If a picture speaks a thousand words, then what aren't we getting when news photographers are kept out of an average of two White House events per week? That's the question behind today's story in Editor & Publisher, which reports that staged photos have "become almost a regular occurrence" as the Bush White House "limits real news coverage of the president and allows the White House to choose only those images it wants people to see."
A review of Associated Press archives found that during the entire eight years of the Clinton administration, only 100 handout photos of events were released to the press. During the first five years of Bush's presidency, more than 500 have been distributed.
The key is that each of these events was closed to news photographers.
E&P quotes Susan Walsh, AP photojournalist and president of the White House News Photographers Association: "The White House staff photographer's role is to document the president. They have now crossed the line and become public relations photographers for the administration.... [With only] one photographer whose images are approved and screened at the highest levels of the White House, you don't know what images are missing."
The photogs aren't happy about it, of course, but there's been little coverage of the problem. Indeed, some news outlets simply accept and run the handouts (e.g. of Pres. Bush looking at Katrina damage from Air Force One) without question or attribution. Dennis Brack of Black Star Publications, who has photographed each president since LBJ, told E&P, "It fools the American public into thinking they are news pictures when they are really public relations pictures."