Kensington Palace No Longer ‘Trusted Source’ At AFP After Kate Middleton Photo Edit
Kensington Palace is no longer a “trusted source” for one of the biggest news agencies in the world, after it was revealed Princess of Wales Kate Middleton had edited a family photo issued on Mother’s Day.
Agence France-Presse (AFP) Global News Director Phil Chetwynd told BBC Radio 4’s Media Show that the doctored image presented a “major issue” for the agency which issued a “kill notice” and retraction of the photo after certain details betrayed it had been tampered with.
Noting the extreme nature of the call to “kill” the image Chetwynd told Media Show host Ros Atkins: “The previous kills we’ve had have been from the North Korean news agency or the Iranian news agency, just to give you some background or context.”
He continued: “All the agencies validated the photo, which clearly violated our rules because it’s actually not even very well photoshopped. There were clearly a lot of problems with the photo. So it shouldn’t have been validated. I think as soon as it was, all the photo editors and all the major agencies immediately saw there was a problem. and got together and spoke about it and say, ‘what do we do?’”
Atkin asked: “That’s interesting. So you actually, you got on the phone with each other or got on a Zoom and all talked, so it’s coordinated?”
In reply, Chetwynd explained that agencies work together in “the royal pool” since “often there’s just one photographer who will be covering a royal event for all the other agencies, bearing in mind that virtually the entire world’s media subscribes to the agency.”
“It’s a way of irrigating the whole global media,” he explained.
Pivoting, the host asked: “You said that Kensington Palace was a trusted source for you at the AFP. Is it still a trusted source?”
Chetwynd left no ambiguity: “No, absolutely not. Like with anything, when you’re let down by a source, the bar is raised and we’ve got major issues internally as to how we validated that photo. We shouldn’t have done. It violated our guidelines. And therefore, we sent out notes to all our team at the moment to be absolutely super more vigilant about the content coming across our desk, even from what we would call trusted sources.”
He went on to describe an attempt to get an original from Kensington Palace before pulling the trigger on the drastic step of a “kill notice”: “Before we killed the photo, we all sent a message saying, you know, could you give us the originals? Could you have a reply? We didn’t get a reply, so that’s why we killed the photo.”
Despite the palace not replying to the news agencies request, Middleton issued a statement through the Kensington Royal X account to “apologise for any confusion” caused by her “experiment with editing.”
