It Was Bound to Happen . . . 
Wrong Satellite Images Depict North Korean Blast

Editor's Note: This article appeared at GlobalSecurity.org on April 23, 2004. It raises some interesting points and reveals the challenges faced by downstream users of imagery. It is reprinted here with permission. We appreciate the opportunity to share it with readers.

On April 22, 2004, a train crash/collision resulted in a massive explosion in the town of Ryongchon in North Korea. With existing restrictions on the "hermit kingdom," the use of satellite imagery became an obvious way to get a look at the accident site. Unfortunately, a number of glaring mistakes were made in the process.

One case was that of Britain's Independent Television News which aired a satellite image purportedly taken of the blast in the North Korean town of Ryongchon. The only problem was the image was actually taken over a year earlier during military operations in Iraq by the DigitalGlobe QuickBird satellite (Figure 1). The image was taken on April 9, 2003 and was displayed on the website as an April 2003 picture of the week. That image shows an explosion captured by satellite as it is happening in a Baghdadi neighborhood, probably from Coalition air strikes. MSNBC also had the image on its website and repeated the claim though with caution. The probability that one of the half dozen commercial imaging satellites would just happen to have its camera pointed right at the area of the blast in North Korea at the exact time it was taking place and with no forewarning is too small to calculate.

At one point, the BBC News website also featured the Baghdad image. It has since been removed (except for the one example we managed to capture...), after BBC was notified of the error, thanks to Jeff S., a GlobalSecurity.org frequent visitor who quickly spotted the resemblance with the Baghdad image. According to BBC, "We used it after it was forwarded to us as a raw image by a usually reliable security source. In this case, it seems some error has been made. We are still trying to ascertain how this happened." Once it got into circulation it was picked up in the United States by NBC and MSNBC, and used in at least two South Korean newspapers. According to a report by the Yonhap News Agency, the BBC obtained the wrong image from the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).

CBSNews.com, on the other hand, displayed imagery of Ryongchon claiming to having been taken hours after the blast and to show smoke caused by the explosion. What the image in fact shows is the town of Ryongchon which, in a black and white image, stands out against the background scenery (Figure 2).

An image posted on the Australian Herald Sun website, appears to mistake a dark area present in DigitalGlobe imagery for the area where a blaze caused by the explosion would have occurred.

How did this happen? With a few exceptions, Broadcast and Cable news organizations have used commercial satellite mostly as "eye candy" or "video B-roll" with little regard for quality control. Years ago one television producer claimed that "commercial satellite imagery would revolutionize News." Clearly the revolution has yet to materialize.

Commercial satellite imagery has much potential as a truly unique news source if its use is driven by the editorial department, and not the graphics department. Although several U.S. News organizations spent an unprecedented amount of money buying and using high resolution satellite imagery during the Iraq war, none have made anything like a long term commitment to incorporate this product into the way they operate. Every major U.S. National broadcast and cable news organization spends a great deal of time and money reporting on and tracking the weather, with in-house meteorologists, sophisticated computers to display weather data, real-time Doppler radar to predict weather events, and most importantly, a dedicated budget and long term investment to cover the weather. This is matched by outsourced contracts to specialized value-added companies to support this coverage. Not one has an in-house satellite imagery analysis shop, and no one has sustained the outsourced contractor support that was temporarily created during Major Combat Operations in early 2003. In most news organizations no one wants to pay for satellite imagery. "Is it a graphics or a special events budget item?" In most cases, neither.

Part of the problem is that news organizations are accustomed to budgeting for pictures that need no explanation beyond the caption provided by the wire service, and which require no further interpretation. Satellite imagery requires explanation and interpretation, and someone somewhere has to pay for this service. Right now, this isn't happening, so satellite imagery isn't getting used as much as it could or should, and when it does get used, too frequently it gets misused.

Until news organizations make high-resolution satellite imagery an editorial priority, and use imagery to support news gathering, silly mistakes like these will continue.

Media Use of Satellite Imagery 
Mark Brender

The first time the media used satellite imagery on a breaking news story was in the spring of 1986 when all three broadcast networks showed Landsat and SPOT images of the damaged Chernobyl nuclear reactor facility in the Soviet Union. Since then the media has used commercial satellite imagery as a tool to better tell a story and as a graphic or map to better show the viewer where the story takes place.

