WashTimes Editor Solomon Regrets Foul-Up Over Pic Of Obama’s Daughters
John Solomon, the editor of The Washington Times, says in an interview that he regrets that his paper’s Web site ran a photo of Obama’s daughters along with a story about murdered school-children in Chicago, blaming it on a technological foul-up.
The photo of Obama’s daughters appeared yesterday with this story reporting that a record number of schoolkids had been killed in Chicago this year. Bloggers flagged the photo, with Gawker opining: “This is just plain creepy.”
After Media Matters jumped on it, suggesting it was another example of right-wing media hinting at violence towards Obama, the photo was taken down.
But Solomon says that no human individual paired the pic with the story, that a technological foul-up was to blame, and that the paper is tweaking its photo selection software to make sure this doesn’t happen again.
“The theme engine, through automation, grabbed a photo it thought was relevant, and attached it to the story,” Solomon says, acknowledging that the photo had gone up without a person seeing it. “There was no editorial decision to run it. As soon as it was brought to our attention, we pulled it down.”
Solomon also conceded that the automated system the paper has in place to pick photos doesn’t have a tight enough screening process, and said steps were being taken to fix that.
“We regret that the technology has let us down in this case,” he said, “and are working to make sure that the [photo] matches are more relevant in the future.”
Such foul-ups are a peril of automated photo selection — remember the Osama pics paired with Obama stories during the campaign? — but this was a particularly bad one.
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That was definitely in poor taste. And had it been any other paper, I would believe the “technical issue” excuse. But the Washington Times being a right leaning paper with a history of jabbing the left, I’m not exactly mollified by the explanation.
Technical foul up? Really.
That was one of the weirdest one of those picture/headline juxtapositions, ever. You don’t do that with the president’s small daughters. You just don’t – you’re more careful if you have any sense at all.
Sorry not buying it. I am pretty sure that the software uses tags to find pictures and I doubt that pictures of the President’s kids would have tags that would apply to a story on kids getting killed. But hey thats just me being skeptical of the Moonie Times.
Having worked at major Web publishing operations I find it highly dubious that an automated process publishes the main picture on the front page. If that is true, then their editorial process is inadequate. Some person must choose which story goes on the front page, and a picture is typically associated with or an attribute of a story. And before you hit publish on that new story, presumably a human being has reviewed it — and therefore the associated picture. A pure technical glitch seems hightly, highly unlikely and just a convenient excuse to hide behind.
It should be safe to assume that other sites use the same “theme engine.” Why don’t we see similar “mistakes” from these sites?
OK, wait. The newspaper uses software to select a stock photo in these cases. The software that picks the “elementary school kid” photo grabs the most famous elementary school kids in the country. That error makes sense on a technical level.
But no one looks at the front page between the software picking photos and the thing going to print? Really? No editor looks at it, or tech guy, or anyone at all? No last-second idiot check? Are they really that hurting that they’ve cut staffing that far? I mean, content issues aside, I’d at least want a few people to check for cropping/scaling artifacts*, and at least one of them would say “Hey, that’s the Obamas!”
* – For the non-graphics people, these are errors that occur when only using part of a picture (like accidentally cutting off half the face or something) or resizing a picture (stretching a shot out wider to make it fit in a spot or just making it too big or too small for the resolution)
They’re just so busy over at the Wash Times – you know, with the HUGE circulation and the hours spent fact-checking – they just don’t have TIME to select photos manually.
Does the automated picture finder write the photo captions too? Not buying the explanation after reading the caption, some one had to write it.
Lame excuse…Washington Times = FAIL!
Thanks ZachPruckowski. Your post convinces me that they are downright lying.
definitely part of the right wingnut conspiracy – their denials prove it.
No arguing that this was an EPIC FAIL here, but yes, the picture likely DID have tags that were relevant – it was likely tagged “kids” and “Chicago” (I believe I remember seeing this same picture shortly after the election when Barack took his daughters to school – like the following Wednesday or Thursday – it stuck in my mind because of how great I felt, as a mom, about what a normal dad we’d just elected). There are often 10-20 different tags associated with that particular photo, not just the girls’ names but also girl, girls, kid, kids, elementary (and even possibly the name of the school if they were being dropped off), school, etc. If the photographer was one of the international press that was following at the time, it could also have the tags in other languages (I know this because a Dutch photographer caught an image of Biden holding my son and emailed it to me – that one picture had about 50 tags!)
So the only clearly nefarious thing going on here is the outsourcing of our brains.
The ‘unfortunate software glitch’ excuse sounds reasonable enough to me, until you find out that the photo was actually captioned, as noted by no more mister nice bloge, here: http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2009/05/anyone-else-find-this-creepy-preview-of.html.
The caption, which became visible when you clicked the photo on the Washington Times’ website, read, “ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTOGRAPHS The Obama daughters (above) – Sasha, 7, and Malia, 10 – attended the private University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. This school year 36 of the city’s school children have been killed.”
Someone had to write that copy, and therefore knowingly associate the photo with that story.
Inexcusable.
What I don’t understand is WHY John Solomon is referred too as an “editor”. Clearly there is no such job description at the Washington Times.
What Joe said. The picture was captioned with the shootings. It blows the excuse out of the water. Someone put that caption into that photo unless they also have that automated.
I don’t see how automated captions is really possible. If a computer could generate original copy, what would be the point of employing writers?
All I CAN SAY IS “GOD IS WATCHING YOU” YOU WILL BE JUDGED!
This begs the question: WTF is the editor’s job if not to look at the pages between when they are created and when they are published?
Paired with the caption, it’s pretty clear what the Washington Times was saying: “Obama’s kids went to a nice safe private school while other children were being gunned down, which makes Obama responsible for the deaths of those children.” It’s a pretty common why-don’t-you-rich-lefties-send-your-kids-to-public-schools smear. But adding the picture gave it that extra flavor of assholishness.
What the rest said. First, no reputable web site relies entirely on software to select photos (not even the BBC which has been hit by variants of this problem on several occasions). Second, the caption blows the explanation out of the water.
You would think at least the the Washington Times would have a firing editor who could be blamed for screwups like this.
These bright adorable little girls used as pawns? Does this surprise any one?
I think not, in light of Liz (Evil Monster’s daughter) Cheney accusing our president of “siding with terrorists” last week.
Well, heck. For some people they all look the same doncha know!
In regards to the caption, you’d almost certainly store the picture in your database with a basic caption or at least details of who is in the picture and the copyright info. An automated caption would have basically the first half of the caption. A computer could write “Malia Obama (7) and Sasha Obama (10) in Chicago; AP Photos, 2009″ automatically using a template.
It’s the second half of the caption that’s likely editor-written, and the fact that the two parts fit together is what’s suspicious. The mention of the private school likely isn’t a detail recorded with a photo of them against a Secret Service van, and thus is likely editor-added. Therefore, the caption writer must have been aware that the photo was of Malia and Sasha.
Wanta bet the paper already has their obituaries written, too?
I’d like to see exactly what “key words” were on those images.
Yeah, that’s common enough practice.
But these people pray for trouble for the Obamas every night.
Given that Solomon was a disingenuous sack of **** when he worked for the AP, and when he worked for the Post, it’s hard to see why he’d stop being a disingenuous sack of **** as editor of the Washington Times.
Do you do all your own writing? Or do you outsource some of it? I’m looking for some similar content for my blog! These are great posts!
Finally, the answers that I was looking for! Cheers mate.
I thought that you would have a bit more feedback posted but anyway, great blog.
I usually don