PICTURES, CAPTIONS AND THE NEWS COVENANT

For any piece of news to make sense, certain details need to be included. The reader needs to be provided with critical information to not only understand what is being reported, but also the context of what has happened. Pictures without relevant captions break this news covenant.

A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words. But keywords are needed, if the pictures appearing in the press are to be meaningful to the reader.

This is where picture captions come in.

In the stand-alone photo story above, the caption says:

'A police officer issues instructions to casual workers who were clearing debris from the site where a house under construction collapsed, injuring two people yesterday. The county inspectorate is investigating the incident.'

Quite a clumsy threading of words, but perhaps the writer was trying so hard to ensure as much information is squeezed into the available space.

We can tell what is happening, who are involved, what they are doing and also when this happened.

However, it's almost impossible to know the location, from the supplied information.

So, there's hardly any relevance in saying 'The county inspectorate is investigating the incident' if the reader is not told the exact county where the incident happened.

There ought to be something more definite, when talking about 'the county' don't you think?