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Taking StockEvery picture tells a story, sometimes the wrong one.

By Jack ShaferPosted Friday, Dec. 7, 2007, at 6:07 PM ET

(Continued from page 1)

That Nature Medicine's image-pickers equated neglected Ethiopian orphans with HIV-positive foster children in Harlem (some of whom were Hispanic, by the way) reveals this disquieting tendency. The Nature Medicine report is about a major media organization apologizing for distributing inferior work, about the politics of medicine, and about HIV dissenters. The image chosen conveys nothing about those complex topics. Instead, it reduces the rich topic to a shocking tableau depicting neglected black toddlers.

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Find a photo that better illustrates Nature Medicine's piece and send a link of it to . (E-mail may be quoted by name in "The Fray," Slate's readers' forum, in a future article, or elsewhere unless the writer stipulates otherwise. Permanent disclosure: Slate is owned by the Washington Post Co.)

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Jack Shafer is Slate's editor at large. Follow him on Twitter.
Photograph of orphans in Ethiopia by Klaas Lingbeek-van Kranen © 2007 Nature publishing group.
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