But would they let a photographer take photos over the shoulder of the President of the documents he has for the meeting?
I don’t think the photo is legit and if it is legit I don’t think it needed to be published.
I am inclined to think it is real, mostly because I don’t see how this could turn out to be embarassing to the President. He writes a note asking for a pit stop. So?
Maybe it’s a real picture, but they changed the words with Photoshop or something.
At least the guy who faked the National Guard memos had an idea of what he wanted to accomplish. God knows I don’t want to be as venal/gulllible/publicly humilated as CBS, but a note requesting a bathroom break? I should care about this because…?
Regards,
Shodan
What makes you think they wouldn’t allow it at a public meeting?
So far, it seems to me that the evidence tends to show that it is legitimate. Furthermore, I see no reason to doubt that at such a meeting either the president might have to ask for a pause for a bathroom break or someone in his delegation might have to ask for one. There’s no shame in this game.
So, fine, don’t post it on your Web site or publish it in your newspaper. That’s the beauty of freedom of speech. Those who feel like publishing such a picture can do so without asking anyone’s permission. And, you know what, who cares? It’s not like it’s actually invading anyone’s privacy. This is an act by public officials at a public meeting. No one is following anyone into the toilet here. No one’s setting up secret cameras. No one’s peeking through someone’s bathroom window.
OK - here is another pic that shows the back of the “President’s” head. Looks like the same pic from a wider angle.
A few things strike me as bogus:
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Does the leader of the free world write with a pencil you would find in grade school? (no comments on the President’s intelligence here!) I would think the leader of the free world would use at least a MontBlanc…
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If you are writing on a loose piece of paper with your right hand, don’t you hold it steady with your left?
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That is one dark writing pencil! Looks like it wrires like a Sharpie.
I still call BS.
Either way, true or not, this is not a reflection on the President, but on a media who finds this notable.
I catch a strong whiff of BS.
There were no other photos in the hundreds I’ve seen of the event from a vantage point like the purported Bathroom Memo.
The head and shoulder are severely out of focus, but you can see the fingernails and print perfectly. That makes me think that a “GWB” head and shoulder were photoshopped in.
Other photos from the event show GWB with a black-and-silver pen in his hand, though I have seen one that might show yellow pencils on the desk.
I saw an "uncropped’ version of the photo that appeared to show the microphone stand in front of the President, but it had a wooden base and there was no evidence of the national name plaque that sits in front of all delegation desks (and is visible in other photographs of Bush that afternoon). The “uncropped” version:
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/050914/ids_photos_ts/r404176213.jpg
shows too much table in front of the President. Those delegation tables are tiny. Most of them have awful green blotters, but the President has a snazzy black one.
The text looks photoshopped; it’s too black, and the paper appears photo-white, with no texture.
If it’s a photoshop job, it’s a pretty good one in terms of getting the table elements similar; light wood, microphone stand, black blotter. But the angle of the head and shoulders, and the text, appear bogus to me.
Actually, all it should make you realise is that you apparently don’t know very much about taking pictures in low light with telephoto lenses.
This picture was obviously taken from quite a distance away, and probably required a long telephoto lens, perhaps on the order of 300mm if it was shot from a press gallery above the floor of the meeting. And, given that it was taken indoors, the picture probably required a wide aperture, perhaps around f2.8.
Anyone who’s spent any time taking pictures using these parameters—long lens wide open—knows that the depth of field is very shallow, and that the differential in focus that you find so unlikely is actually quite expected in such conditions.
I have no particular position on the picture’s authenticity one way or the other, but your analysis of it is pretty thin.
For one, the photographer is really close to the President. Another thing is that even though it is a public meeting, the President and his ‘handlers’ probably don’t want his notes photographed. Can you show me an over the shoulder photo of the notes of the sitting POTUS?
Just becasue something can be published does not mean that it should be. It used to be all the news that fit to print. Then it became all the news that fits. Now ALL of the NEWS fits. All of it. Every bit of information does not need to be put out there. It diminishes the real news. More people now ‘know’ that the president asked for a bathroom break than know what the meeting he was attending at the largest gathering of national leaders was about.
It is called a ‘sense of decency’. Not censorship. Reuters should have one. This did not need to be published. Not to me, not to you, not to anyone. It cheepens the President, the meeting he was attending and it cheepens me.
This is not a free speech issue. New services should be putting out NEWS.
I, for one, would not want to be behind either of those circumstances. Not even if a prehensile rectum is involved.
Okay I hate Bush’s policy, but you guys have to check out that blog link from earlier in the thread. Its obvious that Bush doesn’t write in that mixture of capitals and lowercase like that. His handwriting dosen’t seem like he cares much to making it neat, so I doubt you could argue that he writes in cursive for more formal reasons and in all caps for other things. I think he is replying, to be honest, because the lower cursive parts seem to be more similar to his style. Also, I doubt that it is condi writing to him to ask permission, becuase her handwriting isn’t like that either. Judging from his past handwriting, I doubt the request is his. I think the photo is legit, because on Snopes it seems that the photographer is an experienced journalist, but someone took some liberties with the captions.
