A photo that was designed to still wagging tongues obsessed with conspiracy theories about the health of Britain’s Princess Kate has instead put rumor-mongering into overdrive.
The Princess of Wales has been a focal point for gossip that she is seriously ill ever since a hospital stay in January for abdominal surgery, with the details kept behind a wall of silence. She has remained out of the public eye.
On Sunday, Britain celebrated Mother’s Day, and Kensington Palace released a happy-toned picture of the princess and her three children. Then people started looking at the picture, closer and closer until it was discovered that it had been heavily edited.
As a result, news agencies such as Getty, Reuters, Associated Press and AFP yanked the picture on the grounds that it was too heavily manipulated to meet their rules, according to Reuters.
Multiple photo agencies, including Reuters and AP, have pulled a new image of Kate Middleton from circulation over concerns that it has been “manipulated”https://t.co/rugFlBYHuI pic.twitter.com/rLfiWj7VJ7
— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) March 10, 2024
Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing. I wanted to express my apologies for any confusion the family photograph we shared yesterday caused. I hope everyone celebrating had a very happy Mother’s Day. C
— The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) March 11, 2024
The princess tried a mea culpa.
“Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing,” she said. “I wanted to express my apologies for any confusion the family photograph we shared yesterday caused. I hope everyone celebrating had a very happy Mother’s Day.”
The Wall Street Journal summarized some of the oddities that were noticed: “Catherine didn’t appear to be wearing a wedding ring, while one of her hands looked in focus and the other didn’t. The sleeve on the red sweater worn by her daughter, Princess Charlotte, appeared to have been cropped, leaving her wrist looking bent. The floor behind Catherine appeared to have a kink in it.”
The Palace should release the unedited photo of Kate & the kids asap. If it’s just a small bit of harmless retouching gone wrong, nobody will care. If they don’t release the original pic, the conspiracy theories they were trying to kill, will get way worse..
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) March 11, 2024
Commentators noted the speed at which a feel-good image left a bad taste.
“It has been really quite a wild 24 hours here,” said Roya Nikkhah, a royal commentator and correspondent with The Sunday Times, according to NBC.
“It was supposed to quell all the gossip and rumor and very strange conspiracy theories that have been going around on social media,” she said. “But then people started noticing slight discrepancies in the photographs, things that looked like they’ve been photoshopped.”
“When this picture initially dropped in hit all our social media channels, everyone just breathed a sigh of relief because here was Catherine looking beautiful and healthy and happy and clearly recovering well,” royal contributor Katie Nicholl said.
“But within hours of that image coming out, four international press picture agencies decided to kill that image,” she said. “I certainly can’t remember this ever happening in my career as a royal correspondent.”
The royal family has refused to release the unaltered photo, which some say compounds the problem.
“It’s plausible she’s at home playing with the computer and using an AI tool, but if they’re really going to regain any sort of trust, they should release the unedited photo. It can’t be that bad if they just made a few tweaks,” PR expert Mark Borkowski said, according to the U.K.’s Daily Mail.
“I find they have risen to the challenge, provided the statement as an explanation. The question is, with all the conspiracy theories running around, is whether people believe it, and I’m not sure they will,” he said.
It’s fair to say that most photos released by the offices of public figures have been retouched in some way, so *if* this was an isolated incident then it would just be an unfortunate error. But with the Palace’s long history of lying, covering up, and even issuing statements on…
— Omid Scobie (@scobie) March 11, 2024
Others were harsher on the royals.
Graham Smith, a member of an anti-monarchy group called Republic, said the statement “answers no questions. We can all see the photo has been edited. The question is why? Why haven’t they released the original photo?”
“A statement parsed via the press office, which says nothing and explains nothing, shows a general disregard for the public,” he said.
