White House, Photographers, Agree On New Presidential Pool
By Donald R. Winslow
© 2011 News Photographer magazine
WASHINGTON, DC (June 1, 2011) – A new policy for photographing the President of the United States during live televised speeches has been announced by the White House and Doug Mills, the photographic representative of the board of the White House Correspondents' Association.
The new agreement, reached before the Memorial Day holiday during talks with the White House Press Office, establishes a photographic press pool where one still photographer will be permitted to take the President's photograph live while he addresses the world, New York Times photojournalist Mills told News Photographer magazine today. He negotiated the agreement on behalf of the media and the Correspondents' Association, where he is the group's secretary-treasurer.
The single photographer's images will then be available to all news organizations. The plan call for uploading them to a Web site where they would be available to everyone at the same time, Mill said. The rotating pool arrangement is similar to the one used by reporters to cover Presidential events when space is limited.
The members of the new photographic pool agreement are the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, Reuters, and The New York Times. The Times has taken the place of the Magazine photographer in the White House tight pool. The Independent Still Photographers (ISP) are not part of the tight pool agreement, Mills said.
"We're thrilled that the White House has agreed to do this," Mills told News Photographer today. "This is a big step forward." No date is set yet for the first try-out of the new agreement.
The new pool plan calls for using a Canon 5D Mark II camera in the "silent" mode, mirror locked up, using Live View and a silencing blimp. The one pool photographer will shoot "hand-held" and hopefully a second camera, a remote that is in a blimp also, will be mounted on or adjacent to the television camera to get the "head-on" view that is seen on TV, Mills said.
"Getting the head-on, just like TV, is key," he said.
"We're going to work with the White House to have a 'kit' designated for this purpose, with a tripod and blimp, and have it be kept at the White House. We'll take it with us on the plane when the President travels," Mills said.
The new agreement comes in the aftermath of the photographs of President Barack Obama that were taken after his televised speech announcing the death of Osama bin Laden.
When Obama addressed the world on May 1 to announce the death of bin Laden, five still photographers were not allowed to photograph the live address but were instead ushered into the East Room afterwards. There, the President re-enacted the first 30 seconds of his speech for photographers.
Although the photographs were accompanied by captions that spelled out the details of the circumstances, that the photos were not taken during the actual address but afterwards, many newspapers and magazines and Web sites published the pictures assuming that the images were real, not staged.
During the live address, only White House photographers Pete Souza and Chuck Kennedy were in the East Room. Kennedy photographed the speech using his camera in the "silent" mode by locking up the mirror and using Live View. Souza shot from a different position. Their photographs (at right) were distributed on the White House live Flickr photo feed.
A public discussion over the veracity of the press images ensued over the next few days, and some members of mainstream media organizations and the wire services that have been covering the White House for decades seemed to defend the practice, saying that it's been done that way for many administrations. While not preferred, they said, the opportunity to have some kind of a photograph versus no photographs at all was the foundation of their defense.
The White House put a bit of a damper on the debate on May 12 when deputy press secretary Josh Earnest announced that the long-running practice of having the President re-enact televised speeches had officially come to an end.
"We've concluded that this arrangement is a bad idea," Earnest said, which in effect changed decades of White House policy.
"I hope we can solve this without it being contentious," he told News Photographer magazine a few days before the talks with the Correspondents' Association were scheduled to take place.
While press corps insiders have been long aware of how photographs were traditionally made before or after live televised presidential address, the practice seems to have been little-known to the general public outside of Washington's Beltway. That is, until Reuters photographer Jason Reed wrote a Blog about the bin Laden speech. Public attention was then drawn to the White House practice, resulting in their decision to discontinue staging such scenes.
Earnest told News Photographer after the decision, "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."
The press corps that photographically covers the White House has been dragging their feet for some time over this potential pool agreement because each member has wanted their own photographer to have access to the President. Meanwhile the White House has continued to object to having a large group of photographers inside when the President is on live television, not only because of the noise of hundreds of shutter clicks but also because of their fear that the photographers' motion might distract him at a key moment in the live speech.
The wire services and newspapers' objection to a pool agreement was based, they've said, on limiting their access to the President. But their choice, after the bin Laden decision, seems to have been to agree to this pool agreement or face having no pictures.
"Having a pool photographer is better than none at all," Ron Sachs, the president of the White House Press Photographers Association, said today.
"To their credit, Pete [Souza] and Chuck [Kennedy] showed the way we can shoot this live," Sachs said. "As long as it's silent, there are no objections. We owe our thanks to the White House and Pete for working with us and showing us how to do it."
"We're pleased that the parties were able to reach an agreement that both honors the principals of an independent press as well as the logistical demands of the situation," NPPA president Sean D. Elliot said today.
"Hopefully this can lead to future positive outcomes in relations between the press and the White House."
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