Veterans, families question Kerry adSome didn't OK use of their photos; pictures may violate copyright laws By Matthew Sturdevant Caller-Times
June 3, 2004 A television advertisement for Democrat John Kerry's presidential campaign appears to have violated copyright laws by broadcasting several photos from the Caller-Times book "South Texas Heroes."
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Ad targets Hispanic voters Ad began airing Friday in Arizona, Florida, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado and Ohio.M
Click here to view the ad
Book published in 2003
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15 of the 16 Hispanic veterans featured in the ad appear in South Texas Heroes.
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Ad is altered on Web site late Wednesday
Fifteen veterans from South Texas appear in the original ad; nine are removed from Web site.
Top row, left to right Raul Treviño Barrera, Manuel Gutierrez, William Treviño Barrera, Arnulfo T. Barrera
2nd row Alberto T. Vasquez Sr., Unknown, Rodolfo Treviño Barrera, George Treviño Barrera
3rd row Moses R. Longoria, John V. Rodriguez, Felix Longoria Garcia
Eloy Barrera
4th row Robert G. Lemos, Mel G. Lemos, Frank G. Lemos, Ovidio Marcos Trejo
The original photos
These veterans or their relatives say they did not give permission to use their photos, nor did the Caller-Times.
Top row, left to right Robert G. Lemos, Mel G. Lemos, Frank G. Lemos
Bottom row, left to right John V. Rodriguez, Ovidio Marcos Trejo, Alberto T. Vasquez Sr. |
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Two World War II veterans and relatives of four others say they want to know how photos of their relatives came to be included in the ad, and say the campaign could only have retrieved the photos from "South Texas Heroes," a book published by the Caller-Times last year.
The advertisement targets Hispanic voters in six states, and features photos of 16 Hispanic veterans, 15 of which were featured in "South Texas Heroes."
The commercial, which is not airing in Texas, was conceived and produced by Armando Gutierrez, who owns a political advertising company, A. Gutierrez & Associates, Inc., with offices in Albuquerque and Corpus Christi. Gutierrez said he borrowed the photos from family and friends of family, who gave verbal permission to use the photos in the commercial.
Gutierrez said he did not have the photos as of Wednesday. "When we got them, we scanned them and then gave them back," he said.
The Kerry campaign's director of Hispanic media, Fabiola Rodriguez-Ciampoli, said late Wednesday that the ad may be pulled off the air after she learned that some people did not give permission to run the photos. It's also possible a different version of the ad may run with photos of people who gave permission to Gutierrez and the campaign.
Two local veterans and relatives of four others say Gutierrez didn't contact them. Some say that, to their knowledge, they have the only copies of the photos, which they provided to the Caller-Times for publication in the book.
"How in the world did they get that?" Alberto T. Vasquez Sr., a World War II veteran said of the photo of himself that appears in the Kerry ad. "Without personal approval, I don't think that's legal."
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Ad script (translation)
Narrator: "For his heroism in Vietnam, John Kerry won the Silver and Bronze Stars and three Purple Hearts. John Kerry knows that in Washington, the World War II Memorial is a monument to soldiers with names such as García, Chávez and Ortiz. John Kerry honors all of those Hispanics who have distinguished themselves in our armed forces with valor and dignity. John Kerry honors all of our veterans. John Kerry: I am John Kerry and I approved this message. |
Both Vasquez and his daughter, Doris Vasquez Guillen, who submitted the photo for publication in "South Texas Heroes," said Gutierrez never contacted them. Vasquez said he doesn't know Gutierrez or his family.
The same photo of John V. Rodriguez appeared in both the ad and in "South Texas Heroes." Rodriguez is deceased, and his nephew, David De La Cruz of Corpus Christi, said he has the only copy of his uncle's military photo. De La Cruz said he submitted it for use in "South Texas Heroes." The Caller-Times still has the original photo.
"No one has asked me for permission" to use the photo in the ad, De La Cruz said.
De La Cruz said he would not have given permission to use the photo because he supports Kerry's opponent, President Bush.
Gutierrez said "South Texas Heroes" is not the source of the photos used in the commercial, which started airing Friday. It will be broadcast for two weeks in six battleground states with large Hispanic voter populations - Florida, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado and Ohio. It also can be seen on Kerry's campaign Web site.
But by late Wednesday evening, nine of the 16 photos originally used in the Kerry ad had been removed from the Web site version.
Gutierrez said he is related to most of the people in the commercial, including five Barrera brothers. The other photos were from friends of the family, he said. That's why he didn't think it was necessary to have written permission, he said.
"If that needs to be done, I'll have to double back," Gutierrez said.
Gutierrez said if there is a problem with obtaining rights to the photographs, it is his mistake and not that of the Kerry campaign.
"We didn't know about this," said Rodriguez-Ciampoli, of Kerry's campaign. "I was told that we had authorization for all of the photos.
"The John Kerry campaign apologizes if any veterans or families of veterans were offended by the misuse of pictures by the media consultant A. Gutierrez & Associates," she said. "We're taking steps to correct the situation, and we'll reach out to the families involved to extend our apologies."
Also among the veterans in the ad are three Lemos brothers from Corpus Christi, Mel, Robert and Frank Sr.
"I'm really upset," said Mel G. Lemos. "I never tell anybody who I'm going to vote for. I never gave any picture to anybody."
Robert Lemos, who is ill, would not have agreed to have his photo in the campaign, Mel Lemos and a nephew, Frank Lemos Jr., said. Frank Lemos Sr. is dead.
