A certain photo of Carolyn Leavitt disappeared from AFP’s record after White House staff pointed out that she was seen with a double chin in that low-angle photo, a report claimed.
A smiling turkey and Carolyn Leavitt holding his son. It’s a simple photo but now it’s going viral on social media with claims that the White House press secretary didn’t like her weirdly angled photo and contacted the agency that took the photo.
The image has since been removed from the AFP collection as well as from the Getty archives, the New Republic reported. “The photo, taken by AFP photographer Andrew Caballero Reynolds at a very low angle, is directed at Levitt, who is smiling in a way that gives her a double chin, while holding her son. The turkey they were looking at, Waddle, also appeared very prominently in the frame,” making it clear that the “double chin” in the photo is the problem, the New Republic report said. But the agency denied that there was an official request to remove the photo, although it said that it learned that the White House did not like the photo. “While we know that White House staff found the photo offensive, we want to make clear that there was no official request to remove it, nor was there any outside pressure,” AFP Brand and Communications Director Gregoire Lemarchand told The Daily Beast.
Who takes inappropriate photos of White House officials?
Carolyn Leavitt’s case is not the first. The Washington Post recently reported that photojournalists were prevented from taking photos inside the Pentagon press conference room, where several media outlets published “inappropriate” photos of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. On March 2, Hegseth held a press conference with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to brief the press on the US and Israeli military strikes on Iran that led to the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in February.
After the press conference, news outlets published photos of Hegseth, but Hegseth’s employees reportedly discussed that they did not like Hegseth’s appearance. In order to use the briefing room “effectively,” only one representative from each unaccredited news outlet was allowed in, Pentagon spokesman Kingsley Wilson said in a statement. “Photos from the briefings are immediately posted online for use by the public and the press,” Wilson wrote. “If this harms the business model of some media outlet, they should consider applying for press accreditation from the Pentagon.”
