Why the ‘bad’ photo gets published
[The photographer may not have anything to do with the choice.]
Photo editor and/or news editor must genuinely believe it’s the right photo to go with the news story.
There’s no other photo available. They didn’t get enough shots to choose from or didn’t catch a usable image.
The news source is so massively and repetitively exposed, hundreds of times, that a different look or angle cries to be picked.
The photo of choice is interesting, will invite more attention, even controversy.
Photo editor and/or news editor is no fan of the news source and mean streak or pranking mood surges.
In Cebu, then sixth-district two-term (1992-1998) congresswoman Nerissa Soon-Ruiz told a gathering of journalists she’d go to a beauty parlor to make herself look pretty at an event only to see later a bad photo of Nerissa in the papers. More recently, the camp of Cebu Gov. Pam Baricuatro slammed a news publication’s choice of an “unflattering” photo of her when she spoke last Aug. 29, 2025 on the state of the province.
Worst of all time… super bad photo.
They disappeared my hair…”
U.S. President Trump graced the cover of Time magazine for his “triumph” in the Middle East upon his return from a “victory lap visit” to Israel and Egypt.
Plain fear, or paranoia, over the ‘BIG ONE’
Phivolcs has talked of the “possibility” of the “Big One” earthquake to strike Metro Manila as time goes close to 2058.
Yet many, including those outside Manila, fear that it would come any time, any day or night. Fear or paranoia, it has been stoked by the surge of information, some of which are baseless and wild, from various media platforms.
‘Go bag’ go?
Even Cebu City Mayor Nestor Archival, following Pasay City’s move, announced Oct. 13, 2025 he’s studying feasibility of providing each city household a “go bag,” a pre-packed, emergency preparedness kit filled with essential supplies.