The White House Correspondents Photo of the Year is a Confusing Choice

Last week, the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) announced its annual Journalism Awards which includes the Photo of the Year (which is called the Award for Excellence in Presidential News Coverage) and the winning image is probably not the one anyone expected.

The winning photo was taken by New York Times photographer Doug Mills and depicts former president Joe Biden as he walks away from a podium.

“President Joe Biden walks from the podium after his remarks after the signing ceremony for the $95.3 billion package of aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, in the State Dining Room of the White House, Wednesday, April 24, 2024,” the WHCA writes.

“A somber President Joe Biden — then wrestling with historic challenges, from international crises to domestic calls for him to end his re-election campaign — is centered in the image yet surrounded and visually almost overwhelmed by the physical infrastructure and historic weight of the White House,” the judges wrote of the winning photos. “The only other living human in the picture is looking away from Biden, but the president is not unseen: he moves under the gaze of a reflective President Lincoln, completing this striking portrait of both a sitting president and the presidency itself.”

It’s an odd choice, considering the existence of AP Photographer Evan Vucci’s image of Donald Trump’s assassination attempt from July. Regardless of political stance, the photo of Trump holding his fist in the air with blood on his cheek as secret service members attempt to pull him off stage (all with an American Flag visible in the background) became immediately iconic.

Vucci wasn’t the only one who captured a great photo that day. Mills also shot the same event from a slightly different angle and also captured a photo of the bullet as it passed by Trump’s head.

Why, then, was this photo not selected? It’s not to say that the photo that did win is a bad one — quite the opposite — but rather that it doesn’t seem like the best possible image that could be considered. The WHCA did not offer any explanation and did not respond to PetaPixel request for comment.

Beyond not winning first place, it didn’t even land “Honorable Mention.” That, instead, went to Jim Watson from Agence France-Presse for his photo titled “Musk’s Giant Leap.”

“President Donald Trump began 2024 as a former president, continued as a presidential nominee, and ended it as a president-elect — requiring coverage of a president in both the past and future tenses for the first time in WHCA history. This striking image was taken one month before Election Day 2024, at a Butler, Pa. rally that marked Trump’s return to the location where shots had been fired as he stepped on stage during a campaign event months earlier. The photo was wordless yet descriptive, with Elon Musk’s exuberant leap providing an unmistakable exclamation mark,” the judges write.

Excluding Vucci’s photo is downright confusing.

“It is so utterly preposterous that it is a perfect distillation of everything wrong with our media,” X, formerly Twitter, user Legal_Fil writes. “Insular, driven by pique, willing to look like fools if it means not doing anything that might be to Trump’s benefit — but ultimately magnifying what they are trying to hide.”

Without hearing if there was greater context that led to this decision, it’s hard to disagree with that take.

Image credits: Header image by Doug Mills, The New York Times