The IPTC NewsCodes Working Group is pleased to announce the latest release of the IPTC NewsCodes, our set of controlled vocabularies for the news industry.

Updates this time span many vocabularies, with the biggest updates to Media Topic and Digital Source Type.

Media Topic updates

Most of the recent work has been in the politics branch.

3 new concepts: by-election, recall election, coalition building

2 retired concepts: political campaigns, church elections

4 modified concept names (in English): voting system, referendum, fundamental rights, football (yes we finally refer to the sport as “football” in en-GB and “soccer” in en-US!)

Modified concept definitions: 22 civil rights, election, voting system, intergovernmental elections, local elections, primary elections, referendum, regional elections, voting, fundamental rights, censorship and freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, human rights, football, political debates, privacy, women’s rights, breaking (breakdance)

1 hierarchy move: fundamental rights has been moved from politics to society.

Also, the Wikidata mapping URIs have all been changed to point to the http:// version of the URI instead of the https:// version. This follows the official Wikidata guidance.

See the official Media Topic vocabulary on the IPTC Controlled Vocabulary server, and an easier-to-navigate tree view. An Excel version of IPTC Media Topics is also available.

Digital Source Type updates

5 new concepts have been added:

• Multi-frame computational capture sampled from real life, intended to cover media recorded by modern cameras and smartphones that may process several captured images together to create the saved media file, without any interaction with the photographer. 
• Human-edited media, intended to replace the retired Original media with minor human edits, given that it is subjective to decide what is a “minor” edit.
• Digital creation, intended to replace the retired Digital art so that we can avoid the existential question of “what is art?”
• Screen capture, covering screenshots and screen recordings made on a device
• Composite of elements, as a generic form of the more specific “composite” terms.

2 concepts have been retired: Original media with minor human edits, and Digital art, as explained above.

8 concepts have had their names and definitions modified, while retaining the same machine-readable ID for backwards-compatibility purposes:

• Digital capture sampled from real life (ID: digitalCapture), replacing the previous name “Original digital capture sampled from real life”
• Digitised from a transparent negative (ID: negativeFilm), replacing the previous name “Digitised from a negative on film”
• Digitised from a transparent positive (ID: positiveFilm), replacing the previous name “Digitised from a positive on film”
• Digitised from a non-transparent medium (ID: print), replacing the previous name “Digitised from a print on non-transparent medium”
• Edited using Generative AI (ID: compositeWithTrainedAlgorithmicMedia), replacing the previous name “Composite with Trained algorithmic media”
• Algorithmically-altered media (ID: algorithmicallyEnhanced), replacing the previous name “Algorithmically Enhanced”
• Created using Generative AI (ID: trainedAlgorithmicMedia), replacing the previous name “Trained Algorithmic Media”
• Virtual event recording (ID: virtualRecording), replacing the previous name “Virtual recording”

Our thanks go to IPTC representatives and experts from Partnership on AI, Google, Adobe, C2PA, CIPA and many others on making these updates to our vocabulary, which is now widely used to identify Generative AI content.

Updates to other NewsCodes vocabularies

Alternative  Identifier Role (altidrole)

• Vocabulary’s name changed to fix a spelling mistake.
• New concept: IPTC Video Metadata Hub ID (altidrole:vmhVideoId)

Event Occur Status (eocstat)

• Fix spelling mistake “occurence” -> “occurrence” throughout.

Golf Shot (spgolshot)

• New concept: Chip (spgolshot:chip)

Rights Property (rightsprop)

• New concept: Copyright Year (rightsprop:copyrightyear)
• 4 modified definitions: Minor Model Age Disclosure, Model Release Id, Model Release Status, Property Release Status.

Sports Concept (spct)

• New concept: Recurring Competition (spct:recurring-competition)
• New concept: Governing Body (spct:governing-body)

The IPTC NewsCodes Working Group has released the latest update to IPTC NewsCodes vocabularies.

The changes are quite minor this time, but we still recommend that users stay up to date with the latest version.

