This week I have been doing some picture editing for the BBC News Online Picture desk with Picture Editor Phil Coomes and Emma Lynch. The Day In Pictures and The week in Pictures are similar to other news’ websites pictures galleries featuring striking images from the world’s news such as The Guardian’s 24 hours in pictures. I found the process of selecting images from the daily wires- which are filled at a frighteningly fast pace from the likes of Reuters, Getty, AP and AFP- a fascinating and slightly daunting task. When a friend pointed out to me ‘oh so you select those 12 or so images to sum up the day’ it got me thinking about the daunting task 1000’s of editors across 1000 of news websites face on a continuous basis. Of course, this is played out at every level of media publication and no where is this more apparent than when this is applied to TV news coverage. Simply put, someone decides what is news and what millions of people will see. Now I know I am not the first person to point this out, but its been drummed home to me after my brief stint picture editing. Seeing the rapidity of image uploads into the wires of some news stories and the lack of images about others-notably Libya in the past week- is testament to our times. Someone once said, if there are no photos there is no news, or more accurately put whatever photos there may be, they are the news.