Obama White House: No More Photo Re-Enactments
By Donald R. Winslow
© 2011 News Photographer magazine
WASHINGTON, DC (May 12, 2011) – White House press spokesman Josh Earnest says the Obama Administration has decided to end a long-running practice of having the president re-enact televised speeches for news photographers.
"We have concluded that this arrangement is a bad idea," Earnest said, changing decades of White House policy.
"I hope we can resolve this without it being contentious," he told News Photographer magazine today. "We're all looking for a good resolution to this."
The decision came after last week's reaction to President Barack Obama re-creating the first 30 seconds of his late-night televised Osama bin Laden death speech for the benefit of five still photographers. The photographers were held outside the White House East Room during the actual address and were not allowed to photograph the live event. Only White House presidential photographers Pete Souza and Chuck Kennedy were in the East Room during the actual address. Afterwards, the five independent photographers were brought into the East Room and the President walked down the Cross Hall's red carpet again to the podium where he repeated the first lines of his address.
While press corps insiders have been long aware of how photographs are made traditionally before or after live televised presidential address, the practice seems to have been little-known to the general public outside Washington's Beltway until now. It became a matter of public discussion in recent days after Obama's speech announcing bin Laden's death when photographer Jason Reed of Reuters, one of the five photographers involved, blogged about the historic assignment and gave the details of Obama's staged re-enactment.
Three days after Obama's historic announcement about the Navy Seal commando raid that killed bin Laden, News Photographer magazine reported on the strange role photographs were playing in the bin Laden saga, including the controversy over the staged Obama speech photographs. Public attention was drawn to the White House practice, resulting in today's decision to discontinue staging such scenes.
"The Administration is open to working out some new arrangement with photographers," Earnest told News Photographer magazine today.
"We're hoping to have an open-ended conversation. At the end of the day, we may come up with some kind of a pool solution that everyone can live with. Technology today has provided a solution [to a pool arrangement] but so for, no one wants to do that. But we can't have an entire group of photographers in the room" when the President is giving a live televised address.
The traditional White House objection to having a press pool of five or more photographers inside a room when the president makes a live address is that the cameras are too noisy, and that the movement of the photographers – or someone dropping a lens, as happened this week during an Obama televised speech in Austin, TX – will distract the President during an important moment.
The Austin incident Tuesday was a timely example that supports the White House claim. During Obama's opening remarks a photographer in the cut-away position (off to one side) dropped a lens. Startled, the President stopped and looked, asking "Did someone fall down?" Then he asked, "Is everyone okay?" Then grinning, Obama looked to the audience and said, "You photographers are incorrigible." The television audience had no idea what had happened at the time.
"Obviously NPPA applauds today's change because it ends a long-time practice of essentially faking news photographs," NPPA president Sean D. Elliot said.
"We’ll have to wait and see what new system emerges to allow news coverage of televised presidential addresses by independent journalists. The media culture in Washington may very well contribute to newspapers and agencies feeling that it's been necessity to participate in this practice – but the reality is that regardless of caption disclaimers, a photo of a faked speech is a fake photo. And it’s about time we saw this practice ended."
Elliot also said, "This administration, which promised to be the most transparent in history, should live by that declaration and work with the news media to establish practices that allow independent journalists access to events."
Staging photographs – even in the White House – not only undercuts the public's ability to believe that the press is telling the truth, it flies directly in the face of NPPA's Code of Ethics.
The second point of NPPA's 9-point Code of Ethics, revised for the digital era by NPPA Ethics Committee chair John Long, says, "Resist being manipulated by staged photo opportunities." It follows the first point, "Be accurate and comprehensive in the representation of subjects." The code also addresses the photojournalist's role in avoiding presenting photographs that could mislead viewers or misrepresent subjects
“If it looks real, in the context of news, it has to be real," Long says. "A faked photograph is a visual lie; it deceives the reader. Captioning these photos accurately is essential – but in the final analysis these photos look as though the President is speaking and in reality, he is not, making the images themselves visual lies.”
