Newsweek's Palin Cover is a Six-Year-Old Stock Photo

Q: How did Newsweek get a picture of Sarah Palin posing with a shotgun on its latest cover?

A: They used a stock image from June 2002. The cover is cutout of a six-year-old Alaska Stock photo shot by Judy Patrick. It's rare to see a news magazine dig so far back in the archives for a cover portrait of someone currently in the news. (To be fair to Newsweek, they made no attempt to hide the date of the photo, printing "circa 2002" on the cover and mentioning it again in Jon Meacham's editors letter.)

Apart from this Palin shotgun cover , the big newsweeklies have played it ultra-safe with covers the last three weeks:

Time tapped Platon to shoot Obama for the Sept. 1 cover and McCain for the Sept. 8 cover. The Sept. 15 Palin cover is by Richard Fleischman.

Meanwhile, Newsweek hired Nigel Parry for the Sept. 1 (Democrats) and Sept. 8 (Republicans) covers.

Here's a little bit of color about the Newsweek shoots, sent to us by Parry's rep at CPi:

"Parry photographed Barack Obama and Joe Biden in Springfield, Illinois on August 23rd, the day of the Obama Campaign’s VP announcement. The very next week, Parry flew to Dayton, OH and photographed John McCain and Sarah Palin on August 29th, the day of the McCain Campaign’s VP announcement. In both cases, in the midst of worldwide attention and excitement, Parry was first to photograph the Presidential candidate and his newly announced running mate. He was granted a short amount of time in which he was able to get shots of the duo for the cover and individual shots for the inside story. The images were edited, processed and transmitted to Newsweek within the hour and was seen on the stands 24 hours later."

Comments

[Valerie McGill]

I just want to comment on Nigel Parry's picture on the cover of the September 8 issue of Newsweek. It was terrible lighting, especially for Sarah Palin. Is he a liberal so he's trying to make her look bad?

[barbwire7]

I absolutely love this cover. I think the statement is clear, and I concur. Thanks for the smile.

[Anonymous]

I think you're desperate to prove the big, bad liberal media is out to get you. You'll say nothing when a conservative magazine twists words or uses unflattering images, yet you seethe at the possibility of less-than-ideal lighting? Honestly, grow up and devote your time to better things.

[HLL]

Everyone is aware of liberal bias in the media. We know how desperate and angry all democrats are, as their representative media constantly focuses on the negative in the world. The best part of the "unflattering" photo of Gov. Palin is that Republicans actually support the right to bear arms. So again, while the liberal Newsweak thinks they are putting out a bad photo, it is merely the liberal elitist DC and NY and SF folks that think the photo is unflattering.
Even more fun to think about----the liberal media is so excited about an Obama presidency!!! Yippee! It will be so great when those evil rich people and evil corporations get hit with all those taxes!!! Yippee!!! Oh... oooops ...guess how the media and Newsweak make money? Oh.....ads? Guess who buy products and make products that are advertised? Evil rich people and evil corporations!! When Obama rolls back the tax cuts, so that evil rich people and evil businesses have to pay more to the government, what do you think rich people and businesses will do? The evil Rich will buy less products, and the evil corporations will make less prducts ... thus there will be less need for advertising. With less spending on ads, there will be less revenue at Newsweak and their media friends. At some point, we will see magazines fold, and newspapers fold .......... (just check out the newspaper industry which is getting pummeled!!!).
So much irony!!! So all these forms of media will help to put themselves out of business .... YIPPEE!!!

[Emma]

Most of these tasteless comments make me want to roll my eyes. Honestly, how can you agree with anything Sarah Palin has to offer? She inquired (allegedly "out of curiosity") about BANNING BOOKS. It just doesn't make sense to me that anyone who is responsible for the welfare of people in a FREE country, is looking to limit what the people can and cannot read.

And get over the lighting, Republicans. She looks fine. Now you're just nit-picking and looking for reasons to hate Democrats and liberals, just because your candidates suck.

[Susan Delker]

I think Palin looks terrific and I particularly proud of her bearing arms!

[jon]

Was HLL trying to say that excess taxation of corporations by liberals is the cause of newspapers going under? Seriously? Newspapers are going under because of the internet, silly... It's as if politics were a religion to some people... Things go bad? Blame it on 'liberals', go well and it's our saviors - knights in shining armor - who thought of it before anyone else... I'm just tired of people not using logic and common sense for their arguments... Interesting thought HLL, but I think you were stretching too far...

[Diana]

I don't think Palin's photo looks any worse than Obama's. I think she looks great.Who wants a made up fake face all of the time? She's obviously a beautiful woman. Unfortunately that doesn't make for a good VP.

[MARIE]

EVERY ONE HAS FAULTS. LEAVE HER ALONE. I AM NOT A FAN OF HERS BUT SHE IS APRETTY WOMAN.

[Seva]

Why do people who intensely insist they have God (and that by proxy that their "God" will take CARE of them), so intensely insist on wielding guns...the very tools of the destruction of Life?