Donald Trump photo without ear bandage raises eyebrows
www.newsweek.com
Famous photographer Pete Souza has seemingly deleted his X account after a post doubting whether Trump was shot in the ear.

Updates:

Might be best for mods to lock this post at this point (is that a thing on Lemmy?) because this story is basically wrapped. The FBI says a bullet caused some ear damage. Maybe it was bullet shrapnel from a ricochet or something like that, but later photos show the teleprompters in-tact so it wasn’t shards of glass from those. Trump’s usage of the bandage (and the assassination attempt) as symbols and political tools has been discussed at length and I don’t think conspiratorial thinking beyond that is very productive. Pete Souza took his own account down after getting a lot of harassment, so no further conspiracies are needed regarding X-formerly-known-as-Twitter at this time.

A photo of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump taken on Saturday without his ear bandage has sparked a wave of speculation.

The image, taken by Alex Brandon of the Associated Press on July 27 and shared by photojournalist Pete Souza on X, formerly Twitter, shows Trump walking up an airplane staircase with an apparently fully healed ear wound just weeks after he was shot with a high-powered rifle.

Souza, known for his tenure as the chief official White House photographer for Presidents Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama, posted Brandon’s photo on his now-deactivated X account on Saturday, writing, “AP photo this morning. Look closely at his ear that was ‘hit’ by a bullet from an AR-15 assault rifle.”

Souza’s profile, @PeteSouza, which had over 200,000 followers, now reads, “This account doesn’t exist, try searching for another,” implying that he has deleted or deactivated it. If he had been banned, it would read, “Account suspended. X suspends accounts which violate the X rules.”

  • Hegar@fedia.io
    14·
    3 months ago

    I’m pretty sure a press photographer from AP knows which way around a photo is.

    • inlandempire@jlai.lu
      23·
      3 months ago

      Exactly, so I’m pretty sure a professional photographer knows which way to orient a photo to share their vision, when Eliott Erwin crops a picture of a dog with its owner, it’s not at random, there are deliberate choices made before publishing, the photographer could have taken a picture of the subject on their left side, and reversed the picture to show them walking towards the right to achieve whatever vision they had

      • some_designer_dude@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        3 months ago

        It’s bad journalistic practice to alter photos, period. Flipping horizontally is not allowed. Cropping, maybe. Complete flip? Negative.

      • 14th_cylon@lemm.ee
        3·
        3 months ago

        welcome to real world, representative of generation z.

        this is exactly why you should get your news from respectable news medium, not tiktok.

        respectable medium has journalistic standards it adheres to, as opposed to just any random person on the internet, and its goal is to pass (well, sell) the news, not “share their vision”.

        sharing your vision is happening in opinion pieces, these are clearly marked as not to be confused with news segment (and you shouldn’t lie there as well).

        https://www.ap.org/about/news-values-and-principles/telling-the-story/

        PHOTO

        We avoid the use of generic photos or video that could be mistaken for imagery photographed for the specific story at hand, or that could unfairly link people in the images to illicit activity. No element should be digitally altered except as described below.

        Minor adjustments to photos are acceptable. These include cropping, dodging and burning, conversion into grayscale, elimination of dust on camera sensors and scratches on scanned negatives or scanned prints and normal toning and color adjustments. These should be limited to those minimally necessary for clear and accurate reproduction and that restore the authentic nature of the photograph. Changes in density, contrast, color and saturation levels that substantially alter the original scene are not acceptable. Backgrounds should not be digitally blurred or eliminated by burning down or by aggressive toning. The removal of “red eye” from photographs is not permissible.

        Employees with questions about the use of such methods or the AP’s requirements and limitations on photo editing should contact a senior photo editor prior to the transmission of any image.