Fairfax plays down photo archive claims but admits some may have been sold on eBay

Fairfax Media has fired back at what it claims is “misinformation and uninformed speculation” in the media regarding its attempts to retrieve its photo archives from a US company that had been charged with digitising them.

Earlier this year Fairfax was forced to file a lawsuit in Little Rock, Arkansas, in an attempt to recover millions of images, dating back as far as the 19th Century, from Rogers Photo Archive (RPA), a US company it tasked with digitising its archive two years ago which has been placed in receivership.

In an opinion piece today, by Chris Berry director of information services at Fairfax Media the company addressed ABC reports that original photographs had been sold on eBay before the digitising had been completed conceding: “Fairfax is aware that a small number of images may have been inappropriately dealt with and we are working with the receiver to recover these.”

But the publisher also took aim at wider media reporting on the photo archive litigation insisting that they were working with the receivers and that the millions of photos were not at risk.