Changes to Media Topics vocabulary

Our main subject classification taxonomy, IPTC Media Topics, has seen the following updates:

1 new concept

• breaking (breakdance) (added earlier this year in time for the Paris 2024 Olympics)

1 retired concept

• missing in action (duplicate term added in error in the 2024 Q1 update. The existing term missing in action medtop:20000061 was moved to replace the newer term))

32 modified definitions

These changes mostly correct spelling errors in en-GB where US spellings had slipped in, such as changing “behavior” to “behaviour” for en-GB:

wireless technology, tobacco and nicotine, economic trends and indicators, international economic institution, stocks and securities, adult and continuing education, upper secondary education, social learning, medical condition, Confucianism, relations between religion and government, road cycling, competitive dancing, sexual misconduct, developmental disorder, fraternal and community group, cyber warfare, public transport, taxi and ride-hailing, shared transport, business reporting and performance, business restructuring, commercial real estate, residential real estate, podcast, financial service, business service, news industry, diversity, equity and inclusion, sustainability, profit sharing, breaking (breakdance).

As usual, the Media Topics vocabularies can be viewed in the following ways:

• In a collapsible tree view
• As a downloadable Excel spreadsheet
• On one page on the cv.iptc.org server
• In machine readable formats such as RDF/XML and Turtle using the SKOS vocabulary format: see the cv.iptc.org guidelines document for more detail.

Updates to other vocabularies

Horse Position (sphorposition)

New term “trainer” added to https://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/sphorposition. This term is needed by IPTC Sport Schema.

For more information on IPTC NewsCodes in general, please see the IPTC NewsCodes Guidelines.

Today, IPTC announces the biggest change to the NewsCodes vocabularies in years. Almost 200 terms have been modified in the Media Topics vocabulary, including many “retirements”, trimming the CV down to exactly 1100 terms.

Overall, three controlled vocabularies have been updated: Content Warning, Content Production Party Role and Media Topic.

The changes to Media Topic CV are the biggest ever, with 9 new concepts, 60 retired concepts and 120 modified concepts, including 79 hierarchy moves.

The NewsCodes Working Group has been working hard on this update for over six months, bringing much-needed clarity to the “economy, business and finance” branch.

As part of the review, the “economic sector” sub-branch has been re-named “products and services”, handle both the companies making products or providing services, and also the products and services themselves.

Specifically, we have changed the following:

• 9 New concepts: business reporting and performance, business restructuring, commercial real estate, residential real estate, podcast, financial service, business service, news industry and diversity, equity and inclusion.
• 60 retired concepts: business finance, accounting and audit, analysts comment, earnings forecast, stock option, licensing agreement, aquaculture, arable farming, livestock farming, viniculture, fertiliser, health and beauty product, inorganic chemical, organic chemical, computer networking, computer security, telecommunication equipment, design and engineering, house building, land price, real estate, beverage, grocery, mail order, non-durable good, kerosene/paraffin, financial and business service, funeral parlour and crematorium, janitorial service, personal finance, personal income, personal service, printing service, wedding service, industrial component, instrument engineering, news agency, newspaper and magazine, online media industry, iron and steel, mining, non-ferrous metal, process industry, distiller and brewer, paper and packaging product, rubber product, soft drinks, textile and clothing, traffic, securities, renewable energy, stock recommendation, buy recommendation, hold recommendation, sell recommendation, hot stock, Internet of Things, capital goods, e-cigarette and commercial building. Most of these have notes attached describing which terms should be used instead of the retired ones.
• 39 name (label) changes: terrorist bombings, stock buyback corporate dividends corporate earnings, business financing, shareholder activity, executive officer, business strategy and marketing, products and services, commercial fishing, plastic, computer and telecommunications hardware, semiconductor and electronic component, software and applications, restoration, online shopping, toy and game, renewable energy, electricity, waste management, auction, consultancy, financial advisory service, personal finance and investment, shipping and postal service, media and entertainment industry, books and publishing, film industry, metal and mineral mining and refining, precious material, beverage and grocery, tobacco and nicotine, casinos and gambling, derivatives, stocks and securities, handicrafts, oil and gas, sales channel and heating and cooling.
• 81 definition changes: cyber crime, war crime, bankruptcy, stock buyback, corporate dividends, corporate earnings, business financing, shareholder activity, stock option, business governance, new product or service, patent, copyright and trademark, products and services, agriculture, commercial fishing, forestry and timber, pharmaceutical, plastic, computing and information technology, computer and telecommunications hardware, semiconductor and electronic component, software and applications, telecommunication service, wireless technology, restoration, clothing, online shopping, luxury good, retail, toy and game, energy and resource, renewable energy, diesel fuel, electricity, natural gas, waste management, water supply, accountancy and auditing, auction, banking, market research, personal finance and investment, rental service, shipping and postal service, defence equipment, heavy engineering, machine manufacturing, shipbuilding, media and entertainment industry, advertising, books and publishing, film industry, music industry, public relations, radio industry, television industry, metal and mineral mining and refining, building material, precious material, beverage and grocery, tobacco and nicotine, tourism and leisure industry, casinos and gambling, hotel and accommodation, restaurant and catering, tour operator, transport, air transport, railway transport, road transport, derivatives, stocks and securities, handicrafts, asset management, railway manufacturing, medical equipment, pet product and service, biofuel, utilities, streaming service and crowdfunding.

