Can they do that?

The lead story on MSNBC for a while yesterday had to do with the miseries of air travel. It was accompanied by a picture – two middle aged, overweight people, a man and a woman, trapped in the middle seats on a wide-body jet, heads back, eyes closed, jaws slack, hair askew…

Can they just take a picture of anyone in a public place and use it in a news story? That must be the case, because I can’t imagine that they got permission from these poor folks.