The Economist has admitted that it substantially edited its widely viewed cover picture of Obama. President Obama has been criticized for what is perceived as his detached reaction to the spill for the first few weeks. The cover page showed a solitary Obama in deep contemplation. It was completely manufactured. Not only was Obama not alone in the picture, he was talking to Thad W. Allen of the Coast Guard and Charlotte Randolph, a local parish president. Indeed, his bent figure is not from deep contemplation but apparently listening to the much shorter Randolph.
The picture was shown on the cover of The Economist for June 19th. It was taken on May 28 by a Reuters photographer, Larry Downing. The editing violates Reuters standards — standards that have been strictly enforced since a 2006 scandal involving an enhanced and edited Reuters picture from the Middle East.
Emma Duncan, deputy editor of The Economist, responded and admitted that they edited the photo. However, she does not appear to view it as unethical even though the content and obvious meaning of the photo was changed:
Yes, Charlotte Randolph was edited out of the image (Admiral Allen was removed by the crop). We removed her not to make a political point, but because the presence of an unknown woman would have been puzzling to readers.
We don’t edit photos in order to mislead . . .
I asked for Ms. Randolph to be removed because I wanted readers to focus on Mr. Obama, not because I wanted to make him look isolated. That wasn’t the point of the story. “The damage beyond the spill” referred to on the cover, and examined in the cover leader, was the damage not to Mr. Obama, but to business in America.
I must say that I have considerable respect for The Economist but that is hardly convincing. First, few people would look at the cover and say “Wow, that really sums up “the damage to business.” Second, and more importantly, the obvious meaning of the photo was substantially altered. The position of the The Economist would rob photojournalists of any status as journalists. If photos can be substantially changed (other than for an obvious joke), why not just Photoshop these images on computers? The Economist took a conference with the President with two officials and turned it into a lonely shot of the President bent down in contemplation. That is obviously a violation of standards in the industry. The National Press Photographers Association (NPPA)states as Rule 6 that “Editing should maintain the integrity of the photographic images’ content and context. Do not manipulate images or add or alter sound in any way that can mislead viewers or misrepresent subjects.” Here both the context and content of the photo was changed. I understand Ms. Randolph’s position and accept that there was not intent to mislead, but it did mislead the reader. The Economist needs to assure both readers and other journalists that this was a lapse in judgment and will not occur again.
Source: NYT
Ms. Elaine it doesn’t matter how you slice and dice it. I have a bad feeling we are gonna see what government control is all about.
TSA to Block “Controversial Opinion” on the Web
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20009642-10391695.html
Liberal media? You mean the media that never held Bush’s and Cheney’s feet to the fire in the run-up to our preemptive war in Iraq? The media that went soft on torture during the Bush administartion?
Most of the media is controlled by huge corporations–not by political parties or ideology. Except, of course, for Faux News!
Latest Tropical Atlantic E-Wall visible satellite loop, Penn State University.
Watch as it unfolds.
http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~gadomski/SAT_GULF/anim8vis.html
We will soon see how much clout the liberal media has with this administration.
They don’t want anybody on or near the water to report how bad the damage is going to get.
Two tropical systems 95 and 96L, currently affecting the weather pattern in the Gulf of Mexico could potentially create the worst case scenario in reference to the oil spill. 95L was possibly a depression at land fall. There was an increased chance of development prior to and land observations noted SE winds close or slightly above 30 kts. off the Louisiana coast.
96L is now entering the picture passing thru the Yucatan Channel and is reinforcing an already developed SE wind flow over the Gulf of Mexico and much of the oil spill. Even though 96L may or may not develop, the winds are in place and it’s track is closer to the spill it’s self.
All of that oil will now be pushed to the coast. Not good.
The good news is at the moment the wind flow keeps the oil pushing away from the Florida west coast.
Current data buoy located 262 Nautical miles south of Panama city or due west of Naples Florida recording sustained winds SSE 20-25Kts and are forecast to increase later today. With seas building into the 8-12′ range just off the Louisianan coast within the next 24-36 hours.
Headlines are so misleading it’s hard to take any of them seriously. They say anything to get a readers attention and set a tone that is barely support by the article. I’m waiting for FOX NEWS’ next headline “OBAMA DOESN’T GIVE A CRAP!” only to fid out the President is constipated.
AY–
I “jest” said it cuz I thought it was pertinent to our discussion, doncha know. Are there really many REAL news organizations around today? Of course, my favorite “news” organization is Faux News–the Pravda of the Western world.
A photographer taking pictures of a BP refinery while on a public road was reportedly detained by BP security, local police and a DHS official.
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/photographer-detained-taking-pics-bp-refinery-100-pensacola-area-reservations-cancelled
The union of television and radio professionals — AFTRA — has created a new section of its website to handle reports of journalists who are denied reasonable access to cover the effects of the spill. CNN’s Anderson Cooper has been vocal in protesting the suppression — some would call it censorship — of information by the government.
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2010/07/feds-shut-down-journalist-access-to.html
Emma Duncan’s 1000 words of explanation change nothing; the picture speaks for itself and for the dishonesty of the Economist on this matter.
In 1955 Geoffrey Crowther (editor) said, “The Economist considers itself the enemy of privilege, pomposity and predictability.” Well sweetheart, five and a half decades have passed and Rupert Murdoch has come aknockin’ on your door.
Elaine M.,
Surely you say that in jest. A news organization run by monkeys will always try and out ape the other.
Duncan said: “Yes, Charlotte Randolph was edited out of the image (Admiral Allen was removed by the crop). We removed her not to make a political point, but because the presence of an unknown woman would have been puzzling to readers.”
***************
Picturing an “unknown” woman would be puzzling to readers? Then why not identify her? Or would that be asking too much, Ms. Duncan?
BP and the Obama administration face mounting complaints that they are ignoring foreign offers of equipment and making little use of the fishing boats and volunteers available to help clean up what may now be the biggest spill ever in the Gulf of Mexico.
The Coast Guard said there have been 107 offers of help from 44 nations, ranging from technical advice to skimmer boats and booms. But many of those offers are weeks old, and only a small number have been accepted. The vast majority are still under review, according to a list kept by the State Department.
And in recent days and weeks, for reasons BP has never explained, many fishing boats hired for the cleanup have done a lot of waiting around.
A report prepared by investigators with the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform for Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., detailed one case in which the Dutch government offered April 30 to provide four oil skimmers that collectively could process more than 6 million gallons of oily water a day. It took seven weeks for the U.S. to approve the offer.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs on Thursday scorned the idea that “somehow it took the command 70 days to accept international help.”
“That is a myth,” he declared, “that has been debunked literally hundreds of times.”
He said 24 foreign vessels were operating in the Gulf before this week. He did not specifically address the Dutch vessels.
The help is needed. According to the high end of the federal government’s estimates, millions of gallons of crude have spewed from the bottom of the sea since the April 20 explosion that killed 11 workers on the Deepwater Horizon oil platform.
According to the government’s estimates, the disaster would eclipse the 140-million-gallon Ixtoc disaster in the Gulf three decades ago and rank as the biggest offshore oil spill during peacetime. The biggest spill in history happened in 1991 during the Persian Gulf War, when Iraqi forces opened valves at a terminal and dumped about 336 million gallons of oil.
Still, more than 2,000 boats have signed up for oil-spill duty under BP’s Vessel of Opportunity program. The company pays boat captains and their crews a flat fee based on the size of the vessel, ranging from $1,200 to $3,000 a day, plus a $200 fee for each crew member who works an eight-hour day
.
Rocky Ditcharo, a shrimp dock owner in Buras, La., said many fishermen hired by BP have told him that they often park their boats on the shore while they wait for word on where to go.
“They just wait because there’s no direction,” Ditcharo said. He said he believes BP has hired many boat captains “to show numbers.”
“But they’re really not doing anything,” he added. He also said he suspects the company is hiring out-of-work fishermen to placate them with paychecks.
Chris Mehlig, a fisherman from Louisiana’s St. Bernard Parish, said he is getting eight days of work a month, laying down containment boom, running supplies to other boats or simply being on call dockside in case he is needed.
“I wish I had more days than that, but that’s the way things are,” he said.
Billy Nungesser, president of Louisiana’s hard-hit Plaquemines Parish, said BP and the Coast Guard provided a map of the exact locations of 140 skimmers that were supposedly cleaning up the oil. But he said that after he repeatedly asked to be flown over the area so he could see them at work, officials told him only 31 skimmers were on the job.
“I’m trying to work with these guys,” he said. “But everything they’re giving me is a wish list, not what’s actually out there.”
A BP spokesman declined to comment.
Newly retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government’s point man for the response effort, bristled at some of the accusations in Issa’s report.
“I think we’ve been pretty transparent throughout this,” Allen said at the White House. He disputed any suggestion that there aren’t enough skimmers being put on the water, saying the spill area is so big that there are bound to be areas with no vessels.