Currently, the name and description changes have only been made in English (both en-GB and en-US variants). Other language versions will come soon when their maintainers can make the appropriate changes to their translations.

Changes to Content Warning CV

New terms Drug Use, Fantasy Violence, Flashing Lights, Personally Identifiable Information to match standard terms used in the industry. The “Flashing Lights” term is intended to be used for flagging content that may trigger photosensitive epilepsy, a key accessibility concern by many broadcasters and a legal requirement in some countries.

Label change: Suffering to Upsetting and Disturbing to match industry usage.

Changes to Content Production Party Role CV

New term Distributor. Changed definition of Information Originator.

More information on IPTC Controlled Vocabularies

As always, the Media Topics vocabularies can be viewed in the following ways:

• In a collapsible tree view
• As a downloadable Excel spreadsheet
• On one page on the cv.iptc.org server
• In machine readable formats such as RDF/XML and Turtle using the SKOS vocabulary format. See the cv.iptc.org guidelines document for more detail.

For more information on IPTC NewsCodes in general, please see the IPTC NewsCodes Guidelines.

As is now traditional, the IPTC NewsCodes Working Group has released our regular update at the end of the calendar quarter.

This release includes updates to the Media Topic and Item Relation CVs.

Changes to the Media Topic vocabulary

Label and/or definition changes:

• medtop:20001304 sports award -> sports honour (definition also changed)
• medtop:20001303 sports medal -> sports medal and trophy (definition also changed)
• medtop:20001302 sports record (definition changed)
• medtop:20001104 drug use in sport (definition changed)

Retired terms:

• medtop:20001105 drug abuse in sport: RETIRED
• medtop:20001106 drug testing in sport: RETIRED
• medtop:20001107 medical drug use in sport: RETIRED

Hierarchy moves:

• medtop:20001338 education policy: moved from medtop:05000000 education to medtop:20000621 government policy. This change was suggested by ABC Australia – thanks very much!

New terms:

• medtop:20001360 fraternal and community group (child of medtop:20000768 communities)
• medtop:20001361 cyber warfare (child of medtop:16000000 conflict, war and peace)
• medtop:20001362 public transport (child of medtop:20000337 transport) – suggested by NTB Norway
• medtop:20001363 taxi and ride-hailing (child of medtop:20000337 transport)
• medtop:20001364 shared transport (child of medtop:20000337 transport)

The release also includes no-NN (New Norwegian) translations for the updates released in Q2 2022. Other languages were already updated over previous months.

Changes to other Controlled Vocabularies

The itemrelation CV is used in NewsML-G2 to show types of links between news items. The vocabulary now has two new terms:

• irel:translatedFromRoot: “The related resource contains the content from which this item was translated, either directly or indirectly via one or more other translations”
• irel:wasPackagedIn: “Indicates that this Item was included in the target package”

Thanks to everyone from IPTC members and users of the NewsCodes CV for suggesting terms, and to the NewsCodes and Sports Content Working Groups who helped to put this release together.

