IPTC launches Metawatch: a monthly scoreboard for photo metadata preservation

The IPTC now checks 500+ news publishers in 122 countries every month to see who keeps photographer credits, captions, and rights information embedded in images. The first results show little progress since 2018. Public accountability works when naming and ranking become routine. Organizations that strip metadata from assets lose attribution, violate licensing terms, and erode trust with creators. A monthly public scoreboard makes the cost of stripping metadata higher than the cost of preserving it.