On Tuesday, the British press was rather soft on Princess Kate. However, the retouched photo he claimed responsibility for is a communication disaster and casts doubt on the information being shared by the future royal couple.
The release of a photo of Kate Middleton smiling and surrounded by her children on British Mother’s Day on Sunday was supposed to end rumors and speculation about her nearly two-month absence from public life after major abdominal surgery.
However, the discovery of multiple changes to this photo, its removal, agreed to by the five major press agencies that published it, and an apology from Kate, who took responsibility saying she was “trying to edit”, made the whole thing; opposite effect.
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This Kensington Palace operation is a “PR disaster”, a public relations disaster, sums it up Daily Mail: Tuesday on the front page. The British press is quite understanding of the star couple of the monarchy, Kate and William. “Leave him alone,” says the tabloid Sun.
Credibility in the information distilled by Kensington Palace now appears to be in tatters. “In the current context, any manipulation of the image, even slight and without the intention to mislead, can raise suspicions,” says Chris Morris, director of the verification site Full. Fact: “Conspiracy theories arise when there is an information vacuum, so if you want to be believed, you have to be transparent.”
Retouching in the last century
However, the manipulation of royal portraits is not entirely new; last century, Windsor’s official photographer Cecil Beaton made adjustments to get the perfect shot, recalls royal biographer Hugo Vickers. Telegraph:. Recently, a Christmas portrait of the Welsh family in 2023 or a photo of Queen Elizabeth II and her husband Philip in 2020 showed some inconsistencies: a missing finger, an extra leg, an oddly lit hand.
“It’s getting harder and harder for the public to believe a word they spread (now a photo). It seems almost impossible to get to this stage,” commented royal biographer Omid Scobi, who is close to Harry and Meghan, who broke with the monarchy.
Reliable ?
Kate has a habit of publishing “loving” photos, especially of her children. But “in an age of disinformation (…), who can we believe if even the royal family provides medical photos,” asks journalist Hannah Furness. Telegraph:. The sequence will call into question the princess’s peaceful recovery after her surgery, the cause of which has never been revealed. Especially since the Kensington Palace refused to publish the unretouched photo. According to former BBC reporter Peter Hunt, “people will now be asking themselves if they can be trusted the next time they publish information about the health of members of the royal family”, and that was when King Charles III was diagnosed with cancer.
A new photo taken by two royal photographers on Monday afternoon showed the princess in a car alongside Prince William. The fever has not subsided, with netizens immediately condemning the manipulated photo. Kate’s leaked photo episode follows a week of confusion that saw Prince William skip the official engagement for mysterious “personal reasons” and the announcement of Kate attending a military parade in June pulled from the official schedule just hours later. publication. Some netizens then stepped into the information void, specifically claiming that the princess’s face had been copied and pasted from the front page. Vogue:or that her sweater is not sold in the color she is wearing in the photo.
Source: Le Figaro
