The Independent Had a Story About Zack Polanski. So Why Are These Pictures Here?

I spend a lot of time asking one fairly basic question when I read a news story.

Why this picture?

The Independent’s report on Zack Polanski and the Green Party ⁠gives me two particularly good reasons to ask it.

The story is straightforward enough. Green Party members voted by 1,022 to 813 for a motion defining Zionism as racism and declaring the party anti-Zionist. Israel subsequently announced that party leader Zack Polanski would be barred from entering the country.

There are photographs of Polanski.

There are photographs from the Green Party conference.

So far, so good.

Then this appears.

A Palestinian man stands among burned-out cars at a scrapyard near Ramallah. The caption says the fire followed an attack “allegedly carried out by Israeli settlers.”

What has that got to do with Zack Polanski?

Keep scrolling.

Now we are in Mea Shearim, Jerusalem, looking at two members of Neturei Karta beside a huge Palestinian flag.

That photograph was taken on April 22.

Nearly six months ago.

The Independent’s own caption identifies Neturei Karta as an anti-Zionist Orthodox Jewish organization whose members believe the State of Israel should not exist before the coming of the messiah.

Again, why this picture?

Nobody accidentally drops an AFP/Getty photograph from April into an October news story. Somebody searched for it. Somebody selected it. Somebody decided it belonged there.

I cannot tell you what that person intended.

I can see what the photographs add to the page.

A story about a British political party voting to define Zionism as racism now has an image of the aftermath of alleged Israeli settler violence.

Then it has an image of Orthodox Jews who oppose Zionism.

Neither photograph shows the Green Party vote. Neither shows Polanski. Neither shows the conference where the decision was taken.

There is another detail.

The Independent published another version of substantially the same story⁠.

That article manages perfectly well with photographs directly connected to the story, including Polanski and Green Party figures at the conference.

Which rather proves that finding relevant photographs wasn’t especially difficult.

As a picture editor, this is the point where I stop reading the captions and start looking at the edit.

The Independent had a story about Zack Polanski and the Green Party.

Apparently, it needed some Palestinians and the right kind of Jews to illustrate it.

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