a free, open monitor that checks every month whether more than 500 news publishers in 122 countries keep the credits, captions and rights information embedded in their photographs
In its own words: https://iptc.org/news/announcing-iptc-metawatch/, read 2026-10-29
| What receives provenance | the lead photograph of a news article, as served to the reader |
| Relations carried | creation (creator); credit; rights (copyright); description (caption); data-mining preference (PLUS Data Mining); C2PA Content Credentials |
| Carrier | embedded metadata (Exif, IPTC IIM and XMP) and C2PA manifests |
| Expresses · records · tests | expressesrecordstests |
| Operations tested | publication through a news site's pipeline (CMS, CDN, image optimisation) op |
| What survived | October 2026: 7.2% of editorial images carried a credit or copyright notice (IMATAG's 2018 test: 8%); 321 of 425 crawlable publishers kept none of the scored IPTC fields; 27 of 6,580 images carried a C2PA manifest op |
op the operator's own statement · 3p a third-party account · obs our observation · rd our reading. Hover a tag for its quote; each opens below with its source.
| Canonical name | IPTC Metawatch |
| Also known as | Metawatch |
| Address | https://metawatch.iptc.org/ |
| Operator | IPTC |
| Founded | announced 5 October 2026 |
| Kind | monitor |
| Unit | a news publisher, sampled each month through up to 20 recent articles |
| Lifecycle | active — announced 5 October 2026 |
| Count | 508 news publishers in 122 countries (as of 2026-10) op |
| Cadence | monthly, on the first of each month |
| Data access | every run published as open data |
| Licence | CC BY 4.0 (each run's data) op |
| Versions and dates | announced: 2026-10-05; run reported: October 2026; read: 2026-10-29 |
| Observation | 2026-10-29: read |
0a7fea35f38f83bb…0a7fea35f38f83bb…0a7fea35f38f83bb…0a7fea35f38f83bb…0a7fea35f38f83bb…0a7fea35f38f83bb…0a7fea35f38f83bb…0a7fea35f38f83bb…0a7fea35f38f83bb…0a7fea35f38f83bb…Lee Sharks, ed. "IPTC Metawatch." Provenance meta-aggregator, Provenance Erasure, compiled 2026-10-29. https://www.provenanceerasure.org/aggregators/iptc-metawatch
Record https://www.provenanceerasure.org/aggregators/iptc-metawatch · entity https://www.provenanceerasure.org/aggregators/iptc-metawatch#entity · the census as data
@misc{pe-iptcmetawatch2026,
editor = {Sharks, Lee},
title = {IPTC Metawatch},
howpublished = {Provenance meta-aggregator, Provenance Erasure},
year = {2026},
note = {Compiled 2026-10-29; every field sourced and dated},
url = {https://www.provenanceerasure.org/aggregators/iptc-metawatch}
}