Outrage as Uganda activist cropped from photo with Greta Thunberg

The Associated Press said Vanessa Nakate was excised ‘purely on composition grounds’ after her video complaint went viral

Kenya Evelyn
@LiveFromKenya
Fri 24 Jan 2020 21.56 GMT
Last modified on Fri 24 Jan 2020 22.47 GMT

Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate has called out racism in media after she was cropped out of a photo featuring prominent climate activists including Greta Thunberg, Loukina Tille, Luisa Neubauer and Isabelle Axelsson.

Nakate made the comment in a video which has since gone viral, adding that she now understood “the definition of the word racism” for the first time in her life.

The group had given a news conference in Davos on Friday when Nakate was then cropped out of a published version by the Associated Press, a US news agency. She questioned the removal on Twitter.

“Why did you remove me from the photo? I was part of the group”, she tweeted in response. Other agencies, including Reuters, misidentified Nakate as Zambian activist Natasha Mwansa. Reuters’ currently available version of the photograph identifies the other four activists in the picture but not Nakate.

David Ake, the AP’s director of photography, told Buzzfeed UK that, under tight deadline, the photographer “cropped it purely on composition grounds”

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