Former President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura Bush, were not intentionally edited from a New York Times front-page photo featuring participants gathered for the 50th anniversary of the march on Selma, Ala., the newspaper said in response to criticism.
“Just so you know, President Bush was not cropped out, he was not in that frame because he was so far to our right,” Times photographer Doug Mills told Politico on Monday.
Social media users noted Sunday that a panoramic photo capturing Selma attendees, including President Obama and the first family, Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., and George and Laura Bush, did not make its way onto the cover of the print version of the New York Times.
Rather, a photo that excluded the Bushes was used by the Times on its front page.
Noting the critical reaction to the paper’s photo selection, and allegations the paper purposely cropped the Bushes, Times editor Margaret Sullivan responded Monday, explaining that there was nothing political about the paper’s decision and that the two photos are actually different.
“While it would have been moving and worthwhile to see both presidents in a front-page photograph, I see no evidence of politics in the handling or presentation of the photo,” she wrote.
Citing her Times colleagues, Sullivan said that Mills never sent the photo featuring the Bushes and the reason was simple: It wasn’t a good photo. Mills, along with ranking Times photo editor Michele McNally, said the picture the Grey Lady chose for page one had better lighting and was of better quality.
“Technically, [the photo including the Bushes is] a bad picture, and [Mills] didn’t even send it. [Bush] was totally overexposed,” McNally said.
Elsewhere, in an email to McNally, Mills said of the photos:
Just so you know … at the time the photo was taken, I was using a 70-200 long zoom lens. I also had a remote camera with a wide-angle lens attached to the side of the truck that took a photo at the just about the exact moment as the tighter one. As you can see, Bush was in the bright sunlight. I did not even send this frame because it’s very wide and super busy and Bush is super-overexposed because he was in the sun and Obama and the others are in the shade.
“There was no crop,” McNally flatly stated. “This was the photo as we received it.”
Mills did not respond to the Washington Examiner’srequest for comment.
