No, photographers don’t always own their photographs. It depends on the agreement between them and who they shoot for.
exactly. It was obvious a freelance job and the photography had rights that reverted back to the photographer after the first publication rights. This is not unusual but in this case given the fame level and controversy and abuse of this public figure it should have been nipped in the bud at contract time. As mentioned in another post if this contract was written after and during her time as VP candidate someone REALLY screwed up at RW. I used to oversee this sort of production work and it is not as though any good photographer couldn’t have shot this. RW could have easily kept the full rights for this image.