Objective Representation: Photographs as Facts

Dona Schwartz

On December 31, 1996 the Minneapolis Star Tribune published a photograph on its front page that had been shot by one of the staff's most respected photographers, Stormi Greener. The photograph showed the snow covered St. Croix River and the bridge that spans it and connects Wisconsin to Minnesota. The photograph accompanied a story about the US Department of the Interior's veto if a proposal to build a new bridge. Rather than the usual kudos recognizing her efforts, the newspaper awarded Greener a two-day suspension without pay. She had committed an egregious offense: Unbeknown to her editors, she had digitally eliminated power lines from the photograph before it went to press. The Star Tribune's "Visual content editor." Bill Dunn, explained that Greener had violated the newspaper's policy governing digital manipulation of photographs: "We do not manipulate or alter any photography, with the exception of dust spots or imperfections on the negative….we make every effort to publish what the camera saw' (Gilyard 1997,7).

Media Impeialism Vs. Cultural Identity

If we ask question that do the mass media produce direct, immediate and powerful influences on the audiences, then a simple yes or no answer is not possible. Sometimes the media seem powerful and sometimes not. We can see that an international 'media culture' has come to stay in which certain languages, cultures and types of story have come to find wide influences in all over the world. The mass media play a crucial role in almost all aspects of daily life in these days. The sociological significance of media extends beyond the content of media messages. Their influence is not limited to what we know. People learn and internalize some values, beliefs and norms presented in the media products. Media also affect how we learn about our world and interact with one another. They provide a diversion, a source of conflict, or a unifying force. Such impact is almost obvious when we look at the ways in which the mass media mediate our relationships.

In contemporary society, it is media that most often act as the bridge between people of different origins. The media can serve as an entertainer, informer, and also as a way to transmit values or norms. The relationship between society and the media is more complex than a simple 'free flow of information' slogan might suggest. The process of 'mass communication' is not synonymous with the 'mass media', the organized technologies that make mass communication possible. The 'mass communication' remains as an abstract concept while 'mass media' has acquired a status of reality. Globalization in the field of media is not just about the technological innovations used to communicate over long distances. In addition, and perhaps more important, it also refers to the exchange and intermingling of cultures from different parts of the world. In reality, this process is quite unidirectional. Some scholars claim that the export of American and Western popular culture is latter-day imperialism.

The New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO)

The New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) is a term that was coined in a debate over media representations of the developing world in UNESCO in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The term was widely used by the MacBride Commission, a UNESCO panel chaired by Nobel Prize winner Seán MacBride, which was charged with creation of a set of recommendations to make global media representation more equitable. The MacBride Commission produced a report titled "Many Voices, One World", which outlined the main philosophical points of the New World Information Communication Order.

Rights relating to communication have been central to the concept of universal human rights emerging in the mid-20th century, and its consolidation in the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The idea of a “right to communicate”was at the centre of an international diplomatic row that lasted several years the debate over what became known as a New World Information and Communication Order - NWICO.

John Milton's Areopagitica

When John Milton wrote Areopagitica (1644) to argue against a proposal in the British Parliament that would require licences to print books, he was writing an impassioned plea both for his own intellectual freedom and for the ideal of free speech. The principal argument, couched in Protestant doctrine, is that the knowledge of good and evil is complementary—that a person cannot know what is good without knowing what is evil. According to Milton, preventing wrong-headed or evil books from being printed would only make it harder for citizens to know what books are correct or good.

The 10 rules of writing news for television

By Jessica Grillanda

If you think television news is simplistic, cliché and shallow, there

are many examples to prove you right. It conjures images of anchors

with bob cuts giving the “Coles Notes” on the day’s car crashes and

town fairs. But when it’s done right, television is more than

aesthetics and abbreviations.

Television is the most powerful medium available to newsmakers. Did

you just wait to read about the collapse of the Twin Towers in the

paper the next day? Television can deliver the moving images, sounds

and stories that affect our lives and those of people half a world

away.

Getting it right takes much more skill than weaving a good tale,

recording bed sound or capturing emotive close-ups. It takes

synchronizing all these elements into a cohesive story that appeals to

both the eyes and ears.

Mass Media and Socialization

Socialization is the process of developing a sense of self connected to a larger social world through learning and internalizing the values, beliefs, and norms of one's culture. Through socialization we learn to perform certain roles as citizens, friends, lovers, workers, and so forth. Through internalization our culture becomes taken-for-granted. We learn to behave in socially appropriate and acceptable ways. Some social institutions have explicit roles in socializing the young (such as the family and schools) and others have less intentional but still powerful roles in the process (such as adolescent peers).