Photos by Doug Mills--The New York Times
Democrats are refusing to let McCain back away from Bush especially when McCain tries to stress an image as a maverick and independent. Nothing has had more impact for the Democrats than this striking photograph showing McCain giving Bush a bear hugging embrace at a rally in August 2004.
Photos by Doug Mills--The New York Times
This image is posted all over the internet and as Bush's approval rating drops, distribution of the photograph leaps. Continued below:
One blog comment (from the right) has called it "a dubious Photoshop paste-up." The photograph has been used in video ads as well as on the cover of one book, The Real McCain by Cliff Schecter.
If you use your favorite internet search engine and enter: "McCain hugging Bush photograph", you will likely get up to half a million hits. I have found one website hawking the image on a T-shirt.
As a professional photographer, I began to wonder who created the photograph--it is almost never shown with a credit line. In one case, an unethical and illegal credit line appears within the image crediting a blog website. Searching the internet, I discovered that the photograph was created by The New York Times staff photographer, Doug Mills. It is one part of a rapid sequence of at least 8 images.
I tried to contact and interview Mills but as the cliche goes, "he declined to respond to my request for an interview." As a courtesy, I added his credit line to his photos displayed here.
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Since the internet may have already given this photograph an all-time record distribution, I wanted to post this piece exclusively for Raising Kaine because I believe this high impact image may soon become a controversial news item.
Here are some of the questions that I wanted to ask Doug Mills about the photo:
When and how was it first used in the New York Times?Has he received any feedback from John McCain or his campaign staff?
When did he notice widespread use of the photo on the internet?
Has he been interviewed by others regarding his creation of this photograph?
(It seems like a perfect feature topic for The New York Times.)How has The New York Times recently reacted to frequent "pirating" of the image.
A lot of photographs whether they are political or not are published on the internet in violation of Federal copyright laws. There are, however, a few limited exceptions to the copyright laws. One of the exceptions is a concept called "fair use" but it is always safe to reject the misconception that everything on the Internet is free for the taking. If a photo is being used without permission to sell T-shirts, copyright courts favor the owner as the only one entitled to profit from use of the image. Recently, courts have tended to tolerate use of low resolution thumbnail photos within the "fair use" concept when there is little or no commercial intention. (Copyright discussion here is brief, oversimplified, and may be flawed, but is intended to augment the topic in this diary.)
I am sure that the McCain/Bush bearhug photo is presently being used in ways that could cause its owner, The New York Times, ample anxiety. I believe that we shall see controversy, very soon, about "fair use" of this photograph. Remember you read it first here on Raising Kaine !!
Ultimately though, it's probably far too late to do much about it. Aside from stopping a dishonest individuals - the ones who are turning it into a commercial effort - there is not much benefit for the owners to expend the effort required to stop all the distributions.