Chicago Tribune - November 21, 2002
A picture tells a thousand words on a front page Don Wycliff
Sometimes the readers say it best.
"I am neither a Democrat or Republican but--I am an American and therefore am very offended and so very disappointed by your lack of discretion and sensitivity in choosing to print that picture."
That message, sent by Olivia Pfenning of Glenview to the public editor's e-mailbox, was one of about three dozen communications that came from readers after the publication of "that picture" last Thursday across five columns at the top of Page 1. Only one of those communications was complimentary of the photo's use.
The picture in question was of President Bush and United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan. They were seated in chairs in front of a fireplace at the White House, just before their Nov. 13 meeting on UN arms inspections in Iraq.
But instead of the usual sober, serious pose, Bush was caught giving a thumbs-up signal and wearing a broad grin, part of an overall facial expression like that of a preadolescent boy when the teacher has just sat down on a whoopee cushion.
"We don't understand why you would publish such a terribly unflattering photograph of our president on your front page," North Siders Doug Snyder and Elizabeth Conway wrote.
"We're not always partisan, but we're always patriotic, and after all the effort that's been put into the UN efforts recently, we would think that your paper could pick from an abundance of potential photo-opportunities for a quality picture of Kofi Annan and President Bush. It's laughable to think that you would not [sic] publish this photograph without underlying motives. It was wrong, and when you have a sweeping ability to do what is right with the photographic eye yet you do differently, it's a real turnoff. So why did you?"
Good question--and one to be taken very seriously. Because the tone of Snyder, Conway, Pfenning and the rest was not the usual strident hyperpartisanship of those pro-Bush zealots who live to hate Clinton and find evidence of media bias. The zealots probably relished "that picture" because it confirmed their conviction that the media are against them.
These correspondents were people who expected us to be fair and objective and were heartsick that, in their view, we had failed. Like Pfenning, they were "so very disappointed" in us. Like one man who called and left a terse phone message, they found the photograph "mean-spirited," "nasty" and "well below the Tribune's standards."
So why did we do it?
Bill Parker, the associate managing editor for photography, said this photo actually gave him less anguish than many others he has recommended. Bush, he said, was a "president on a roll" and the photo reflected that.
The president's Homeland Security bill had just been passed by the House of Representatives--a headline to that effect was just below the picture. So was another headline announcing Saddam Hussein's capitulation to a UN demand to allow weapons inspectors back into Iraq--a resolution that Bush had sought and won.
And all of this, Parker noted, had happened barely a week after mid-term elections in which the president, defying historical odds, had seen his party add to its numbers and become the majority in both houses of Congress.
In such circumstances, Parker's logic went, Bush was entitled to be gleeful and the disputed picture--obtained from the syndicate Agence France-Presse--captured his happiness. For what it's worth, a spokesman at AFP's Washington office said none of the five major American papers that the syndicate monitors for its "play reports" used this photo of Bush. (Those papers are USA Today, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun and the Los Angeles Times. The last two of those are Tribune Publishing Co. newspapers.)
Three foreign newspapers--one in Montreal, one in Nigeria and one in Dubai--did use the photo, the spokesman said.
Ultimately, of course, this is not a matter of numbers, but of judgment and taste. And this is an instance, I believe, in which the readers have it right. Try as I may to read "that picture" as Parker did, my gut tells me it amounted to a Page 1 editorial in which George W. Bush was being labeled an idiot and a clown, unsuited to the presidency.
There may be a place for that in the newspaper, but it's not Page 1.