"A picture is worth a thousand words," goes the old saying. The picture of Trump after he had been shot, blood smearing his face, his fist raised in the air against an impossibly blue sky framed by the American flag, has already been worth a billion words or more.
The photo, taken by AP's Evan Vucci, along with the photo shot through the legs of a Secret Service agent of Trump on the ground taken by Getty's Anna Moneymaker, and the "bullet photo" showing the trajectory of the near-fatal bullet by the New York Times photographer Doug Mills have all appeared on countless websites.
But an Axios media trend assessment on Tuesday suggested that news outlets should refrain from using the photos lest they be seen as "propaganda."
Multiple photographers worried privately in conversations with Axios that the images from the rally could turn into a kind of "photoganda," with the Trump campaign using them to further their agenda despite the photographers' intent of capturing a news event.
None would comment on the record for fear of losing future work.
A photo editor and photographer from a major news outlet said the "amount that publications have been using Evan's photo is kind of free P.R. for Trump in a way, and its dangerous for media organizations to keep sharing that photo despite how good it is."
I hate to point out a double standard dripping with hypocrisy, but if it had been Joe Biden the target of an assassination attempt and he had risen to his feet or done whatever a feeble old man can do to show people that he was OK, would these jamokes be worried about handing the candidate a propaganda victory?
"We can't control how people perceive anything," one freelancer said. "But you can educate them." The arrogance in that statement says a lot about the media in general. Manipulate people's perceptions until they get to the "right" conclusion. Scary stuff.
But in the case of the Vucci photo, it's likely that people's "perception" was colored by this combination of the heroic and the mythological.
Psychotherapist Jonathan Alter feels the image "encapsulates the essence" of what Americans want from its leaders. Reagan survived an assassination attempt, telling his wife Nancy, "Sorry honey. I forgot to duck." That kind of grace and strength under fire raises a candidate from the ordinary to the mystical.
"The image and the preceding event perfectly capture the raw vulnerability of a powerful former leader at his most vulnerable moment likely ever in his life, only to be followed by that of perseverance, strength, and defiance in the face of evil," Alter told Fox News Digital.
"This image very well encapsulates the essence of what most Americans have come to admire in our heroes --both in fiction and in real life -- and in those we look towards to lead: emerging from chaos with resilience and authority, and unwavering toughness," he continued. "Frankly, one that might change the narrative on ‘toxic masculinity.’"
"Trump Changes 'Toxic Masculinity'" might be a bit overblown. After all, the feminists still get a lot of mileage out of that particular bit of nonsense. But I wonder if more than changes to the presidential race, we might see a change in attitude toward Trump himself.
That alone would be a game-changer.
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