Research Guides: Journalism: Images and video footage

Applying Fair Use to Copyrighted Audio/Visual Works

Set of Principles in Fair Use for Journalism
This Set of Principles, created by the The Center for Media and Social Impact (CMSI), reduces risk of copyright infringement by clarifying professional community standards. It identifies seven situations in which journalists routinely employ fair use, and what its limitations are: Incidental capture; proof; use in cultural journalism; illustration; historical reference; to foster public discussion and advancing the story.

This is an excellent guide for how to comment on and incorporate copyrighted works of all formats in your stories and projects.

Editorial News Images

AP Newsroom This link opens in a new window
AP Newsroom (formerly AP Images) contains photos and audio gathered by Associated Press reporters around the world. Content is updated daily and continuously. The archive also includes the NYC Associated Press Daybook (the AP Daybook), the current year's photo report, and historical images dating from the 1500s. Photos and audio may be downloaded or printed.

Stock Film and Video Footage

Vanderbilt Television News Archive This link opens in a new window
The Vanderbilt Television News Archive is a searchable collection of the individual network evening news broadcasts from ABC, NBC, and CBS from 1968-present, CNN from 1995-present, and Fox from 2004-present. Broadcasts from CNN and NBC can be streamed; broadcasts from all sources, including ABC, CBS, and Fox, can be downloaded in MP4 format after creating an account and paying a nominal duplication fee ($12 per clip + a $10 processing fee). Reuse rights allow the NYU Community to assert Fair Use on content loaned and downloaded through the platform.
Follow this link for more information on the loan process for this content and any associated fees: MP4 loans — compilation and duplication fees

C-SPAN video library (U.S. House and Senate coverage)
C-SPAN is a public service created by the American Cable Television Industry, and contains footage of the gavel-to-gavel proceedings of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, and to other forums where public policy is discussed. Most of it is free to download and reuse; create a free account to download lower-quality clips for free. High resolution clips are a modest fee.
Internet Archive: FedFlix
FedFlix has films produced by the United States Government, from training films to history, from our national parks to the U.S. Fire Academy and the Postal Inspectors. All of the content is available for reuse without any restrictions whatsoever.
Internet Archive: Stock Footage archive
Search across all of the Internet Archive's free, downloadable, and reusable film and video content in one place.
Internet Archive - TV News Archive
A free archive of streaming, U.S. News content. Searchable by closed captions from the major cable and broadcast television networks from 2009-present. Streaming videos are not available for download, but users are able to borrow DVDs of each show. Transcripts are available for each show.
Free Stock Footage
FreeStockFootage.com offers a large collection of free and low cost HD and 4k video stock footage, B-Roll, and motion graphics downloaded by the clip. Clips can be used for personal, corporate, and commercial productions, as well as blogs, social media, advertisements, web and mobile applications, and more.
Open Video Project
An older website created by the UNC Chapel Hill Libraries, this site provides video clips from a variety of sources, especially U.S. government agencies such as the U.S. Records and Archives Administration and NASA. Free to download and reuse for Fair Use, though much of the content is low-resolution and some of the files are no longer available (the site does not look to be actively maintained).

Stock Photos and Images

Pexels - free stock photos
Pexels provides high quality and completely free stock photos licensed under the Pexels license. All photos are tagged, searchable, and easy to discover.
Pixabay - free images & royalty free stock
Pixabay provides access to millions of high quality stock images and videos shared by their community. Free instant downloads.
Nappy.co — free photos of black and brown people
Nappy.co is a black-owned stock photo website with a collection of free high-res photos of black and brown people.
Vice - The Gender Spectrum Collection
The Gender Spectrum Collection is a stock photo library featuring images of trans and non-binary models. This collection aims to help media better represent members of these communities. Free to download and reuse within the usage guidelines: https://genderphotos.vice.com/guidelines
Unsplash
Unsplash offers a collection of free high-resolution photos.

Archival images from historical newspapers

Historical Newspapers (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
Search the PDF full text and image archives of more than 100 major U.S. and African American newspapers. Articles have been scanned as PDFs and include images and advertisements, and are full text searchable. Photos can be downloaded; reuse of photos is guided by Fair Use copyright laws.
Access World News This link opens in a new window
Access World News provides the html full text and, for some titles, the pdf "as printed" visual representation, of articles from a variety of national and international news sources, including newspapers, digital-native news websites, television and radio transcripts, blogs, college and university newspapers, journals, magazines, and some audio and video. Most international titles are English language. Dates of coverage vary from title to title, but primarily span the late 20th century to present. Photos can be downloaded; reuse of photos is guided by Fair Use copyright laws.
America's Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
America's Historical Newspapers includes articles from local and regional American and Hispanic American newspapers from all 50 states. Coverage dates from 1690 to the early 20th century. Articles have been scanned as PDFs and include images and advertisements, and are full text searchable. Photos can be downloaded; reuse of photos is guided by Fair Use copyright laws.
New York Newspaper Archive This link opens in a new window
Access New York Newspaper Archives and discover stories of the past with NewspaperArchive.com. The archive covers New York history from 1753-2020, with lots of content from smaller, local newspapers. Articles have been scanned as PDFs and include images and advertisements, and are full text searchable. Photos can be downloaded; reuse of photos is guided by Fair Use copyright laws.