The publication on Sunday of a photo of Kate Middleton, all smiles and surrounded by her children on British Mother's Day, was to put an end to rumors and speculation about her absence from public life for almost two months, after a heavy abdominal operation.
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However, the discovery of multiple edits on this photo, the withdrawal of the latter coordinated by five of the biggest press agencies which had published it, and the flat apologies from Kate, who took responsibility by saying "trying to editing,” had the completely opposite effect.
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This Kensington Palace operation is a “PR disaster”, a public relations disaster, summarized the
Daily Mail
on its front page on Tuesday.
The British press is rather understanding towards Kate and William, star couple of the monarchy.
“Leave him alone,” says the tabloid
The
Sun.
Confidence in the information distilled by Kensington Palace now seems to have been undermined: “In the current context, any manipulation of an image, even minor and without intention to mislead, can arouse suspicion,” believes Chris Morris, director from the verification site Full Fact.
“Conspiracy theories emerge when there is an information vacuum, so if you want to be believed, you have to be transparent.”
Retouches in the last century
However, the manipulation of royal portraits is not entirely new: in the last century, the official Windsor photographer, Cecil Beaton, used to make adjustments to obtain the perfect shot, recalls royal biographer Hugo Vickers in the
Telegraph
.
More recently, the 2023 Christmas portrait of the Wales family, or a photo of Queen Elizabeth II and her husband Philip in 2020, displayed some inconsistencies: a missing finger, an extra leg, an oddly lit hand.
“It is becoming increasingly difficult for the public to believe a word (and now a photo) of what they share.
Catching up at this stage seems almost impossible,” commented Omid Scobie, royal biographer close to the couple Harry and Meghan, who broke with the monarchy.
Trustworthy ?
Kate has a habit of publishing “amateur” photos, especially of her children.
But “in an era of false information (...) who can we believe if even the royal family provides doctored photos,” asks journalist Hannah Furness in the
Telegraph
.
The sequence will have cast doubt on the peaceful recovery of the princess, after her operation, the cause of which has never been revealed.
Especially since Kensington Palace refused to publish the unretouched photo.
According to Peter Hunt, a former BBC correspondent, "people will now wonder if they are trustworthy the next time they publish information about the health" of members of the royal family, and this at the when King Charles III was diagnosed with cancer.
A new photo taken by two royal photographers on Monday afternoon showed the princess in a car alongside Prince William.
The fever has not subsided, with Internet users immediately denouncing a manipulated photo.
The episode of Kate's manipulated photo follows a week of confusion, during which Prince William missed an official engagement for mysterious "personal reasons", and the announcement of Kate's participation in a military parade in June was removed from the official program a few hours after its publication.
Some Internet users then rushed into the void of information, claiming in particular that the princess's face was copied and pasted from a cover of
Vogue
, or that her sweater is not sold in the color she wears. on the picture.