News organizations unknowingly paid Melania Trump at least $100,000 last year to use pictures of her

Melania Trump.
(Image credit: Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images)

President Trump's financial disclosure from May shows that in 2017, first lady Melania Trump earned between $100,000 and $1 million from an unusual deal with Getty Images.

NBC News reports that Getty Images, a photo agency, agreed to pay Trump in royalties for the use of any images in a series of 187 photos of the Trump family taken by Belgian photographer Regine Mahaux. The photos were taken between 2010 and 2016, and it was a requirement that the images be used in "positive stories only." NBC News found that at least 12 media organizations, including Marie Claire, Yahoo News, and NBC News itself, paid to use the Mahaux pictures.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.