WEDNESDAY'S LETTERS: 'NY Times' and the Lamont Endorsement, Reuters' Doctored Photographs

By: E&P Staff In today's letters, a reader expresses disappointment that E&P touted the New York Times' endorsement of Ned Lamont in the Connecticut democratic primary, a charge that the media is further spinning the Reuters doctored photo story, and a suggestion for how wire services can have more oversight over field photographers.


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'NY Times' and the Lamont Endorsement

While I'm thrilled that Ned Lamont beat Joe Leiberman, I'm disappointed that E&P touted the New York Times' endorsement of Lamont.

No one should ever forget the war the New York Times conducted against Al Gore in 2000 in conjunction with the Washington Post, filled with misquotes and flat out lies about Al Gore while they disgustingly fawned over Bush the thief. The refusal of the New York Times to tell the truth in 2000 was a major [factor] in creating the nightmare our country is now in.

Nancy Kuhn


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On Reuters and Doctored Photos

In your belated attempt to spin the recent scandal about a once-respected news agency, namely Reuters, running with altered news photographs, you engage in some blatant intellectual dishonesty to cover up for them. To wit, you state as "fact", the following, which I lifted verbatim from your article.

"The second photo showed an Israeli jet releasing three flares -- while the original photo showed one flare."

Sad to say, you fail to mention that the original Reuters caption for said photo mentions absolutely *nothing* about the jet "releasing flares" -- in fact, it said that the Israeli jet was *firing a missile*. Your spin on this part of the story is just as distorted as the original fake photo.

Craig Seufert
Meredith, N.H.



If their field photographers are using digital cameras, the photo editors of AP, AFP and Reuters should actually have tools to accurately chart the time sequences behind those much-debated Qana photos. Most digital cameras record date, time and exposure data for each photo and include that data in metatags on each original image file. Unfortunately, rather than look to those tags for dispassionate forensic evidence, the respective editors chose to defend themselves with knee-jerk defensiveness or weasel words such as "could" and "may."

Paul Konstadt
Boston, Mass.