AP Photograph
Cartoonist Kirk Anderson has me thinking more about a question raised recently in Philip Kennicott's Washington Post article.
Kennicott asks whether photojournalists become unwitting participants in the political spin process at the hands of public relations specialists and presidential image-makers? Do photojournalists have any choice but to allow themselves to be tightly managed and overtly manipulated by media handlers. I looked at this issue a little last week, but feel compelled to dig a bit deeper.
This picture illustrates how the placement and control of the media in covering presidential events is carefully constructed to produce predictably favorable images for public consumption. At these photo ops, photojournalists do not have free reign to seek out what they consider to be the best possible angle and distance from the subject.
The Associated Press is the original source of this image with bush's head nicely proportioned to the likenesses of former leaders on Mt. Rushmore. One possible reading of the signification going on here leads me to think that George Washington is place so that he looking over George W. Bush's shoulder.
AFP photo
Here is another "infamous" image illustrating the stagecraft that goes on in managing what the media and public visual consumption.
How do you think these types of staging costs US taxpayers? I can only imagine that none of this is cheap, but more research must be done before assumptions become truth.