Seen Tom Fetzer lately?
If all you’ve seen are the photographs in the News and Observer, you haven’t. The paper has been running the same photo of Fetzer for years.
The photo in question is this one, taken by staff photographer Jim Bounds. It shows Fetzer as he looked perhaps ten years ago:
Tom Fetzer, N&O
Look, it appeared in a story just today.
Compare that to how Fetzer appears today, posted by WRAL:
Tom Fetzer, WRAL
See the difference? Fetzer (as anyone would) looks strikingly different today than he did ten years ago, yet the News and Observer either hasn’t noticed, hasn’t thought to take an updated photograph, or is well-aware it is misleading its readers with a younger Fetzer’s picture. I was actually shocked when I saw Fetzer’s photo taken during one of his recent weekly rants. It was because I had grown accustomed to the N&O’s misleading picture.
Jim Bounds, by the way, hasn’t worked for the N&O since at least March 2009 and probably far longer, if editor Dan Barkin wasn’t easily able to locate Bounds’s number. The most recent N&O photo I can locate that is credited to Bounds is this one from March 2004.
Is it against journalistic ethics to knowingly print a possibly decades-old photograph without labeling it as a file photograph? I don’t blame the N&O for not actively covering Fetzer’s repeated and often pointless press conferences, but isn’t it custom to at least take an updated photograph when a public figure accepts a new post, as Fetzer did when he became head of the North Carolina Republican Party? The only recent shot of Fetzer appearing anywhere in the N&O is in this blog post in April, and even this is a thumbnail from the NCGOP site taken some time in 2009. That’s it.
Once the two squared off, but now Tom Fetzer loves the N&O. Judging by the photographs the feeling is mutual.
Update 9 August: N&O Editor Dan Barkin agrees an updated Fetzer photograph should be used.