This is your underlying mistake. Their readership makes no such assumption. The only assumption that they do make is that if women are present in the photos, they will be removed. It doesn’t matter what the political or social status of that woman is. Don’t put your assumptions that you have when you look at media on them!
Do you think the average reader will see the photo and think “there was a woman there but the paper removed her?” Or do you think the average reader will take the photo as a factual representation of what happened?
I think the latter is true.
If the former is true, then perhaps the newspaper is further violating tznius standards since men looking at every photo must be wondering “Was there a woman in that photo? If so, who was she?”
The Wolf