The practice has been used for decades to avoid distracting presidents with shutter noise. | REUTERS W.H. ends practice of re-enacting

The White House has announced it will end the controversial practice of re-enacting part of presidential speeches for the sake of still photographers, after drawing criticism for doing it for President Barack Obama’s historic speech announcing the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Journalists and free speech advocates generally cheered the move, although it is not yet clear what the new arrangement for photographing presidential speeches will be.


“We have concluded that this arrangement is a bad idea,” Obama spokesman Josh Earnest told POLITICO, adding that the administration is open to working out some new arrangement with photographers.

The practice has been used for decades to avoid distracting presidents with shutter noise and jostling photographers while they are giving important addresses to the country. Following a speech, presidents often read a passage of it aloud again to give a lifelike re-enactment for photographers.

The practice violates most mainstream news organizations’ ethical rules against re-enacting photographs, but has long been seen as one of the aspects of flexibility required to cover a president.

But the practice sparked controversy when it was used on May 1, following the president’s dramatic late-night speech on bin Laden. When he had finished speaking, five photographers were brought into the room to take photos of the president reading a few lines from his speech. Several news organizations, including Reuters and the AP, made it clear in their captions that the shots they took were taken after the speech.

The controversy really began, though, when Reuters photographer Jason Reed blogged about his experience.

“As President Obama continued his nine-minute address in front of just one main network camera, the photographers were held outside the room by staff and asked to remain completely silent,” he wrote. “Once Obama was off the air, we were escorted in front of that TelePrompTer and the President then re-enacted the walk-out and first 30 seconds of the statement for us.”

That prompted questions about the practice in the journalism community, with Al Tomkpins at the Poynter Institute interviewing an array of current and former White House photographers for an in-depth report about the practice. They said it was standard, if unpopular, practice, but Tompkins pointed out that it flew in the face of the professional ethical standards for photojournalists.

“It is time for this kind of re-enactment to end,” he wrote. “The White House should value truth and authenticity. The technology clearly exists to document important moments without interrupting them. Photojournalists and their employers should insist on and press for access to document these historic moments.”

The AP reported that its director of photography, Santiago Lyon, said the news service “would welcome real-time access to these sort of addresses in a way that maintains our journalistic independence.”

Upon hearing the news that the White House had heeded this call, Ken Paulson, president of the First Amendment Center and former editor of USA Today, applauded the move.

“Leveling with the American people is always a good thing,” he said. “It is important that the public be able to trust the news media.”

He agreed that technological advances made the main argument against photographing live speeches obsolete, and argued that by the time someone has become president, they’ve given enough speeches that they ought not to be distracted by photographers.

“A speech by the president is news,” he said. “No one would accept a re-enactment of a home run at the World Series, and they shouldn’t accept a re-enactment of a speech.”

Michel du Cille, assistant managing editor for photography at the Washington Post, said the paper, as a rule, does not accept re-enacted photos. It doesn’t like hand-outs from the White House either, so it usually runs screen-grabs from the television feed, though the low resolution of these images limit how large they can run.

On the night of the bin Laden speech, however, a last-minute change swapped one of the re-enacted photos into the paper. The caption didn’t claim it represented the president speaking, but du Cille said he regrets that the changed happened.

“I hate that practice,” he said. “It’s a fake moment.”

Glenn Thrush contributed to this report.