National Archives doctors photo to remove Trump criticism

I’ve read that the Soviet censors intentionally did a less than perfect job when they were altering photographs. You couldn’t tell what had been removed by looking at the retouched pictures but you could see that something had been removed.

The government wanted people to know what it was doing. It wanted to warn potential opponents that the government was capable of not only killing them but also of erasing them from records after their death. They wanted people to know they were rewriting history.

Ah, but that edited photo was not part of the formal collection of the Soviet archives. It was just a promotional photo… or something.

I don’t necessarily agree with their decision, but I can see why they might have done it. They were kind of in a no win situation. Their goal was to promote their show without getting bogged down in the partisan political crossfire that permeates out everything. If they left it in, then every right wing new outlet would jump on the story that leftist deepstaters have taken over the national archives are engaged in a partisan operation to take down Trump, to be followed by presidential tweet and senate investigation of their department, and firing of whomever authorized the photo. It’s probably better odds to hope that no one notices the omission than to hope that no one notices the inclusion.

Then simply don’t display that image at all. Pick a different image that is relevant to what is being archived. Don’t censor an image in your display, as that communicates that your archive is also going to be censored.

I agree with this. Or they could label it as being NSFW and display it.