Metawatchby IPTC

Metawatch

Metawatch tracks how often major news publishers preserve embedded photo metadata (Exif, IPTC Photo Metadata (in both original IIM format and newer XMP format), and C2PA) on the images they publish. We crawl a curated list of publishers monthly and score the photographs they serve.

Latest run2026-10-01 Sites crawled425 Countries122
Images analysed6,580
Mean IPTC score5.96
% with any IPTC11% % with C2PA0.5%

Trends across runs

Each point is one crawl run. Note that the earlier points are slightly skewed, as we crawled fewer publishers in those runs. See the dataset page for the underlying parquet files.

Mean IPTC score

0.025.050.075.0100.02026-06-032026-07-012026-08-012026-09-012026-10-016.25.56.06.26.0Score (0–100)

% of images with any IPTC

0.0%25.0%50.0%75.0%100.0%2026-06-032026-07-012026-08-012026-09-012026-10-0111.2%11.4%10.8%10.7%11.0%% with IPTC

How the scores are distributed

Every publisher we scored, ranked from best to worst. Any average describes almost nobody here: a small group embed metadata thoroughly, and 321 of 425 publishers embed none we can find at all. The faint line is the previous run.

By publisher

0255075100321 publishers score exactly zero321 publishers at zeromean 5.53 per publisher — 69 above ithighest scoringlowest IPTC score
Each line is one of 425 publishers2026-09-01104 carry metadata · 321 carry none

By country

025507510056 countries score exactly zero56 countries at zeromean 3.81 per country — 35 above ithighest scoringlowest IPTC score
Each line is one of 120 countries2026-09-0164 carry metadata · 56 carry none

Covers every publisher that returned at least one image. Publishers we reached but got no photograph from are listed separately as no_images rather than scored zero, since that is usually our blind spot rather than their practice. Country scores are the mean of that country’s publishers. The dashed line averages these scores one publisher at a time, so it sits a little below the 5.96 headline figure, which weights every image equally instead.

Top sites

Ranked by mean IPTC score across all sampled images in the latest crawl. Only publishers with at least 10 images sampled are ranked, so a couple of lucky photographs can't put a site at the top.

#SiteCountryCategoryImages% with IPTCScore
1 taz Germany newspaper 20 95% 93.8
2 Süddeutsche Zeitung Germany newspaper 15 93.3% 91.7
3 Politico United States online 18 94.4% 84.7
4 The Japan Times Japan newspaper 20 90% 78.8
5 PBS NewsHour United States broadcaster 20 90% 77.5
6 Les Echos France newspaper 20 80% 72.5
7 NPR United States broadcaster 10 90% 70.0
8 Le Figaro France newspaper 18 77.8% 66.7
9= Prensa Libre Guatemala newspaper 20 90% 62.5
9= Nederlands Dagblad Netherlands newspaper 20 100% 62.5

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Top countries

Country mean is the average of site scores, equal-weighted per site. Only countries with more than 3 publishers scored are ranked, so a single publisher can't put a country at the top. Movement is against the 2026-09-01 run.

#CountrySites scoredMean scoreSince last run
1 France 10 19.8
2 Germany 18 19.2
3 Taiwan 4 18.8
4 United States 21 18.1
5 Sweden 5 17.6
6 Norway 6 15.7
7 Netherlands 4 15.6
8 Austria 7 10.5
9 Portugal 4 7.5
10 Japan 18 6.9

