Letter for New York Times

Lens Blog,

Editor in Chief,

The New York Times,

The New York Times Building,

620 Eighth Avenue,

New York City,

New York,

10018,

UNITED STATES

Dear whom it may concern,

I read your article from the New York Times about debating the rules and ethics of digital photojournalism, my thoughts on this article was that it came across quite bias. The reason for this is because most of the people you interviewed in the article were part of the competition, however you only interviewed two photographers. There was only one actual partaking photographer interviewed for this article and he was anonymous, showing that either he must've not been allowed to show his identity or he was too scared of the officials on their high horses as they seem to have a lot of power, which really only gives a one sided opinion on this matter.

Moving on to the actual situation from this article, I agree with Melissa Lyttle who says “The fact that some photojournalists think any degree of lying and manipulation is okay, makes me question the message they’re sending to others”. I feel that the photographer was wrong to edit the photo for something that is going to be used for photojournalism as it can completely manipulate the image and the meaning behind it. However, if this was a different situation I would 100% agree with the photographer that photography is an art form that we all do differently, so there shouldn’t be any disqualification based on art, however, there is a line to where you should stop editing out things, as sometimes it is best to leave things in so it lets people see the whole image and the meaning behind it.

Thank you for your time

Yours Faithfully,

Bethaney Dean