BlackFive

A recent piece making the rounds of the interwebs has a junior Naval Officer sharing her reasons why, in her frustration, she must resign from the US Navy.  In it she lays out her rationale, which has drawn both support and (significant) derision.  There have been a number of rebuttals, the most eloquent of which came from the Duffellblog.

At the top of the piece is the picture of a female Navy officer, saluting.  Here's the problem:  the woman pictured is NOT Anna Granville, the discontented officer and authoress.

Apparently the original publisher (Task and Purpose) opted to use stock DOD footage to headline the public resignation.  And many of us presumed the saluting woman was the writer.  

This was brought to my attention by a colleague, Ben Armstrong, who shared the following (emphasis added by me):

You know who I feel bad for? The saluting Lieutenant in the DoD stock photo which Task & Purpose decided to use to "illustrate" the most recent "why I'm leaving" article. The woman in the photo isn't the author of the uber-hyped article. But now Duffleblog used the same stock photo and her face is all over FB for something she hasn't done, said, or was even involved with. Maybe DoD's fair use policy is nice for pictures of ships and planes, but when it comes to people the Media can really hose somebody for no reason.

One would have to surmise that the pictured officer (still serving) is not very happy about this.   

As bloggers we use cool photos for our posts because, lets face it, it adds pizzazz.  And, as Ben notes above, while that's no issue with ships and planes, we ought to be much more careful when we use pictures of people - particularly where an association between pictures and content may be made.  

Shared for your consideration and comment.