Political Media:

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Political Media

• Documentary

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Politics and media

• The critical role of media in conventional
  politics
• The role of media in constituting particular
  issues and objects as political issues or matters
  of public concern
• The politics of media as an institution
  (following Habermas, The Structural
  Transformation of the Public Sphere)
• The politics of media form

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The Rhetoric of the Image

• .for the linguistic sign Panzani gives not
  simply the name of the firm but also, by its
  assonance, an additional signified, that of
  Italianicity. The linguistic message is thus
  twofold denotational and connotationalputting
  aside the linguistic message, we are left with a
  pure image (even if the labels are part of it,
  anecdotally). This image straightaway provides a
  series of discontinuous signs Barthes, The
  Rhetoric of the Image, Image-Music-Text, 1977

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Problems with textual approaches

• The status of the interpretation and the problem
  of the role of the audience, the site and
  conditions of reception leads to reception
  studies
• The affective registers of media
• The truth of the image

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Realism1) The Production of the Real
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Intertextuality
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• "Thomas Deichman and LM questioned the veracity
  of ITN's reports of the Bosnian Serb camps at
  Omarska and Trnopolje. Deichman's specific
  charges, his evidence, and the supporting
  arguments, have all been examined. Even in their
  own terms in which the material specifics of a
  particular fence at one camp are the focus of
  attention the claims of Deichmann and LM are
  erroneous and their arguments flawed.the
  journalists they criticized were not interviewed,
  and the inmates who survived the campswere
  ignored" Campbell, 2002

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2) Truth and Lies

• "It is this fragility that makes deception so
  very easy up to a point, and so tempting. It
  never comes into conflict with reason because
  things could indeed been as the liar maintains
  they were. Lies are often more plausible, more
  appealing to reason, than reality, since the liar
  has the advantage of knowing beforehand what the
  audience wishes or expects to hear. He has
  prepared his story for public consumption with a
  careful eye to making it credible, whereas
  reality has the disconcerting habit of
  confronting us with the unexpected, for which we
  were not prepared" Hannah Arendt, Lying in
  Politics, in The Crisis of the Republic, p.6

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3) Forms of Realism
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The realist interview
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Independent mediaa politics of location and
distribution
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Modernism and the avant-garde
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Reflexive realism

• Maybe journalists should be more honest about the
  constraints under which they work and the deals
  they do, so readers, viewers and listeners could
  better evaluate the news. Headscarves are just
  the beginning. Left-wing "indie-media" types say
  those who report while "embedded" with British or
  US troops in Iraq are propagandists - dressed,
  incidentally, in flak jackets and helmets,
  another sartorial signal. By agreeing to the
  rules of the military, they say, we abrogate our
  journalistic independence. 'I reported
  everything I saw'Well, I covered the November
  2004 assault on Fallujah as an "embed" on the
  front line, and it was one of the most important
  stories I have ever reported. Obeying US military
  rules, I did not say exactly where we were, nor
  did I give the names or show the faces of
  American soldiers who were killed until after
  their families were informed. But I saw a lot
  and I reported everything I saw. It was the only
  way to get the story - this was not a conflict
  where you could wander around independently and
  stay alive.

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Unstaged reality/verité
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4) Documents and Events

• "Empathetic witnessing, McCullin originally
  though, would not be a political exercise. But By
  portraying 'the appalling things we are all
  capable of doing to our fellow human beings',
  McCullin's photojournalism sought 'to stir the
  conscience of other who can help', to show those
  comfortably at home in Britain.how these people
  were suffering'. But while political, McCullin's
  pictures, especially those of Biafra, 'were not
  partisan. I would like to think these images
  brought help to the beleagured hospitals with
  their dying children. I knew my pictures had a
  message, but what it was precisely I couldnt
  have said except perhaps, that I wanted to
  break the hearts and spirits of secure people"
  (Campbell, 2003, p.68)

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5) Photography and Geopolitics
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6) The Filmic Assemblage

• the photograph requires the politics produced
  by the interplay of image and context Campbell
  2003, p.72