Getty Images' Editors' Note on Kate Middleton's Video Finally Gets a Sane Explanation
Kate Middleton and Kensington Palace probably hoped that her cancer announcement video would end all of the internet conspiracy rumors, but that wasn’t the case after Getty Images posted an editors’ note next to the available clip on their site. That tiny detail fueled a second round of speculation that the video was filmed using AI and social media users grabbed ahold of those new theories.
The Princess of Wales’ video probably wouldn’t have happened at all if someone, who was possibly tied to The London Clinic medical record breach, hadn’t threatened to release her diagnosis to the public. To say that this time in the royal family was a stressful one seems to be an understatement at this point. However, there might be light at the end of the tunnel because The New York Times found an expert who has a reasonable explanation for why the note was added by Getty Images in the first place — and hopefully, conspiracists will pay attention.
“They are very keen not to take handouts and have their own photographers where possible,” Nic Newman, a senior research associate at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism told the media outlet. There’s currently a pushback on public figures, including the royal family, “controlling the narrative” when it comes to photos and videos. A great example is a superstar like Beyoncé, who hires her own team to showcase her life through snapshots and video. She no longer relies upon red carpet photographers because she wants to tell a story about her work in her own way.
The royal family started to do something similar with Kate often releasing personal photographs for her children’s birthdays — it was a way for Kensington Palace to control their image. However, the Princess of Wales’ recent Photoshop issue has put the public and news agencies on high alert, and the “kill notice” didn’t help the situation. The Getty Images’ editors’ note is a subtle way of them saying that this celebrity trend isn’t approved by them.
With Getty Images hoping to promote vetted photos and videos, they added the editors’ note. Unfortunately though, it added a second round of “fake news” to Kate’s health journey. And as Newman noted to The New York Times, “People often take those labels and then blow them up out of all proportion.” It’s going to take some time for things to settle back into place, but there is no conspiracy. The video is real, but Getty Images prefers not to have third-party submissions to their site.
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