 "Donald Trump with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (right) Photo: MFA Russia Twitter handle")
According to reports in the U.S. media, Washington is furious that the Russian state media published photographs of President Trump’s meeting on Wednesday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak.
#Lavrov - @realDonaldTrump meeting has just started | ? ???????? ???????? ???????? ??????? ?.??????? ? ?.???????#RussiaUSA #????????? pic.twitter.com/7raFrkWhiC
— MFA Russia ???????? (@mfa_russia) May 10, 2017
“The White House did not anticipate that the Russian government would allow its state news agency to post [the] photographs,” CNN reported on Thursday. “They tricked us,” an angry White House official told the news network. “That's the problem with the Russians — they lie,” the official added.
This Thursday, TASS photojournalist Alexandr Scherbak, the man who took the controversial pictures in the Oval Office, responded on Facebook, accusing the U.S. government and media of “hysteria,” arguing that the Russian Foreign Ministry was entirely transparent about Minister Lavrov’s meeting with President Trump.
RuNet Echo translates Scherbak’s message below:
My message to the American media:
I admit that this is all nonsense to me. I’m not a public person, and I’ve never before commented on my work like this, but the hysteria surrounding my photographs in the White House compels me to say what I’ve written here.
I’ve worked in the [Foreign] Ministry’s press pool since 2015, and periodically I’m asked to cover cover trips and meetings with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his counterparts. I’ve covered almost all his meetings in the U.S., France, Germany, Switzerland, and many other countries, which I’ve managed to visit during my work. These were closed meetings and open meetings, summits and forums, and a whole lot more throughout the course of my career.
The lists with the names of press members who are covering a trip are always submitted well in advance, and everyone knows who is working, where they’ll be, who represents whom, and so on.
Under the work terms between Russia’s Foreign Ministry and the TASS news agency, I turnover part of my photo materials to the Foreign Minister for free publication on its official website and on other resources, and part of my report goes to the TASS newsroom, and then the photos are distributed the same way any other news agency uses its photos.
Nothing unusual happened while photographing the meeting between Donald Trump and Sergei Lavrov. Everything went as planned. First, after the meeting with Rex Tillerson, an American representative brought me to the White House, where I underwent a routine scan, was patted down, and then I was sniffed by police dogs.
Then I was taken to another part of the White House, where I waited in a room for the arrival of our delegation. I was introduced to a woman photographer working there, and they told me to stick to her, because she knew all the protocol and so on. I only brought two cameras to photograph the [Trump-Lavrov] meeting. I left all the rest of my things (including my cell phone) in another room — just as they instructed me in advance.
The photoshoot was ordinary. There were handshakes with everyone in the delegation, an exchange of words, and then the meeting began. I worked for a minute, and then they told me, “That’s all.” I left the Oval Office and walked back to the room where I’d waited before. When the meeting ended, I left with the delegation and went back to the Russian Embassy for the press conference. And with that we all returned to the airport, boarded a plane, and flew away.
I’m appealing to American journalists not to lose their sense of professional dignity and not to pass onto other people their own failure to organize a photoshoot with U.S. press access. I’ve worked as a professional photojournalist for many years, and I confess that this is the first time I’ve encountered such absurd and ludicrous accusations.
This article by Kevin Rothrock was originally published on Global Voices on May 11, 2017
