Western media, especially BBC and NYT, always apply gray filters to photos in China and Russia.
This article by NYT has several side-by-side photos of China versus the USA that make the gray filter especially obvious.
Notice how the plants in China are all gray, while the US plants next to oil wells are somehow green and normal:
Most obvious gray filter:
This last image of solar panels in Shanxi is hilarious. Apparently plants in China have evolved to be black instead of green:
It seems the NYT photographer in China forgot how to color grade photos, but magically remembers once they fly back to the USA.
The article itself just laments about the sorry state of US renewables compared to China, which is building solar and wind at breakneck speed.
Scroll down to see my comments documenting other cases of this visual propaganda.
You're right and I agree, I just wanted to note that the "grey filter" doesn't have to be a literal post-processing filter like the "grey trees" were (I remember that ridiculous moment); bad-faith framing and lying by ommission are much more common than outright lying in Western media. I'm quite a pedant on these sorts of things.