Royal flush

Former president Richard Nixon taught the United States many, many years ago that the cover-up is always worse than the crime. Apparently the United Kingdom didn’t get the memo.

It appears the Royal Family has stepped in it, royally, with their release of a photo of Kate, Princess of Wales, admittedly doctored by Kate, who apologized for any “confusion” caused over the photo. She admitted that, as an amateur photographer, she does “occasionally experiment with editing.”

At issue is a photo of

Kate and her children that was intended to calm concern and speculation about the British royal’s health, after undergoing abdominal surgery nearly two months ago. No photos of her have been released since, until this one.

Nobody suggested the photo was fake, but the AP retracted it because closer inspection revealed the source had manipulated the image in a way that did not meet AP photo standards. Apparently, the photo contained an inconsistency in the alignment of Princess

Charlotte’s left hand with the sleeve of her sweater.

What? Who looks this closely at these things?

It seems that lots of people do. And in a world of eight billion people, someone, somewhere is going to raise an eyebrow. Now Getty, Reuters, AFP and the UK national agency, PA, have also withdrawn the photo. As inconsequential as even the existence of a monarchy with no real role in United Kingdom policy-making may be to millions of Americans, for us, the episode means something different and is consequential, but maybe not in the way you’d expect.

This photo was not generated by artificial intelligence, or at least no one has claimed it was. However, it gives us some level of confidence that if the largest news outlets in the world can ferret out something like this, they can do the same with nefariously produced content generated from AI.

That’s never been more important than in an election year, and will continue to be critical in future years. Flash a Vee for Victory for the press.