Two Residents wade through chest-deep water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store after Hurricane Katrina came through the area in New Orleans, Louisiana [AFP/Getty-Chris Graythen]
White liberals and enraged blacks have been jamming AFP's front desk with emails and phone calls as they complain about the above caption attached to the picture of a white male wading behind an hispanic or native-looking female. [Editor's Note to Kanye West: She isn't white.]
The controversy erupted when Yahoo! News inadvertently placed the image next to an unrelated image in which a black youth wading through water is described as having looted the items.
Jocelyn Nevek at the Associate Press reports:
"The pictures appear to be identical but one individual is "looting" and the other is "finding" needed items!" one person wrote the AP. "This is irresponsible journalism and fuels the attitude that 'all' African-Americans are looters."
On Thursday, Yahoo withdrew the photo of the light-skinned pair at the request of Agence France Presse, which distributes Getty's U.S-produced photos internationally. In a note, Yahoo wrote it "regrets that these photos and captions, viewed together, may have suggested a racial bias on our part.
AFP said it withdrew the photo because it had been flooded with time-consuming phone calls and emails, while already stretched covering the enormous tragedy.
"It's safe to say that it was just causing us a lot of problems," said Bob Pearson, AFP's director of photography in the United States.
The real story?
"When we see people go into businesses and come out with goods, we call it looting," said Santiago Lyon, AP's director of photography. "When we just see them carrying things down the road, we call it carrying items."
Chris Graythen, who says the subjects of his photo were simply picking up items floating by in the dank waters, wrote an emotional plea on a message board at SportShooter.com:
Jeasus, I don't belive how much crap I'm getting from this. First of all, I hope you excuse me, but I'm completely at the end of my rope. You have no Idea how stressful this whole disaster is, espically since I have not seen my wife in 5 days, and my parents and grand parents HAVE LOST THIER HOMES. As of right now, we have almost NOTHING.
Please stop emailing me on this one.I wrote the caption about the two people who 'found' the items. I believed in my opinion, that they did simply find them, and not 'looted' them in the definition of the word. The people were swimming in chest deep water, and there were other people in the water, both white and black. I looked for the best picture. there were a million items floating in the water - we were right near a grocery store that had 5+ feet of water in it. it had no doors. the water was moving, and the stuff was floating away. These people were not ducking into a store and busting down windows to get electronics. They picked up bread and cokes that were floating in the water. They would have floated away anyhow.
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