The Coast Guard said there are roughly 550 skimmers working in the Gulf, with 250 or so in Louisiana waters, 136 in Florida, 87 in Alabama and 76 in Mississippi, although stormy weather in recent days has kept the many of the vessels from working.
The frustration extends to the volunteers who have offered to clean beaches and wetlands. More than 20,000 volunteers have signed up to help in Florida, Alabama and Mississippi, yet fewer than one in six has received an assignment or the training required to take part in some chores, according to BP.
The executive director of the Alabama Coastal Foundation, Bethany Kraft, said many people who volunteered are frustrated and angry that no one has called on them for help.
“You see this unfolding before your eyes and you have this sense that you can’t do anything,” she said. “To watch this happen in our backyard and not be able to help is hard.”
Associated Press writers Jay Reeves in Orange Beach, Ala., Michael Kunzelman in New Orleans, Harry R. Weber in Houston, and Seth Borenstein, Erica Werner and Eileen Sullivan in Washington contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Less than four months after President Barack Obama took office, his new administration received a forceful warning about the dangers of offshore oil drilling.
The alarm was rung by a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., which found that the government was unprepared for a major spill at sea, relying on an “irrational” environmental analysis of the risks of offshore drilling.
The April 2009 ruling stunned both the administration and the oil industry, and threatened to delay or cancel dozens of offshore projects in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico.
The U.S. Court of Appeals reversed its decision and allowed drilling in the Gulf to proceed—including on BP PLC’s now-infamous Macondo well, 50 miles off the Louisiana coast.
The Obama administration’s actions in the court case exemplify the dilemma the White House faced in developing its energy policy. In his presidential campaign, President Obama criticized the Bush administration for being too soft on the oil industry and vowed to support greener energy forms.
But, once in office, President Obama ended up backing offshore drilling, bowing to political and fiscal realties, even as his administration’s own scientists and Democratic lawmakers warned about its risks.
I’m looking at the picture and I’m not seeing “detachment.” Maybe exhaustion, maybe “I’m feeling a little overwhelmed by the problem.” But I don’t see anything suggesting he’s not feeling affected.
So this shows how unreliable photographic evidence is these days. Remember how the photo of OJ Simpson’s shoes was considered so significant? Maybe they swapped feet. (Not that I think he was innocent but still…)
The point isn’t the accuracy of the photograph, the point is the point of the cover which is to illustrate the President’s purported detachment. I assumed the cover was Photoshopped because I hadn’t seen the original photo and I didn’t realize that some of the oil rigs were that close to shore.
What if the Economist had put in the background the actual rig involved in the oil spill? Perhaps, that would more accurately make the point but would it be unethical or misleading? News publications mix and mash photos all the time to make editorial points and the resulting product doesn’t carry some kind of disclaimer.
I suppose the Economist could have had an artist draw the same illustration as it put on the cover. While it would obviously not have been a photograph would it have been misleading?
The real point is that some people would say that President has been sufficiently political astute not to adopt this pose standing by himself with an oil rig in the background and, therefore, should not be so depicted. It doesn’t change the editorial point about detachment which seems to be a genuine concern and which the cover depicted very effectively.
Cheryl,
The Economist did intentionally mislead its readers. It just thought that somehow it wouldn’t be caught. Prof. Turley was exactly correct that they violated their own ethical standards and they won’t admit it! Is it me or is Obama the victim of the most outrageous emails and the most altered photographs of any politician in our history? I wonder why?????
I understand “The Economist” didn’t intentionally try to mislead what I don’t understand is feeling dishonesty was the way to go. And the arguument made for what they wanted their cover to convey was weak at best. Nice article Mt. Turley!
“That is obviously a violation of standards in the industry.”
Oh, no,.. not a violation of the standards… one like the actual bloody oil spill itself?!
As always, bounds of reason…
That is not editing a photo, that is re-framing. I see nothing wrong or unethical here. As soon as you write a story you will be framing the issue, because you simply cannot mention every single relevant fact. If you think the economist was unethical, try and fight Fox. Tell-lie-vision frames the world every single day, times 50.
I guess they are trying to make Obama look as stupid as Bush during Katrina. Somehow or another I do no personally think that is humanely possible. I have stated before I was not an Obama supporter. However, when people pull things like this, I usually will champion to their defense.
We all know that economics is a lot like history. Its what the last person says that is viewed as the most accurate. Well at least historians are more accurate and less people are generally harmed by there predictions. So I guess I stick with reading what I perceive to be the facts rather than rely on someone who things they under stand how Keynesian economics as it relates to current events. Models like his do not work in the free real world.