Photo Op '08: Clinton Loses Photo Primary

So Obama won the primary. Did he win the photo coverage? Clearly, yes.

Sen. Hillary Clinton started as the media-appointed front-runner, but it didn't show in her photo coverage. In our weekly count of Yahoo! News wire service photos, she almost always lagged behind Sen. Barack Obama.

You could argue that the volume of coverage is irrelevant and what matters is the image of the candidate. Still, our examination of political coverage over the past months shows advantage Barack.

Commonly published photos of Obama show him looking poised, confident, optimistic. (The Onion may have summed this up best: Obama Practices Looking-Off-Into-Future Pose.) There were plenty of photos of Clinton looking commanding as she spoke to massive crowds at campaign stops (often featured in newspapers), but another side of her seemed to get more buzz on Web sites, cable TV and other audience-driven media. That's the side of Clinton looking crazed, volatile, loopy. Influential political Web sites – notably The Huffington Post and The Drudge Report – embraced these images of both candidates.

Is the photo media hopelessly biased? Did the Obama team do a better job than the Clinton team of setting up flattering photos of their candidate? Does Obama just look better in photos? We shall be thinking of these questions during the exciting Obama-McCain race.

Important: Despite my choices of images above, I am not trying to single out Charles Ommanney (who shot that Jan 14, 2008 Newsweek cover) or Elise Amendola (who shot the May 28 AP photo of Clinton having a drink on her plane). These photos are each samples of a wider trend.

Comments

[Oleg Shpak]

Tastefully posed intimate photos accidently leaked on Internet would help her photo ratings a lot. Too late to save other ratings though!

[Best Political Websites Guide]

I can find out a distinctively unique category of Political sites in Visitthebest which is highly constructive for upcoming parents….