Thread by @DrRJKavanagh

I am so glad the fact that public defender offices are vastly underfunded has made the @nytimes.

But I hate this article.

There's a nice picture of the lawyer in a suit & then there's all his nameless clients' mugshots plastered at the top of the page.

nyti.ms/2SnwebX

The photos helpfully flash on & off as you read how many cases he has, which are felonies, who is facing life w/o parole etc. But the clients are never named & we're never told their stories.

Then there are photos in court of clients in cuffs taken from behind with time stamps.

I think the point is to emphasize how people are shunted through the system and if public defender offices aren'f funded properly they don't even act as a stop gap.

But the photos are of actual people. It comes across as exploitative.

And I get that the article is about public defenders so in this context it's a choice to center them, but then don't use clients as props.

This is an important topic. How we choose to frame it matters.

.@richoppel & @jugalpatelNYT can you please explain how you got the consent of the people pictured to use their mugshots?

Especially since the lawyer featured in the article no longer works for the public defender office & so wouldn't represent them anymore.