Fun With the Press

One thing I am endlessly fascinated with is how the press chooses two things. The first is story placement and how long to run a story. The second, and subject of this blog is pictures they choose to use, especially for really well known people that must have hundreds of file photos. I remember when Condeleeza Rice was in the middle of the controversy as to whether she would testify before Congress or not. While she was refusing to testify, cnn.com had a very dour looking picture of her, with her arms folded across her chest. But, when they ran the story saying she had just agreed to testify, suddenly it was a much more genial picture of her. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, so I'm not going to accuse cnn.com of putting politics into their picture-choosing, I just think it's interesting. Is real thought put into it, is it random, a subconcious choice by the picture-person, two different people choosing the pictures, etc, etc, etc..


So, with that background you may understand that I almost fell out of my chair laughing when I saw the picture cnn.com put up for the lead story of Sen. Edwards admitting his extramarital affair:


See what I mean? I'd say it's a pretty darn good picture of him and about the worst picture in the world of her. I imagine there are not nearly as many pictures of her, but there are other pictures. How the heck did they decide to place those two pictures together?
Whatever the reason, keep your eyes open when perusing the news sites. It's pretty interesting!