Frank Lemos Jr., an imaging technician for the Caller-Times, worked on "South Texas Heroes." On Friday, when he saw an Associated Press photo of a frame from the commercial, he recognized faces from the book, including his father and uncles.
When Frank Lemos Jr. recognized his father and uncles in the Associated Press image, he contacted page designer Fernando Ortiz Jr., who had designed the book and who recognized other faces in the commercial as among those featured in "South Texas Heroes." Ortiz notified Editor Libby Averyt and further investigation showed that at least 15 of the photos were the same as those in the book. Some photos had been flipped so that the soldiers faced a different direction.
Frank Lemos Jr., who worked as the lead imager on "South Texas Heroes," said many of the photos that were submitted for the book were in bad condition. He said a number of the photos needed to be restored and the photos that appear in the Kerry commercial appear to be those from the book.
Lemos family members said they have the only copies of the 1951 photo of the Lemos brothers used for the commercial. The photo appeared with written permission from the family in "South Texas Heroes." Mel Lemos has a copy, Frank Lemos Jr. has a copy. The third copy belongs to Diane Gonzales, a niece of the three Lemos brothers. Frank Lemos Jr. and Gonzales said neither of them gave Gutierrez permission to use their copy of the photo.
Mel Lemos and Gutierrez know each other. Lemos was Gutierrez's Spanish teacher at Miller High School. But Lemos said he hasn't seen Gutierrez since he graduated in 1965.
Frank Lemos Jr. said his father, a Democrat, voted for Bush, a Republican, in 2000.
"My father was a strong Bush supporter," Frank Lemos Jr. said. "If he was alive today, he wouldn't have done this."
One of the photos in the advertisement is of Gutierrez's uncle, William Trevino Barrera, and four others are of his brothers, George, Raul, Arnulfo and Rodolfo. William Trevino Barrera said his nephew asked if he could use photos of the brothers for the ad, and that he used those photos. Barrera said he did not give Gutierrez a photo of the Lemos family, but that he knew the Lemos family from decades ago when they were all living in the same neighborhood.
"No, I don't have a photo (of the Lemos family)," William Trevino Barrera said. "But there's one in 'South Texas Heroes.' "
Caller-Times president and publisher Larry L. Rose said: "In putting together the Corpus Christi Caller-Times book, 'South Texas Heroes,' we gained permission to use photos and we followed the law to copyright our book. No one asked our permission to reprint parts of the Caller-Times publication."
"If John Kerry allows this commercial to run, it will show the kind of person John Kerry is," Rose said. "That he allows his campaign team to lift Hispanic faces from a Caller-Times book, to violate copyright, and to violate the individual rights of those Hispanic veterans, is appalling. If Kerry wants to do the honest and ethical thing, let's see if he has his staff get permission from the veterans, from the Caller-Times, or, if he doesn't do that, let's see how fast he cancels his commercial.
"And as for flopping some of the photos, why did they do that?," Rose said. "It's yet another unethical part of this flawed attempt to capitalize on Hispanics."
Another photo in both the ad and the Caller-Times book, that of Ovidio Marcos Trejo, was contributed by his granddaughter, who is a Caller-Times human resources coordinator, Veronica Rodriguez. Neither Gutierrez nor Kerry's campaign contacted her family, and the family owns the only copies of the photos, she said. Rodriguez said she would have liked to have been been notified.
The public is fortunate that Caller-Times employee Lemos recognized his father's photograph, said the Caller-Times' Averyt.
"It's a shame that the Kerry campaign underestimated South Texas veterans and the Caller-Times and apparently assumed no one would ever notice the use of the copyrighted material published by us with the permission of the veterans' families," Averyt said. "It is truly disappointing that a presidential campaign would operate in this manner."
A local company that did some video production for the ad, Quadrant Productions, was under the impression that Gutierrez had permission to use the photos, said Frank van Heugten, owner of Quadrant Productions.
"That's the only way we would do things," van Heugten said.
The commercial was intended to be a tribute to all Hispanic veterans of World War II, Gutierrez said. In the commercial, a photo of a young John Kerry in decorated military garb looks to the left of the screen. At left, the photos of 16 veterans fade into view as a list of names scrolls down the middle of the screen.
Some of the names on the screen match those in the photos. Some names don't match, and some of the people in the photos don't have their names on the list.
Gutierrez included the names Barrera, Trevino and Gutierrez - the names of his family members in the photos - but the name Lemos does not appear. Lemos is a Greek surname, though the three brothers are Hispanic, from their mother's side of the family.
Gutierrez said he was trying to make the commercial "as broad-based as possible" by using last names of people who fought in World War II that were also common names in the states where the ad would be broadcast.
Frank Lemos Jr. said he finds it offensive that Gutierrez used "generic" Hispanic names next to the photos, rather than the names of the people in the photos.
The Nueces County Democratic Party has endorsed Kerry, said party chairman Solomon Ortiz Jr. But Ortiz said he was not aware of the commercial or that it featured local veterans.
"I haven't seen it," Ortiz said. "I know Armando I know that he does work for (New Mexico's Democratic Governor) Bill Richardson and for the DNC (Democratic National Committee)."
Gutierrez has been a political analyst and source for a number of newspaper articles. He said he worked on the Rev. Jesse Jackson's campaign in the 1980s, which helped him land contracts to do advertisements for Democratic presidential candidates in the past two elections, Bill Clinton-Al Gore in 1996 and Al Gore-Joe Lieberman in 2000.
Contact Matthew Sturdevant at _886-3778 or sturdevantm@caller.com
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Wednesday, Jun 2
