In October 2024, 70 people representing 30 organisations from 15 countries across four continents gathered at the BBC building in Salford to join the Origin Media Provenance Seminar.  The seminar was organised by BBC R&D with partners from Media Cluster Norway (MCN) in Bergen.

Media provenance is a way to record digitally signed information about the provenance of imagery, video and audio – information (or signals) that shows where a piece of media has come from and how it’s been edited. Like an audit trail or a history, these signals are called ‘content credentials’, and are developed as an open standard by the C2PA (Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity). Content credentials have just been selected by Time magazine as one of their ‘Best Inventions of 2024’.

Attendees came from all over the world, including the US, Japan, all over Europe, and also sub-Saharan Africa.

According to the BBC blog post:

In order for news organisations to show their consumers that they really are looking at some content from the real “BBC”, content credentials use the same technology as websites – digital certificates – to prove who signed it. The International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) has created a programme called “Origin Verified News Publishers”, which allows news organisations to register to get their identity checked. Once their ID has been verified, they can get a certificate, which gives consumers assurance that the content certifiably comes from the organisation they have chosen to trust.

For more information about the event, see the blog post on the BBC Research & Development blog.

For more information about the IPTC Origin Verified News Publishers List, please see the Media Provenance section of the IPTC website or contact the IPTC directly.