The NYT’s photo editor defended the pic saying: “There was no crop, this was the photo as we received it.” One huge problem with that defense, she received the photo from Doug Mills, who works for the New York Times.
Via NY Times:
Many readers wrote to me over the weekend, upset that a front-page photo of President Obama and his family leading a commemorative march in Selma, Alabama did not include former president George W. Bush and his wife, Laura. The Bushes were also in the front line of marchers.
Twitter was ablaze with criticism of The Times, many conservative news organizations wrote critical articles — and my email inbox overflowed. Some readers said they were canceling their Times subscriptions. Others were simply disappointed.
Keith Merwin wrote: “As a southerner and a voter, I was deeply hurt that the New York Times would create a front page where they edited a photo such as they did for their Selma anniversary article. Cropping the picture to remove President Bush was wrong!” And he added that he wanted editors to apologize and “retract” the photo treatment. […]
I asked The Times’s ranking photo editor, Michele McNally, about the photo this morning.
“There was no crop,” she said. “This was the photo as we received it.”
She sent me an email from the photographer, Doug Mills, who has been shooting White House and presidential photographs for many years.
Mr. Mills wrote to photo editors on Sunday to describe his process after The Times received an inquiry from Politico. Mr. Mills wrote that he never sent the photo desk a photograph that included the Bushes, and his reasons were technical ones.