In this post, I’m including photos issued by Kensington Palace for various occasions and events. Some KP pics from the Princess of Wales’s various “work” (including the much-loved pie chart pics), some pics for various holidays and birthdays and at least one photo issued by KP after the death of QEII, in which “Kate” took a photo of QEII with all of her grandchildren, a photo which still looks extremely fake. Oh, and I’m including the Kensington Palace-released portraits, taken by Paolo Roversi, for Kate’s 40th birthday in 2022, because those were crazy air-brushed. I bring you this wealth of KP-issued photos because, apparently, CNN has announced that they’re conducting a review of all palace-issued photos.
CNN is reviewing all photographs handed out by Kensington Palace after the Princess of Wales admitted editing a family portrait. The American broadcaster said the picture of the Princess and her three children had been distributed for editorial purposes and that media organisations “expect those images to be accurate”.
The photograph was recalled by four of the world’s biggest picture agencies over fears it had been “manipulated”. The Princess then admitted editing the image after several inconsistencies were identified. She said that as an amateur photographer, she “occasionally experimented” and apologised for any confusion it had caused.
An analysis of the furore published online by CNN said that, like most news organisations, they “regard it as unacceptable to move, change or manipulate the pixels of an image” as it would alter the reality of the situation the image is intended to document.
“CNN is now reviewing all handout photos previously provided by Kensington Palace,” it added. A decision about any action will be taken when the investigation has concluded.
There have been some egregious examples of heavily manipulated photos coming from KP before now, but the reason why those photos were never called out was because they weren’t released as a significant “proof of life” during a particularly weird missing-princess storyline. Like, the photo of QEII and her white grandkids (taken by Kate) was so obviously heavily edited, but it wasn’t issued as “look, QEII is still alive, we promise!” There were no constitutional implications. Oh, adjacent to this, the British Press Photographers’ Association released a pretty scathing statement about Kate’s Photoshop debacle:
The British Press Photographers’ Association applauds the actions of the major agencies who have had the courage to withdraw the recently distributed image showing Her Royal Highness The Princess of Wales and her children by issuing a ‘kill notice’. Their suspicions that the photograph had been digitally manipulated are well-founded and it is important for the reputation of press photography that they have acted as swiftly and decisively as they have.
We are lead to believe that HRH The Princess of Wales has said that she edited the image and has apologised. That should not be an end to the matter however. Whether the picture was manipulated to ‘look nice’ by someone who didn’t understand the importance of truth
in images or whether there is something else behind their actions is not as important as getting the message out there that it is wrong.
The BPPA has always spoken up in favour of making sure that the public has trust in the photographs produced by our members as well as those who supply images to the news media. This has become more of an issue since pictures supplied by such a variety of sources
have become more common and we would urge all of those sources to have a look at item 1, clause i) of the Editors’ Code of Practice which says: “The press must take care not to publish inaccurate or misleading or distorted information or images, including headlines not supported by the text.”
We would urge everyone involved to make the original images available for inspection so that we can assess what has been done, make sure that it doesn’t happen again and allow this story to be the last time that manipulated images are distributed to the media.
This is an extremely harsh statement from the BPPA. Is it personal? Perhaps – they’re mad that they haven’t been called in to photograph the Wales family. But it’s also a huge professional issue for them, the fact that KP has been issuing heavily manipulated photos for years.
Photos courtesy of Kensington Palace, Avalon Red.