Following on with our quarterly update cycle, the IPTC NewsCodes Working Group has released the Q2 2022 update of IPTC NewsCodes, including updates to the Media Topic, Subject Code, and Digital Source Type vocabularies.

Media Topic updates

• Translation changes:
  • A new language translation for “New Norwegian” (Norwegian nynorsk, no-NN) has been added to all labels. The existing Norwegian labels previously tagged with “no” are now tagged as “no-NB” for Norwegian bokmål. Thanks very much to NTB for providing the update.
• Label and definition changes:
  • medtop:20000446 diseases and conditions
  • medtop:20001230 corporate social responsibility -> environmental, social and governance policy (ESG)
  • medtop:20000449 epidemic -> epidemic and pandemic
  • medtop:20000451 virus disease -> viral disease
  • medtop:20000452 AIDS -> HIV and AIDS
  • medtop:20000457 medical conditions -> medical condition
  • medtop:20000458 mental health and disorder
  • medtop:20000463 health organisation
  • medtop:20000464 health treatment -> health treatment and procedure
  • medtop:20000466 dietary supplement
  • medtop:20000467 medical drugs -> non-prescription drug
  • medtop:20000468 prescription drugs -> prescription drug
  • medtop:20000469 medical procedure/test -> medical test
  • medtop:20000470 medicine -> health care approach
  • medtop:20000474 western medicine -> conventional medicine
  • medtop:20000480 government health care
  • medtop:20001225 ophthalmology -> eye care
• Definition changes:
  • medtop:07000000 health
  • medtop:20000784 family planning
  • medtop:20000454 heart disease
  • medtop:20000456 injury
  • medtop:20000461 health facility
  • medtop:20000465 diet
  • medtop:20001219 drug rehabilitation
  • medtop:20001221 emergency care
  • medtop:20000471 herbal medicine
  • medtop:20000472 holistic medicine
  • medtop:20000473 traditional Chinese medicine
  • medtop:20000479 healthcare policy
  • medtop:20000483 health insurance
  • medtop:20000484 private health care
  • medtop:20000486 medical service
  • medtop:20000490 paediatrics
• Hierarchy moves:
  • medtop:20000500 animal moves to become a child of medtop:20000441 nature
  • medtop:20000507 flowers and plants moves to become a child of medtop:20000441 nature
  • medtop:20001318 pests moves to become a child of medtop:20000500 animal
  • medtop:20000494 animal disease  moves to become a child of medtop:20000500 animal
  • medtop:20000495 plant disease moves to become a child of medtop:20000507 flowers and plants
  • medtop:20000460 obesity becomes a child of medtop:20000457 medical condition
  • medtop:20000477 vaccine  becomes a child of medtop:20000464 health treatment and procedure
• New terms:
  • medtop:20001355 developmental disorder
  • medtop:20001356 depression
  • medtop:20001357 anxiety and stress
  • medtop:20001358 public health
  • medtop:20001359 pregnancy and childbirth
• Retired terms:
  • medtop:20001218 pandemic (use the new “epidemic and pandemic” term instead)
  • medtop:20000450 plague (disease)
  • medtop:20000453 retrovirus
  • medtop:20000455 illness
  • medtop:20000475 physical fitness
  • medtop:20000476 preventative medicine
  • medtop:20001220 general practice
  • medtop:20000488 geriatric medicine
  • medtop:20000489 obstetrics/gynaecology
  • medtop:20001223 oncology
  • medtop:20001222 orthopaedics
  • medtop:20000713 pharmacology
  • medtop:20001227 psychiatry
  • medtop:20001224 radiology
  • medtop:20000491 reproductive medicine
  • medtop:20001226 surgical medicine
  • medtop:20000493 non-human diseases

In a related tool update announcement, we have now added a handy “show retired terms” checkbox to the Media Topics interactive tree browser tool, and we default to only showing the active (non-retired) terms. The new option can be seen in the picture at the top of this article.

Digital Source Type vocabulary updates

After asking for feedback on a draft of the work a few months ago, we have updated the Digital Source Type vocabulary to support the emerging area of “Synthetic Media.”

