One of the images below is of President Obama delivering his historic “justice has been done” address live to the nation on Sunday night. The other image is of President Obama re-reading a portion of that address in front of a group of photographers shortly after delivering the full address to the nation (so that the photographers could get a shot of the president appearing to deliver his historic “justice has been done” address live to the nation).

Which is the reenactment photo and which is the real deal? In which image is history being made and in which is history being made up? (**Answer at the end of this post).
















When you hear “reenactment,” perhaps you think “battles of the Civil War” or “crime segments on Dateline NBC.” You should also, apparently, be thinking “presidential addresses.”

Reuters photographer Jason Reed yesterday blogged about the experience of being called in to the White House late on Sunday to cover an imminent statement from the president. From Reed’s post:

As President Obama continued his nine-minute address in front of just one main network camera, the photographers were held outside the room by staff and asked to remain completely silent. Once Obama was off the air, we were escorted in front of that teleprompter and the President then re-enacted the walk-out and first 30 seconds of the statement for us.

After reading Reed’s post this morning, I wrote this on Twitter:

After prez ended live speech Sun. night, he “re-enacted…first 30 secs of statement” for photogs. (Really? Unusual?) http://reut.rs/kroEXx

And then I set out to answer my own questions by trying to track down some of the photographers who were at the White House on Sunday night. Before I could get very far, Poynter’s Al Tompkins posted a very detailed explanation addressing more or less everything I was hoping to find out (as well as several things that hadn’t even occurred to me).

To summarize Tompkins: Photographers weren’t allowed to photograph the real presidential address “because of the noise from the camera shutters and the placement of the teleprompter,” which “means the photograph that appeared in many newspapers Monday morning of Obama speaking may have been the staged shot, captured after the president spoke,” and, apparently, “this type of staging has been going on for decades.” Typically, photographers “disclose the re-enactment” in captions, though “not all newspapers reprinted those disclosures.” And, I’d add, not all news consumers actually read captions (lesson learned!).

Tompkins concludes:

It is time for this kind of re-enactment to end. The White House should value truth and authenticity. The technology clearly exists to document important moments without interrupting them. Photojournalists and their employers should insist on and press for access to document these historic moments.

In the meantime, anyone who uses these recreations should clearly disclose to the reader the circumstances under which they were captured.

On all points: agreed. And, in this case, the photo captions don’t “clearly disclose to the reader the circumstances under which they were captured.” Not entirely. For example, here is how Reed’s Reuters image was officially captioned:

U.S. President Barack Obama is pictured after announcing live on television the death of Osama bin Laden, from the East Room of the White House in Washington May 1, 2011.

“Pictured” doing what? Something that looks like an awful lot like announcing to the nation the death of Osama bin Laden. (Re-enacting!)

Here is the AP’s caption:

President Barack Obama reads his statement to photographers after making a televised statement on the death of Osama bin Laden from the East Room of the White House in Washington, Sunday, May 1, 2011.

But the president only read, according to Reed, about thirty seconds of his statement to photographers. He read—reenacted—just long enough to allow photographers to get the shot. This caption doesn’t convey that.

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Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.