Photojournalists have to constantly make the decision to shoot photos rather than help or interfere with the situation that is right in front of them and with that comes the question when/ is there a time that you should get involved. I think that if you are a photojournalist you are there to shine a light on everything, not just the nice parts and your job is to give a true representation of what's happening before anything else; so that other people can truly see what's going on and to make people more aware of what's actually happening, not just stories told by the person on the tv.
The image below is an image taken by Eddie Adams of Nguyen Ngoc Loan, the national police chief of South Vietnam, executing a vietcong fighter. My initial thought on this image is why did he let that happen and not stop the 'chief of police' from executing someone when he's only a few meters away from it but in situations like this, one it may not always be safe for the photographer to interfere but two images like this hit hard hard with the public and can influence change and action. In this case Adams made the right call as the day after this image was taken it appeared on the cover of multiple different newspapers across America and completely changed what people thought about the Vietnam war for the better, it made people question who was on the right side of this war in a way that reading an article couldn't do.
image © Eddie Adams
An ongoing debate in photojournalism is that just because you can take photos of whoever, should you? street photography is a hugely popular with photographers but is rarely done by asking permission, for example the image below, taken by Bruce Gilden in NYC of a busy street, he shoots with an external flash close up to peoples faces. The problems that surround this is that not everyone may want there photo taken, there's a child In the image and its not a flattering photo however Gilden is completely within the law shooting images like this. Some people find having their photo taken without their permission a big problem but often these photos are the most interesting so in this case its not about whether the image means something but more how close the photographer feel is acceptable to get to a stranger and shoot an image. This will be different for everyone as Id struggle to get as close and use flash like Gilden does, id feel a lot more comfortable finding a scene and waiting for a subject to pass through it
image © Bruce Gilden see - https://www.brucegilden.com/#/a-beautiful-catastrophe/
another ethical debate in photojournalism surrounds the alteration and manipulation of photos as it is often hard to spot and not very obvious. The photo below was released by the Iranian revolutionary guards official news site, Sepah news of four missiles being launched from an undisclosed location in the desert however not all of the missiles fired. the image that was released to the public and been published around the world had been altered to make it appear as if all four missiles fired although the altered photo looks better in photojournalism you should never remove things, change the colour of things, or over dramatise things, your job is to show a true representation of what's happening.
This next photo could be considered unethical by some people as I'm sure the person in the photo probably wouldn't have wanted their photo taken and shared right after they'd lost everything to a tsunami, and some people may say that it isn't appropriate to photograph someone immediately after something like this happens. However photos like this have a more powerful effect on people and will stick in peoples minds and memories more than a portrait of the person with a description. It's these kind of images that get people to do something like helping out or donating money to charities that help with situations like this and its these photos that get things to change.
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