Over the years, the wire services (the Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Press, Getty, etc.) and the major newspapers, such as The New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, have objected to pool situations, even to a rotating pool which would include their own staff photographers, because they want "exclusive" pictures by their own journalists. The other reason they've given for objecting to pool situations is that it is, in their view, a "slippery slope" which could lead to less and less press access to the President.
They have also objected to White House hand-out photographs from the President's photographer, Pete Souza, from events where independent journalists have not been allowed to attend. The wire services have refused to publish or circulate White House photography department images on the ethical stance that they were created by a staff member, the circumstances can't be independently verified, and they amount to a "visual" version of a White House press release, which they also don't circulate verbatim.
During the pre-digital era of film and prints there was a legitimate objection to pool situations because of the awkward and time-consuming nature of what physically had to take place to distribute a pool photo. After a pool image was shot on film, that film had to be transported to a bureau (usually by bike messenger), developed in chemicals, dried, edited, and then printed. A copy print had to be made for every member participating in the pool. That print had to be transported (again, usually by bike messenger or a photographer running across town) to all the pool members. The physical photographic print had to be scanned into everyone's publishing system, and a pre-agreed upon embargo release time had to be determined. It was clunky, time-wasting, and involved a lot of people and a lot of energy and effort.
During the digital era, however, selecting and distributing a digital pool image could take place in a matter of seconds, globally.
So any possible objections news organizations might have to a pool situation in the digital era might be based on a fear of losing access to the President, and may also have roots in their business practices (i.e., making sure they have "unique" content to offer their clients, not the same picture that everyone else in the pool has transmitted).
Camera technology has advanced significantly over the years, while the policy of keeping photographers out of live White House televised addresses remained unchanged. The main two White House objections that they've consistently voiced have both been based on sound: the sound a camera makes, and the sound moving and jostling photographers make. They've said it's about making sure the President is not distracted.
The features of a modern digital camera make it possible for the camera to operate in near silence, either using the method Chuck Kennedy used during the bin Laden address to lock the mirror up and shoot on a tripod using Live View, or by using a silencing blimp on the camera the way Hollywood movie still photographers do to shoot on movie sets (a practice that's decades old and time-tested). That leaves only the "jostling photographers might distract the President" excuse. One solution might be for a pool of photographers to actually agree to not behave that way, and then follow through with it (by setting up on tripods, locking down to a position or ladder setting, and abiding by some simple rules). Photographers could also be asked to take advantage of the modern era's superior lens quality, fast ISO settings, and digital imagery's superior file quality to actually back off a greater distance with a telephoto and not be up in the President's face with a 20-70mm zoom lens.
During the Obama Administration there has been a change of leadership in the Press Office when Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Press Secretary Robert Gibbs left this year. Now William Daley is the new Chief of Staff and Jay Carney is the Press Secretary. Early in the Obama Administration, during the Emanuel and Gibbs days, the wire services and major newspapers were in talks with them over access to events where the White House had closed the door to press cameras and instead were offering only a Souza hand-out. During those early first-term days, the White House suggested a pool situation under some certain circumstances – but the independent press organizations flatly rejected the idea, insisting instead on their own access with their own staff.
The talks broke down, News Photographer magazine was told, after one press organization delivered what's been described by a party who was involved in the talks as a "tersely-worded letter" to Emanuel that greatly angered the Chief of Staff. After that, the discussions abruptly ended and no more progress was made.
But today's offer from Earnest indicates the White House – an Administration keenly aware of their visual image and the power of still photography – is now at least interested in sitting down with the press organizations again to open a fresh discussion about possible alternatives.
What remains to be seen is what happens next – whether the wire services and major newspapers will come to the table suggesting potentially creative solutions which embrace today's technology and global information network, or whether they will remain glued to their old positions.
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