The single term “softwareImage” has been retired, which means that while it is acceptable in legacy content, we no longer recommend its use. The term is now replaced with 9 new terms covering the spectrum from purely human creation through to purely machine image creation:

• Original media with minor human edits
• Composite of captured elements
• Algorithmically-enhanced media
• Data-driven media
• Digital art
• Virtual recording
• Composite including synthetic elements
• Trained algorithmic media
• Pure algorithmic media
• RETIRED: Created by software

To see more detail including the definition of each term, click the links above or view the entire IPTC Digital Source Type vocabulary.

Thanks to those both inside and outside of the IPTC community who gave feedback on our original proposal, your comments were very much appreciated.

Subject Code vocabulary updates – indicating its deprecated status

The IPTC Subject Code vocabulary was created over twenty years ago, in the year 2000. It was maintained through to 2010, but at that point the Media Topic vocabulary took over as IPTC’s preferred subject classification taxonomy. We will keep it on our vocabulary server, but we no longer recommend its use in projects due to some terms being out of date.

So we have put warnings on the pages of the Subject Code vocabulary that indicate its deprecated nature, and encourage users to look at Media Topic instead.

As always, the Media Topics vocabularies can be viewed in the following ways:

• In a collapsible tree view
• As a downloadable Excel spreadsheet
• On one page on the cv.iptc.org server
• In machine readable formats such as RDF/XML and Turtle using the SKOS vocabulary format: see the cv.iptc.org guidelines document for more detail.

For more information on IPTC NewsCodes in general, please see the IPTC NewsCodes Guidelines.

Next Thursday 10th March, IPTC members will be presenting a webinar on IPTC Media Topics and Wikidata. It will be held in association with the European Broadcasting Union as part of the EBU Wikidata Workshop.

The webinar is part of our series of “member-to-member” webinars, but as this is a special event in conjunction with EBU, attendance is open to the public.

The IPTC component of the workshop features Jennifer Parrucci of The New York Times, lead of the IPTC NewsCodes Working Group which manages the Media Topics vocabulary, and Managing Director of IPTC Brendan Quinn, introducing Media Topics and how they can be used with Wikidata. Then Tor Kristian Flage of Norwegian agency NTB and Gustav Carlberg of vendor and IPTC member iMatrics will present on their recent project to integrate IPTC Media Topics and Wikidata into their newsroom workflow.

Other speakers at the workshop on March 10th include France TV, RAI Italy, YLE Finland, Gruppo RES, Media Press and Perfect Memory.

Register to attend the full workshop (including the IPTC webinar) for free here.

Bill Kasdorf, principal at Kasdorf & Associates and individual member of IPTC, has published his latest column at Publishers Weekly, “News You Can Use”, where he promotes IPTC standards including IPTC Photo Metadata and IPTC Media Topics.

As Bill says, “I recently attended the IPTC Autumn Meeting, and at virtually every session, I thought, “People in other sectors of publishing ought to know about what the IPTC has to offer them.”

Bill goes on to discuss IPTC’s work with Google on exposing IPTC Photo Metadata in Google search results and the Licensable Images feature in Google Images search, explaining how those in the publishing industry can use those features to find out who owns the copyright on an image they might want to re-use, and how to obtain a license to use it.

He also talks about IPTC’s Media Topics subject taxonomy, and how publishers could use it for press releases, so they can “be sure the terms you use are the ones the news industry itself uses”.

You can view the article on the Publisher’s Weekly website.

Thanks Bill for sharing your thoughts and for promoting the IPTC cause!

The IPTC NewsCodes Working Group has been very busy in the last six months. At the IPTC Spring 2020 Meeting, we announced three new language translations of our core Media Topics vocabulary, many term updates, and a new NewsCodes Guidelines document.

Thanks to Ritzau, we added Danish translations of Media Topics in March. Since then we have also added Chinese (Simplified) translations of Media Topics, with great thanks to the team at Xinhua News Agency. We also received a contribution of IPTC Media Topics in Norwegian from NTB.