How this run’s top 10 ranked in earlier runs

2026-06-032026-07-012026-08-012026-09-012026-10-01France: #1 of 26 on 2026-06-03 — score 22.8, 10 publishersFrance: #1 of 33 on 2026-07-01 — score 28.8, 11 publishersFrance: #1 of 34 on 2026-08-01 — score 21.7, 10 publishersFrance: #2 of 36 on 2026-09-01 — score 19.3, 10 publishersFrance: #1 of 34 on 2026-10-01 — score 19.8, 10 publishersFrance#1FranceGermany: #4 of 26 on 2026-06-03 — score 16.9, 19 publishersGermany: #4 of 33 on 2026-07-01 — score 16.8, 18 publishersGermany: #2 of 34 on 2026-08-01 — score 19.4, 18 publishersGermany: #4 of 36 on 2026-09-01 — score 18.3, 18 publishersGermany: #2 of 34 on 2026-10-01 — score 19.2, 18 publishersGermany#2GermanyTaiwan: #16 of 33 on 2026-07-01 — score 2.8, 4 publishersTaiwan: #14 of 34 on 2026-08-01 — score 3.8, 4 publishersTaiwan: #15 of 36 on 2026-09-01 — score 3.8, 4 publishersTaiwan: #3 of 34 on 2026-10-01 — score 18.8, 4 publishers#3TaiwanUnited States: #3 of 26 on 2026-06-03 — score 18.4, 23 publishersUnited States: #3 of 33 on 2026-07-01 — score 17.9, 23 publishersUnited States: #3 of 34 on 2026-08-01 — score 17.8, 23 publishersUnited States: #1 of 36 on 2026-09-01 — score 23.1, 23 publishersUnited States: #4 of 34 on 2026-10-01 — score 18.1, 21 publishersUnited States#4United StatesSweden: #5 of 26 on 2026-06-03 — score 16.2, 5 publishersSweden: #2 of 33 on 2026-07-01 — score 20.1, 5 publishersSweden: #6 of 34 on 2026-08-01 — score 14.4, 5 publishersSweden: #3 of 36 on 2026-09-01 — score 19.0, 5 publishersSweden: #5 of 34 on 2026-10-01 — score 17.6, 5 publishersSweden#5SwedenNorway: #6 of 26 on 2026-06-03 — score 14.6, 6 publishersNorway: #5 of 33 on 2026-07-01 — score 16.0, 6 publishersNorway: #8 of 34 on 2026-08-01 — score 13.1, 6 publishersNorway: #5 of 36 on 2026-09-01 — score 17.1, 6 publishersNorway: #6 of 34 on 2026-10-01 — score 15.7, 6 publishersNorway#6NorwayNetherlands: #2 of 26 on 2026-06-03 — score 18.8, 4 publishersNetherlands: #6 of 33 on 2026-07-01 — score 15.0, 4 publishersNetherlands: #5 of 34 on 2026-08-01 — score 14.7, 4 publishersNetherlands: #7 of 36 on 2026-09-01 — score 16.3, 4 publishersNetherlands: #7 of 34 on 2026-10-01 — score 15.6, 4 publishersNetherlands#7NetherlandsAustria: #11 of 26 on 2026-06-03 — score 8.2, 9 publishersAustria: #9 of 33 on 2026-07-01 — score 11.3, 9 publishersAustria: #10 of 34 on 2026-08-01 — score 9.7, 9 publishersAustria: #10 of 36 on 2026-09-01 — score 10.1, 9 publishersAustria: #8 of 34 on 2026-10-01 — score 10.5, 7 publishersAustria#8AustriaPortugal: #7 of 26 on 2026-06-03 — score 13.0, 5 publishersPortugal: #10 of 33 on 2026-07-01 — score 10.7, 4 publishersPortugal: #4 of 34 on 2026-08-01 — score 16.6, 4 publishersPortugal: #6 of 36 on 2026-09-01 — score 16.9, 4 publishersPortugal: #9 of 34 on 2026-10-01 — score 7.5, 4 publishersPortugal#9PortugalJapan: #12 of 26 on 2026-06-03 — score 4.4, 18 publishersJapan: #11 of 33 on 2026-07-01 — score 8.8, 18 publishersJapan: #11 of 34 on 2026-08-01 — score 8.5, 18 publishersJapan: #12 of 36 on 2026-09-01 — score 8.2, 18 publishersJapan: #10 of 34 on 2026-10-01 — score 6.9, 18 publishersJapan#10Japan

A break in a line means that country wasn’t ranked that run — usually because too few of its publishers returned images. Earlier runs ranked fewer countries, as we tracked fewer publishers. Hover a point for its score.

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