Back in the olden days, before digital imaging and the computer technology giving novices the ability to doctor photographs, there was a saying, “The camera doesn’t lie.”
That wasn’t true even then, as skilled photographers could use angles, shadows, light and darkroom tricks to distort or enhance photographs.
But it’s easier now than it ever was.
So it is that one defense of President Obama’s decision not to release photographs of a dead Osama bin Laden is that skeptics of his killing wouldn’t believe the photos were real.
Now there’s an interesting sidelight to that story.
A Brooklyn, N.Y., Orthodox Jewish newspaper on Monday apologized for digitally deleting Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton from a photo of President Barack Obama and his staff watching video of Navy SEALs move in on bin Laden.
The weekly Di Tzeitung, which says it doesn’t publish images of women, printed the doctored photo Friday. It issued a statement saying its photo editor hadn’t read the “fine print” accompanying the White House photo that forbade any changes. The newspaper said it has sent its “regrets and apologies” to the White House and the Department of State. Another woman, Counterterrorism Director Audrey Tomason, also was deleted from the photo.
Di Tzeitung said it has a “longstanding editorial policy” of not publishing women’s images. It explained that its readers “believe that women should be appreciated for who they are and what they do, not for what they look like, and the Jewish laws of modesty are an expression of respect for women, not the opposite.”
Try telling that to your average women’s rights advocate.
As for the photo that Di Tzeitung doctored, philosophy aside, they cut out the best part of the picture. Clinton’s eyes, with her hand over the lower part of her face, reflected more of the drama of the moment than did the expressions of the others as they watched the events unfold in real time.