Anyway, its kind of funny, not because its Bush, but because its interesting to see these people that we think of as icons (president, stars, etc) are similar to us in a few ways.
I think the integrity of the actual image is verified by the fact that it was taken by a professional of 12 years and also by the fact that it was on the Reuters wire. Who would ever want to fake such a stupid photo, risking their reputation. Makes no sense. The caption is likely the culprit. But the question remains: who would have written it?
How do you know? It could be taken with a zoom lens from any distance.
Maybe the photographer didn’t ask the handlers.
Isn’t that what this is? Did you mean another photo?
I don’t see how. I think everyone already knew he was a human being who urinates and defecates.
Can you tell me who he is meeting with and what they are discussing?
Without cheating?
What makes you think so?
If the press gallery is above the floor of a meeting then there are going to be shots of writing. Do you think there are “handlers” checking out each shot that a photographer is taking? Do you think they should? Probably, they limit where a photographer stand and let him takes what he wants from that viewpoint. It seems to me in a place like the United Nations, there are well-established protocols for this. If the photographer can see the notes from the press gallery, he can see them.
I think you’re overreacting, each day, hundreds if not thousands of “non-news” photos of the president and other officials are taken.
Is it news that the president walked from his helicopter to the White House?
Is it news that Scott McClellan is avoiding giving meaningful answers to questions, once again?
Is it really news when the president’s people set up a blatant non-news photo-op or other publicity appearance?
Not really.
Those daily images that do nothing but help propaganda, those are the ones that make me upset. This one, not so much.
Thousands of non-news images and reports are published of the president on a daily basis. This just happened to be a shot that aroused some curiosity, because, well, it’s kind of funny to see the president discussing potty breaks in writing, but it’s not really harming anyone to let the public see it, neither the president, nor his staff, nor the public.
How does this compare to all the horrific invasions of privacy perpetrated on Bill Clinton? How does this compare to the press’s eager publication of casual defamation on a daily basis by Clinton’s political opponents? This is something that Bush was doing in public on a harmless topic (either asking for a bathroom break or responding to someone else’s request for one) while exercising a public function (participating in a diplomatic meeting). No big deal.
Why does that matter?
I don’t get what you mean by tiny delegation tables. Are you thinking about the General Assembly? Here a pic of the dias in the Security Council. Light brown table, substantial depth, black blotters.
I’ve been in the Security Council chambers, and as I recall, it’s not exactly the biggest room there is. The General Assembly hall at the UN is quite large – like large opera house sized – but if I had to guess, I’d say the dimentions of the Security Council chambers is roughly in line with a smaller high school gym. There are a substantial number of seats facing the dias, but to either side, it is not a great distance between the sides of the dias and the walls of the room.
In fact, you can do a virtual tour of the chamber here. Quicktime is required for this. You can see that the second story booths on either side of the dias are not very far away – certainly close enough for a photographer to have a decent shot at taking a picture of a note.
And it boggles my mind why Reuters would Photoshop a note and put it out on the wires. It’s not like Reuters is run by Michael Moore. If it is faked, then it should be a tremendous blow to Reuters’ credibility.
I concure. This seems the most reasonable explanation that fits the observable facts.
It doesn’t boggle the mind half as much as why any news source would find it worthy of publiciation at all. What’s next his to do list, or maybe a list of groceries he wants the secret service to pick up?
…and I concur that “concur” is not spelled “concure”! :smack:
It kind of looks like, “Is this possible?”
It obviously titillates enough to have this thread run to two pages. But whether publishing it is in poor taste or not has nothing whatsoever to do with its authenticity.
This is pretty much where I am. In the OP of the thread that I started on the subject, my only comment was:
The possibility that the photo itself is fake seems almost too incredible to give much consideration to. There are too many people with careers and reputations to protect along the way from the floor to the public. There’s nothing technical about the photo itself that should raise any doubts amongst sophisticated critics.
As for the subject of the photo, it’s so banal and commonsensical that we should take the existence of this type of communication for granted. Even in the Corridors of Power, you’re bound to bump into people who’ve just stepped out to answer the call of nature. I don’t think anyone thinks that Security Council meetings are casual affairs in which people come and go from their seats willy-nilly, and even with careful preparation, urgencies that don’t conveniently fit the schedule are certain to arise.
It does seem possible that it’s a snapshot of a dialogue. Newcrasher protests that the president appears to be signing the note “W.” I don’t see this at all. It looks more like the beginning of a new line, starting with “W…” This would make sense if it were a back-and-forth: