Just how much can the public trust images released by the Royal Family? That’s the question as another photo released by the Prince and Princess of Wales has been flagged by a global image agency as being “digitally enhanced at the source.”
This comes just over a week after several major news agencies pulled a Mother’s Day photo of Catherine with her children just hours after publishing it, citing concerns about digital manipulation. The retractions sent the online rumor mill, already rampant with speculation over Catherine’s recent operation and recuperation, into overdrive. News agency AFP later said Kensington Palace is no longer a trusted news source.
Now, Getty Images is reviewing a photo of Queen Elizabeth II and her grandchildren and great-grandchildren taken in 2022 and released last year. An editor’s note recently added to the photo on the site says it “has been digitally enhanced at the source.” “Getty Images is undertaking a review of handout images and in accordance with its editorial policy is placing an editor’s note on images where the source has suggested they could be digitally enhanced,” a Getty images spokesperson told CBC News Tuesday.
The spokesperson clarified the statement only applies to handouts from the palace. The image in question was released on April 21 last year, on what would have been Queen Elizabeth’s 97th birthday. A caption on the Prince and Princess of Wales’s Instagram account says the photo was taken at Balmoral the previous summer.
Some of the discrepancies flagged by the Guardian Tuesday include “a vertical line where the tartan of the late queen’s skirt does not match, a dark shadow behind Prince Louis’s ear and a similar small black patch behind Prince George’s shirt collar.” CBC News has reached out to The Associated Press and Reuters to ask whether they’re also reviewing the image, or any others released by the Royal Family. They have yet to respond.
The Mother’s Day photo controversy resulted in increased scrutiny by the press and public of other photos released by William and Catherine in recent years, Toronto-based royal author and historian Carolyn Harris told CBC News. “There is interest in whether this only happened once or if there is a longer trend of making changes to photographs that are posted on social media and released to the press,” Harris said.
Robert Finch, the dominion chairman of the Monarchist League of Canada, told CBC News that it’s not necessarily surprising the Royal Family edits its own images, but he understands why the public might think so. “Most of us would simply expect that to be done by a professional team, but here you have the Princess of Wales editing a picture of herself and children taken by her husband or a picture taken and edited by the Princess of Wales of the late Queen and her grandchildren. I’m sure that’s surprised people,” Finch said.
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