Throughout the late 1980s and during the next decade the media's use of commercial imagery was sporadic mainly because the imagery resolution was coarse and often it took weeks or months to obtain it. Another factor was the fact that the media did not budget for imagery and were reluctant to pay the high price for pictures that were to be used on air or in print only one time.

While the use of commercial imagery has increased, the capability of the media to interpret the imagery has not. Until the media seriously considers how to integrate commercial imagery into the news gathering process, there will  be tabloid-style imagery analysis and mistakes will be made.

No media organizations have any in-house analysts that know how to get the maximum value from the imagery. And for the most part, the artists, photo editors, and occasionally cartographers in the graphics departments are the people most interested in space-based imagery. It's rare that an editor or reporter uses imagery as an investigative tool. Other than the few "imagery activists" within the networks and at the major newspapers, senior media executives don't understand or know about commercial remote sensing capabilities. That may change when half-meter systems are launched within the next few years and the information within the image can be more easily understood without the aid of experts.

In the mid-1980s one network producer was quoted saying that space-based cameras will be as indispensable as a handheld camera or a printing press to free societies. That time is still not at hand.

In the predictions column in the Ladies Home Journal in 1900, the editors stated that "Flying machines will carry powerful telescopes that beam back to earth photographs as distinct and large as if taken from across the street." That prediction came true almost exactly 100 years later when Space Imaging launched IKONOS. But the media's use of this technology is still in its infancy.

Mark Brender is vice president of Corporate Communication at Space Imaging. Before joining the company, he worked at ABC News for 16 years.

Timeline: Media Use of Satellite Imagery

1986-1989
July 4, 1986
ABC used SPOT imagery during its New York Liberty Weekend coverage.

April 1987
ABC used SPOT imagery of the Krasnoyarsk radar facility in the Soviet Union and was able to confirm that the facility was a violation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty. ABC used the imagery as an editorial tool as well as a graphic tool. It was one of the first times that a news organization was able to independently confirm what the administration has been saying about the facility.

May 1988
ABC used SPOT imagery of Abu Musa Island in the Persian Gulf to point out suspected Silkworm missile sites. The Pentagon confirmed the story 10 days later.

January 1989 
All the broadcast networks aired SPOT imagery of a suspected chemical weapons facility near Tripoli in Libya. Shortly after the imagery aired, Libya invited journalists to visit the facility.

2001
January 2001
The New York Times published IKONOS imagery of a suspected terrorism training camp in Afghanistan.

CBS used imagery of Washington, D.C. during its coverage of the Presidential Inauguration.

ABC used imagery to show the mass and scale of the Kumba Mela religious festival in India.

April 2001
All networks and major papers used IKONOS imagery of the Navy EP-3 intelligence aircraft that was forced down and landed on a Chinese military airbase off the coast of China. IKONOS imaged the site five times and tracked the dismantling of the plane until the plane was flown back to U.S. soil in July 2001.

July 2001
NBC (and later CNN, CBS, and The Washington Post) broadcast imagery of an island in the South Pacific where investigators were searching for Amelia Earhart's lost plane.

August 2001
USA Today published an image of the CBS Survivor camp in Kenya.

September 2001
Major media around the world published IKONOS imagery of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks before and after the terrorist attack.

2002
February 2002
NBC aired imagery during its Olympic coverage including an image of the Rice-Eccles Olympic Stadium, in Salt Lake City.

May 2002
The New York Times published imagery of Israeli damage to the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank.

July 2002
The Washington Post published an IKONOS image of the Bushehr nuclear facility in Iran collected in 2001 (right).

NBC airs a QuickBird image of the U.S. buildup at an airbase in Qatar.

December 2002
USA Today published an image of Sijood Palace in Baghdad. This was the first presidential palace site inspected by the UN.

2003
February 2003
Media outlets published imagery taken by IKONOS over eastern Texas where the pieces of the Columbia Shuttle fell. 

March 2003
ABC aired QuickBird imagery of suspected nuclear sites in Iran.

2004
April 2004
Major media aired QuickBird imagery of an explosion from a train disaster in North Korea (see page 12).

May 2004
The New York Times published IKONOS and QuickBird "before-and- after" imagery of industrial parks in Iraq that have been looted. The imagery was on page one-above the fold.

Reuters provides IKONOS imagery of the new World War II Memorial to all its subscribers.

Acknowledgments
EOM acknowledges the contributions of Mark Brender and Gary Napier at Space Imaging for their help in putting together this timeline.

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