LEAK FROM REUTERS

REUTERS PHOTO



REUTERS CAPTION

"U.S. President George W. Bush writes a note to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a Security Council meeting at the 2005 World Summit and 60th General Assembly of the United Nations in New York September 14, 2005. World leaders are exploring ways to revitalize the United Nations at a summit on Wednesday but their blueprint falls short of Secretary-General Kofi Annan's vision of freedom from want, persecution and war."

Rick Wilking of Reuters has the photo of the year. No question about it. He captured a historic moment. The image is a national treasure. A picture is worth a thousand words, etc...

NEWS FLASH: George Bush goes to the bathroom!

Reuters really dropped a load this time. What good does dumping that photo do?

It's a transparent attempt by Reuters, the news outlet that refuses to call a terrorist a terrorist, to diminish Bush in stature.

By presenting the leader of the free world as if he were a first grader asking permission to relieve himself, Reuters hints that Bush was not properly concentrating on international issues, but instead, focusing on other more intimate matters.

I don't recall. Did Reuters ever run any private notes written by Bill Clinton on their photo wire?

My guess is that those would have been far more interesting, in that tawdry, vulgar Clintonesque sense.

Personally, I wouldn't want to know the contents of notes exchanged between Clinton and Madeleine Albright. (A chill just went through me.)

On a serious note, I think it's troubling that a photographer is snapping pictures of jottings between the President and the Secretary of State. Something far more sensitive could have been in the note. I guess that was Wilking's hope.

"Annan is a major league a**hole" would have been newsworthy.

Putting out a photo of a note about a presidential "bathroom break" is just cheap and disrespectful.

If that's what Reuters considers to be appropriate for its photo wire, why did they fail to provide more of the details?

What did Condi do in response?

Why didn't Wilking leak the rest of this pressing story?