You can see HTML browsable versions of the new languages here:

• IPTC MediaTopics in Danish
• IPTC MediaTopics in Simplified Chinese
• IPTC MediaTopics in Norwegian

As usual, IPTC Media Topics (and all other NewsCodes vocabularies) are available in SKOS format (RDF/XML and Turtle) as well as HTML and as NewsML-G2 Knowledge Items.

The Working Group has also made some updates to the vocabularies based on suggestions from Ritzau, Xinhua and NTB and also some fixes (such as removing duplicate wikidata mappings) suggested by ABC Australia. As with all of our MediaTopics updates, we have not changed the meaning of any existing terms, but we add new terms, clarify the meaning of terms and move terms to put them in more appropriate places in the hierarchy.

We have also developed the NewsCodes Guidelines document,  which explains what are the IPTC NewsCodes, how we decide whether to add new terms, how the NewsCodes are maintained and how you can contribute suggestions. We welcome comments and suggestions on the guidelines document, please get in touch via the public iptc-newscodes@groups.io discussion group with your thoughts.

And finally, we have made some updates to the Genre NewsCodes vocabulary, to include some suggestions from members plus some suggestions based on our work with the Trust Project and the Journalism Trust Initiative. We have added genres for Fact Check, Satire, Sponsored content and more. Please see the genres vocabulary at http://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/genre/.

In late February we pushed the latest update to Media Topics, IPTC’s main controlled vocabulary for subject classification (also known as a taxonomy).

This release includes a translation of NewsCodes into the Danish language.

On behalf of the NewsCodes Working Group and its chair Jennifer Parruci, we would like to say thanks very much to Mette-Lene Østergaard and Mads Petersen from the Danish news agency Ritzau in Denmark for all their work on making the translation.

It’s available from all the usual places:

• The main IPTC Controlled Vocabulary server at cv.iptc.org, which includes both human- and machine-readable versions of all IPTC NewsCodes: http://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/mediatopic/
• HTML browsable view: https://www.iptc.org/std/NewsCodes/mediatopic/treeview/
• Graphical tree view: http://show.newscodes.org/index.html?newscodes=medtop&lang=dk&startTo=Show
• Downloadable Excel version: https://www.iptc.org/std/NewsCodes/IPTC-MediaTopic-NewsCodes.xlsx

The IPTC Media Topic NewsCodes vocabulary is now available in 9 languages: Arabic, British English, Danish, French, German, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish.

We are working with partners on several more language translations coming very soon. If you would like to work with us on contributing a new language translation of IPTC Media Topics or any other IPTC standard, please contact us!

The NewsCodes Working Group of IPTC has completed mapping of the top two levels of hierarchical terms of Media Topics to Wikidata.

Media Topics is an IPTC standard – a 1,100-term taxonomy with a focus on categorizing text. Released in 2010 as a development based on the IPTC Subject Codes, use of Media Topics is free and available in different formats. They can be viewed on the IPTC Controlled Vocabulary server, or in a user-friendly tree hierarchy tool.

IPTC creates and maintains taxomonies and controlled vocabularies – to assign terms as metadata values to news objects like text, photographs, graphics, audio and video files and streams. This allows for a consistent coding of news metadata across news providers, over the course of time.

“The idea of semantic mapping and being involved in a linked data initiative like Wikidata is a natural step for IPTC,” said Jennifer Parrucci, chair of the IPTC NewsCodes Working Group and senior taxonomist for The New York Times.  “When linking an existing taxonomy to another, Wikidata serves as a central point of reference.”

Wikidata is a free, collaborative, multilingual knowledge base that can be read and edited by both humans and machines. It provides centralized storage for an access to structured data for all Wikimedia projects, as well as for use on external websites.

In total about 100 mappings from Media Topics to Wikidata have been manually applied. The mappings use SKOS mapping relationships.

Media Topics began with the Subject Codes vocabulary and extended the tree from 3 to 5 levels and reused the same 17 top-level terms. The lower-level terms have been revised and rearranged. Each Media Topic provides a mapping back to one of the Subject Codes.

More information:
Media Topics Page, IPTC.org
IPTC Controlled Vocabulary server
Guidelines
Tree Hierarchy Tool
News CodesSubject Codes
Questions? Contact us.