Calling it a "bad idea," the White House has decided that it will no longer re-enact speeches for still photographers, as it did the night President Obama announced the death of Osama bin Laden. That re-enactment was the subject of a Poynter.org story that sparked industry conversation about the ethics of staging photos, particularly one of such a historic event.
On May 1, continuing a practice in place for decades, the White House barred still photographers from photographing the live presidential address because of the disruption the still cameras would cause. After the speech, President Barack Obama walked down the hallway toward the microphones for a second time and spoke for a few minutes, just so still photographers could capture what they missed.
Photojournalists defended the practice to Poynter.org, in part because captions disclosed that the photos were not taken during the live speech. But the captions weren't all that clear that the photos were staged, and our audit found that in many cases those captions didn't run with the photos.
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