Photographers and news services shared images all the time. These were not seen as important items beyond a few days after they were first used and they often reciprocated with images at later dates. I have seen lots of letters between editors at papers and even some notes on the backs of some images sent from one paper to another with things like "Thought you could use this for your sports paper". I believe within the circle of newspapers, there was a very loose handshake agreement about copyrights of images. Outside that circle, say in the world of commercial advertising, I believe the rights of the photographs were a bit more protected.
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