White House: No more photo re-enactments

Source: Associated Press

The White House said it is ending its long-running practice of having presidents re-enact televised speeches for news photographers following major addresses to the country, a little-known arrangement that fed suggestions of fakery when Barack Obama announced the death of Osama bin Laden.

After Obama's live, late-evening address from the East Room of the White House on May 1, five photographers were ushered in to shoot pictures as the president stood at the podium and re-read a few lines of his speech — a practice that news organizations have protested for years.

Even though The Associated Press and other news outlets said in captions to the photos that they were taken after the president delivered his address, many people who saw them may have assumed they depicted the speech itself. That raised questions of whether news organizations were staging an event.

... The AP, in the photo captions transmitted with pictures shot by Pablo Martinez Monsivais, said: "President Barack Obama reads his statement to photographers after making a televised statement" on bin Laden's death. Despite that, a survey by the journalism think tank Poynter Institute found that 30 of 50 newspaper front pages that used an Obama photo from the speech "implied or strongly suggested it was an image of the live address."

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110512/ap_on_re_us/us_obama_photographers

Who started this silly practice? To be sure, there's nothing inherently wrong with a post-speech photo op. But, it seems entirely designed to fulfill the wishes of either the press who want photo time, or the WH communications office, who want to control the PR message. Either way, it's unnecessary and takes the President's valuable time away from him. Either have them take pictures during the speech itself or use screen captures of the video.

Good decision by the WH to end this dumb practice.

Does anyone know who started this nonsensical tradition?

...that they don't want the photographer's flashes going off while the video is being shot?
Again, just a guess.

Not sure when this started but a possible reason for televised announcements is that the flash of bulbs could be a big distraction. Also can make it difficult for anyone to read a typed speech and could temporarily washout all text on a teleprompter. Just a thought though as to why this is done.

A printed version of a vidcap can only be reproduced at approximately 1/3 the size of the video onscreen before you start to see pixelation. So shooting film gives the editor the option of running the photo very large, say 5 or 6 columns for a front page splash. In general, I find the quality of still photos is superior, but of course there are exceptions.

I'll echo the comments of the posters above me... it's probably about avoiding the flashes during the actual speech. I find the conspiracy theories about this practice to be rather silly.

Video is public domain, the pictures the press take are owned by them.

popping while the President is addressing the nation... or having a bunch of babbling morons scream out questions while he's addressing the nation would be a distraction... Who cares?

they'll say it's an American tradition, and that Obama thinks he knows better than previous presidents.

I feel pretty good about this prediction.

nm

but okay, thanks, ya'll. I'm not going to applaud but I'm at least going to say - good going, now let's do even better and stop reporting bullshit.

This is total bullshit. His SPEECH was LIVE TELEVISION!!!!!! The photos are a memento of an event. WHAT, when photographed he sent subliminal images with his eyes that contradicted the televised speech? Seems to me the AP statement made it very clear...
AAAArrrrrrggggghhhhhh!
I do not want to be distracted by the whirring of cameras while my prez is telling me something important!
I posted a message about this several days ago, laughing that this incredible revelation (HAH) was the only thing that the likes of Drudge and Lucianne HAD on Obama.
I feel like I'm falling down the rabbit hole.

Of course, everything else takes 20 years just to file for. Brilliant.

And who cares? If people think this is staged or anything else is staged, they are going to think that. It won't change.

Whenever I saw Bush give a speech, he looked like a total fucking idiot, but if I saw a press photo, he merely looked like a complete moron. It was the added stress of actually reading that pushed the video over the edge.