So I couldn’t help but notice a weird little trend among the stories summarizing last night’s presidential debate. The trend being that while the photos news outlets have selected to accompany their stories generally make Barack Obama seem calm/dignified/sane, the John McCain photos make the Arizona senator seem angry. Or petulant. Or just-plain-crazy. Or some combination thereof.
There’s Stern-n-Severe McCain at the Miami Herald…
…and Get-Off-My-Damned-Porch-You-Stinkin-Kids McCain at the Boston Globe…
…and I-Will-Turn-This-Car-Around-Right-Now-I-Mean-It McCain at The New York Times…
…and Freakishly Giddy McCain, also at the Times…
…and Hey-You-Over-There-I-Just-Ate-a-Handful-of-Sour-Patch-Kids-And- My-They-Really-Have-a-Bite-to-Them McCain at the LA Times…
…and, finally, Hey-‘That-One’-Isn’t-It-Obvious-I-Don’t-Like-You- Get-Your-Paws-Off-Me McCain at The Washington Post.
Anyhow. Photo editors. Since I imagine you must have had hundreds of decent McCain/Obama photos to choose from for your stories today—photos that were either equally flattering or equally not-flattering to both candidates—I can only assume that: 1). you have a passage-aggressive message you want to send about McCain, or, 2). you’ve been taking his campaign’s mockery of the media personally. If it’s the latter, though, don’t worry! All that’s just a campaign gimmick! I’m sure when this is all over, you’ll once again be the senator’s special “little jerks“…provided he doesn’t see all these unflattering pictures you’ve published of him. Because, if he does, he’s gonna get crazy mad…
As a page designer, and someone who saw basically all the photos that moved over the AP wire, I can assure you that most of the photos were indeed one of two kinds: 1. McCain looking cooky with Obama looking serene; 2. McCain looking pretty normal, and Obama ... looking pretty normal. Sorry, but after watching the debate, the photos seemed to tell the story of what I saw.
Posted by Jeremiah on Wed 8 Oct 2008 at 08:35 PM
Great post! I find it unfortunate how often the headline or the photographs dictate the whole tone of an article. Unfortunately, I do believe there is a bias here in favor of Obama, as we all saw the same happen between Hillary and Obama during the primaries. While neither Hillary nor McCain may be "spring chickens" like Obama, that does not mean that equally flattering photographs do not exist. I challenge anyone to find even half as many "negative" or unflattering photos of Obama in mainstream venues as there are for McCain or Hillary.
Posted by whysoharsh on Thu 9 Oct 2008 at 11:59 AM
This essay is predicated upon a spurious supposition that numerous photos exist showing McCain and Obama looking equally good. That's just silly. Obama is taller, slimmer, younger, more handsome and healthy. McCain is shorter, fatter, older, less vital, less mobile and quite badly scarred by numerous surgeries. These are not partisan assertions, they're unequivocally factual. Whether Americans should base their vote on which candidate is more photogenic is certainly a matter for dispute. The fact that one candidate is much more photogenic than the other, quite frankly, is not. Any attempt by photo-editors to bridge this attractiveness gap by selecting pictures that support some false equivalence would be a far greater exercise of editorial manipulation than that you're attempting to imply.
Posted by DanJoaquinOz on Fri 10 Oct 2008 at 09:06 AM