EXCLUSIVE: Karoline Leavitt has been compared to Barbra Streisand after the White House had a supposedly ‘unflattering’ image of her removed from online photo libraries
Karoline Leavitt is navigating her latest PR drama(Image: AP)
Karoline Leavitt has been told she “can’t delete [her] way out of a narrative” after she got an “unflattering” image removed from Getty.
Leavitt recently found herself in the news after Agence France-Presse (AFP) and Getty Images removed a photograph of her after the administration reportedly expressed dissatisfaction with it.
The image in question was one of the 28-year-old holding her son. It was taken from a low angle by Andrew Caballero-Reynolds at one of the White House‘s pre-Thanksgiving events. In the image, she’s smiling while holding her child on her hip, but critics have claimed the photo is “unflattering” and supposedly shows her with a double chin. It comes as Trump is ‘like a 3rd grader struggling to read a teleprompter’ in his worrying primetime address.
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The photograph was removed from online libraries after AFP and Getty were “made aware” that the White House didn’t like it.
AFP’s director of brand and communications, Grégoire Lemarchand, confirmed that the White House informed them they did not like the image, but said the decision to remove the photo was an “internal editorial one” as he noted the “poor” camera angle.
Anne Flanagan, Getty Images’s vice president of brand and communications, told Status that AFP maintains full editorial control over its imagery. She also did not confirm whether Getty had received a complaint about the photo from the White House.
However, following the image’s deletion, PR expert Lynn Carratt spoke exclusively to Irish Star about what this drama could mean for Leavitt, and how best to manage it.
Lynn warned the White House Press Secretary not to “control the narrative too tightly,” as she’ll “lose it entirely,” remarking, “Karoline Leavitt’s ‘unflattering’ image disappearing from Getty becomes a news story, and suddenly everyone has seen it. What was, by all accounts, a fairly forgettable, low-angle shot becomes an international talking point overnight.”
Calling the situation “almost textbook,” Carratt compared Leavitt’s drama to that of Barbra Streisand, who failed in her 2003 lawsuit to remove a photo of her home. This filing then led to the “Streisand Effect,” with the PR expert saying, “It’s remarkable how often it still catches people out.”
“Had the image been left alone, it would likely have lived and died in obscurity. Instead, its removal reframes the story entirely, no longer about a bad picture, but about image control and whether public figures are trying to curate reality,” Carratt told us.
Continuing, the expert, from E20 Communications, revealed that one “simply cannot ‘delete’ [their] way out of a narrative,” adding that “if anything, attempting to do so signals that there’s something worth looking at.”
For Leavitt, Carratt advised that she “ignore it, laugh it off, or even better, drown it out with stronger imagery,” as she said this will “always travel further than perfection.”
It comes after the daughter of Trump’s doctor made a bombshell claim about his health.
