became the photo editor. It was a very interesting time with the Vietnam War, with all the protests going on, with all the music. I made a picture of Roberta Flack at a concert once, it was one of the first pictures of mine the school newspaper used. As a matter of fact, she came back to Buffalo and saw the picture; they were even considering using it for an album cover, which was amazing to me. After that I ended up covering protests. I went to Washington and covered the Vietnam War protests there in 1972. I love making pictures. I love telling stories. The thing I love most about photography is that it allowed me to think, but it also allowed me to work with my hands. I do not think I would want to sit at a desk all day long, although now, as a lawyer, I do that more than I would like.
After the newspaper that I worked for went out of business, I went to television. I loved television almost even more than shooting stills because it was really a collaborative effort. With a reporter in newspapers, in publications, it is like this antagonistic relationship. Either my photo ran bigger and their story ran shorter, or their story ran longer and my picture was smaller. Whereas in television it was all very complimentary. A reporter could have the best story in the world, but if they did not have good visuals it was not television anymore.
Now, as a lawyer for journalists, I love representing them and upholding their First Amendment rights. I think one of the things that people do not realize is that, even though freedom of the press is in the First Amendment, it is put there not so much to protect the rights of the press, but to protect the rights of the public to receive information. That is why they have gotten this special designation that no other profession has been given, because they are the ones that are informing the public. They need to be responsible. That is something I think most people do not realize about what the First Amendment stands for. I see people who think freedom of the press means that they get to do whatever they want. No, they do not get to do whatever they want.
I am just as passionate now as I was when I was younger. When I finally got to the point when I was getting a bit older, I thought “what might I enjoy as much as being a visual journalist?”. I thought that being a lawyer and representing journalists was a way to give back to a profession where I never felt like I worked a day in my life. That is why I am as passionate as I am about all of this.
Writing with Light is a movement to support nonfiction photography in which the integrity of the photographer, as the author of the image, is considered to be paramount in establishing the photograph’s veracity. Many resources, including a bibliography and AI detection tools, are made available for anyone interested in reading up on these matters. For more information head over to wwlight.org, and make sure to spread the word.