David Ortiz's Samsung Photo Is Ruining White House Selfies For Other Athletes

Boston Red Sox slugger David Ortiz's controversial selfie with President Barack Obama last Monday might have caused the White House to put the kibosh on athletes taking their own photos with the president.

According to the Associated Press, Olympic athletes were told to keep their phones in their pockets when meeting the president this past Thursday, a request that appears to be a direct reaction to Samsung using the Ortiz photo, which it helped plan, in ads on Twitter.

The AP reports that while Red Sox players were told not to worry about taking photos with the president because the White House has its own official photographer, the Olympians were explicitly asked not to take their phones out.

"It was more of a: 'Don't worry, someone will be there to take pictures with the President if he has time,'" the Red Sox told the AP in a statement.

Business Insider reported last week that President Obama was unaware that Ortiz's photo, taken during a team visit in celebration of the Red Sox' 2013 World Series championship, would be used for commercial purposes.

Samsung reportedly worked with Ortiz, a paid endorser of its products, on how to take and share photos prior to the visit. The company then paid to promote the photo on Twitter after Ortiz posted it on the social network, and told users that it had been "taken with a #GalaxyNote3," a Samsung model smartphone.

The controversial photo is part of a larger campaign by Samsung to show the public that influential celebrities use its products. It last garnered mainstream attention in March, when talk show host Ellen DeGeneres and actor Bradley Cooper used the Galaxy Note 3 to take a photo of themselves and a group of Hollywood A-Listers at the Academy Awards.

Here's the Ortiz selfie: