J 301F Lecture Notes - Lecture 23: Photojournalism, Inculturation, Indexicality
11/3/16
Who’s Minding the Gate?
Pool Feeds, Video Subsidies, and Political Images
• Pool video: a video that was shared by multiple news organizations.
• Increasingly popular among news organizations, which save money by taking turns sending photographers
to events, and by event coordinators who are able to contend with fewer photojournalists at a particular
event.
• Pool feeds and technological assistance provided by state entities for video coverage constitute
iforatio susidies hih authorities attept to otrol essages helpig jouralists.
• Material subsidy: news workers are given the use of lights and audio equipment provided by the state.
• Regulating pools and feeds grants political actors a source of power in their effort to influence the news
agenda.
• The subjective nature of photojournalism coupled with the influence of political operatives in the pool
system constitutes a cultural production system that favors those who control physical access to events.
• The assumption of images as objective representations, operating within the constructive process by
which such images are negotiated, presents an illusion of transparency.
Conceptual Framework
• Democracy requires the free flow of information.
• Photographic images are a special form of information in that they are not ideas but material artifacts.
• Photographs appear as ojetie fats eause e are so ilied to relate seeig ith koig.
• What we see in the media are highly constructed images, whose style, point of view, format, and angle
are negotiated between journalists and their sources.
• The power to grant physical/material access to events constitutes an advantage in negotiating the
meaning of those events.
• The subjective decision making involved with collecting, editing, and disseminating news video is not part
of news presentation.
• Because we so strongly equate seeing with knowing, it is essential that we attend to what is shown, and
more importantly what is not.
Subjectivity versus Indexicality
• The degree to which state agents work to influence video production contradicts the use of those images
by news organizations as objective.
• Video cultivates an inaccurate impression that we are getting the full picture.
• Most of the real happenings in politics are shielded from photographers.
• The emphasis of feed video on the formalities of legislative bodies in highly orchestrated ritual constitutes
a political message of its own, a message protected by political actors and unacknowledged by journalists.
Subsidies and Cooptation
• What can be shown is often decided in concert with political agents.
• The essentiality of visuals for television coverage intensifies the reliance of photojournalists on the
officials who regulate pools and feeds.
• There’s a spirit of ooperatio ut the to sets of ators, photojouralists ad politiias, ko the
rules and follow them.
• By providing news organizations with a less-expensive, efficient way to obtain news video, the pool
system also benefits those who provide and regulate it.
• Pro: news organizations save money and time. Politicians no longer face rows of flashed and bobbing
lenses and can deliver their messages efficiently.
• Cons: close working relationships may degrade the role of journalists as detached observers. Visual
information subsidies cause journalists to cede control.
Transcription vs. Contextualization
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