David Hume Kennerly

Famed news photographer David Hume Kennerly took to the New York Times' “Lens” blog last week, with an update on Monday in which he denounced Newsweek's “skewed imagery to advance its editorial agenda,” to excoriate the magazine for “photo fakery” in how it cropped a picture he took of former Vice President Dick Cheney to imply “something sinister, macabre, or even evil was going on.” Kennerly proposed: “The Sept. 14th Newsweek cover line -- 'Is Your Baby Racist?' -- should have included a sub-head, 'Is Dick Cheney a Butcher?'”

Newsweek used the cropped photo from Getty Images for its “The Take” section with this caption: “'I am.' Dick Cheney on Fox News Sunday, in response to the question, 'So even these cases where [CIA interrogators] went beyond the specific legal authorization, you're OK with it?'” Kennerly explained:

Featured inside the magazine was a full-page, stand-alone picture of former Vice President Dick Cheney, knife in hand, leaning over a bloody carving board. Newsweek used it to illustrate a quote that he made about C.I.A. interrogators. By linking that photo with Mr. Cheney’s comment and giving it such prominence, they implied something sinister, macabre, or even evil was going on there. [Original, un-cropped, photo below the jump]