The family picture of Kate Middleton and her three children- Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis released by Kensington Palace on the eve of Mother’s Day on Sunday, which was used by various news outlets including The New York Times, was taken down after some time by the Palace officials itself.
It followed after few news agencies such as The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence- France Presse raised concerns of the image being photoshopped.
There are various conspiracy theories being cooked up, doubting Kate’s presence in the image considering the severity of her illness. Catherine, the Princess of Wales, was discharged from a private hospital on January 29 in London, after 13-day of recovery period and was so last seen in public in a car reportedly driving near Windsor Castle.
Kate Middleton, Catherine Princess of Whales apologized on Social Media
Princess took X( formerly known as Twitter) and Instagram to apologized for editing the photo “herself’ and the “confusion”.
“Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing,” says her post but the rumour has already set and so in no time it became the talk of the town about the so-called manipulated image and why did Princess felt the need to retouch it.
As per the cases previously reported, this is not the first time that the Royal family was in sensation because of morphed pictures of alleged retouching. The recent Christmas Day photo showing Kate,42, and Prince William, 41, was digitally altered.
Its difficult to anticipate what Middleton, aka the Princess of Whales and the Future Queen of England was thinking when she allegedly edited her own photo so casually that it became a front page news headline in a bunch of countries.
Kill notices by the news agencies
Shortly after the image was made public on X , some of the world’s biggest agencies like The Associated Press, Getty and Reuters, issued retraction alerts called “kill notices” instructing media outlets to not use the image or, if they have, to pull it, citing “manipulation”.
Kill notices are incredibly rare and unusual as they are hardly seen. Sources says that the number of kills issued in a year could be counted on mere one hand.
The Wire services has a strict rule about what’s acceptable and what’s not. AP does allow minor cropping and color adjustments but do not tolerate the removal of “red eye”. There’s no vetting process manipulated images on Instagram, where the doctored picture remains up with no note or disclosure from the palace. But now in Instagram in the post, a bright red alert appears at the bottom, added by Instagram: “Altered photo/video. The same altered photo was reviewed by independent fact-checkers in another post”, the post reads.
The Kensington Palace refused to provide a “running commentary” on health, in recent weeks speculation and conspiracy theories around Kate , her health and her life has been growing. This fueled the ongoing drama when social media users identified traces of editing in the Mother’s Day photo.
There’s been questions as why the wire services couldn’t catch Princess Charlotte’s sweater sleeve disappearing at the cuff which is widely visible. Then a cut of Kate’s coat and inconsistencies around trousers of Prince Louis only added to the questions.
As the discourse around the “morphed” picture grew, the photo agencies including the Press Association and Getty Images issued “kill” notices to news outlets, asking them to cease using the portrait as it may violate their guidelines.
On March 11, just after 24 hours, Kate Middleton released a rather rare personally authored apology via social media for any “confusion” her amateur editing might have caused.
