Ramblings

Andrew in 2013 (Photo: Titanic Belfast)

You’ve seen the photo of course. Not this one, that one. The whole world has seen the photo. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor cowers in the back of a police vehicle, hopelessly failing at not being seen. I would show it here, but I don’t think Reuters would like that.

He looks scared and haunted. The perfect image of power, privilege and wealth being cut down to size, and with characteristic schadenfreude (I can’t believe the Germans coined a word for that before we British did) it was gleefully published by the Daily Mail, The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Star, The Daily Express, The i Paper, The Sun and The Daily Telegraph, on the BBC and in media outlets all around the world. It has even been put on display at the Louvre.

The photographer who took the picture, Phil Noble, has become a celebrity: he has done a lap of honour on Reuters YouTube channel, another on the BBC, and told the story of his triumph in many other places. The BBC published another fawning piece about the picture where their journalist Matt Precey breathlessly tells the full story of how he was standing next to Noble when the photo was taken.

Noble has certainly done his job well. Paparazzi will paparazz, we can’t expect anything different from him. But there is one question I would put to him.

Why did you leave the red eye in?

I’m no expert, but it’s trivially easy to remove red eye from a photo. This question is rhetorical of course. We know exactly why. The cowering and the fear is all Andrew’s, but the photo derives a good part of its power from the demonic light shining from his right eye – an accidental product of flash photography. The red eye was left there to make him look (even) worse, and frankly it’s so effective that a paparazzo might be tempted to add it when it wasn’t there. But they’re highly ethical chaps, so that wouldn’t happen.

That nice fellow Phil was just doing what he does. But should we not expect higher standards from some of our media outlets? Much of the press is still happy to wallow in its gutter. But surely The Guardian, The Times and the BBC have higher standards. Why did they leave the red eye in? Probably because they wanted the same dramatic, albeit misleading photo that everyone else was showing. But there is another, more surprising reason: they weren’t allowed to take it out.

Reuters states that they maintain strict standards “to ensure the authenticity and integrity of their photojournalism.” This is reasonable: they don’t want customers misrepresenting their stories or photographs. But astonishingly, removal of red eye is regarded as “doctoring” as it is “an alteration of the physical reality captured at the time”, and so it is not allowed.

WHAT? The red eye was not captured by the camera, it was created by the camera. It could never be seen by the naked eye: by removing it you are not flattering the subject as you might be by, say, airbrushing the image. You are merely removing an unpleasant artificial effect created by the flash. The deception is to leave it in place.

Of course, this bizarre rule suits the media, who have no choice but to use an unrealistic, nightmarish but dramatic image on their screens and front pages. The enthusiasm with which the media used the photo and then followed up with awe-struck “making of” features suggests they were happy to leave the photo as it is.

I do not defend Mountbatten-Windsor. He was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office by sharing confidential information with Jeffrey Epstein. And god knows what he got up to at Epstein’s parties. Illegal or not, it was pretty damned sleazy. He has consistently denied any wrongdoing, but I’m going to take a wild swing and say he sounds like a nasty piece of work.

By all means, hold the rich and powerful to account. Please. Show us their descent into shame and misery. Gloat over their downfall, if you must. But why do you have to do it dishonestly?