To Tell the Truth: Codes of Objectivity in Photojournalism
Jan 25, 2010 Photojournalism
A bomb blast at the Australian Embassy in Jakarta, Thursday, Sept. 9, 2004. Nine people dead and more than 160 wounded.
Communication, 13:95-109, 1992
Recent mass media scholarship has shed considerable light on journalistic objectivity as a social construct. Seminal studies by researchers like Tuchman (1978), Gans (1979), Epstein (1973), and Fishman (1980) have revealed the relationships among work routines, professional norms and values, and the institutional contexts in which newsmaking takes place. Examining news production as a social activity has helped to place objectivity within an appropriate cultural frame, allowing us to see it as a professional value and a set of communicative strategies employed by journalists. While the newsmaking routines associated with print and broadcast journalism have received significant scholarly attention, surprisingly little scrutiny has been directed towards news photography, or photojournalism.
Both history and popular lore have encouraged us to view photographs as direct, unmediated transcriptions of the real world, rather than seeing them as coded symbolic artifacts whose form and content transmit identifiable points of view. Statements of the kind made by Lady Elizabeth Eastlake, published in the London Quarterly Review for 1857, represent the enduring popular attitude towards the medium of photography:
- [Photography] is the sworn witness of everything presented to her view. What are her unerring records in the service of mechanics, engineering, geology, and natural history, but facts of the most sterling and stubborn kind?…Facts which are neither the province of art nor of description, but that of a new form of communication between man and man–neither letter, message, nor picture–which now happily fills up the space between them?
Since the introduction of photography, viewers have invested the medium with a level of authority and credibility unparalleled by other modes of communication. The iconic similarity of the photograph to its subject masks the distinction between image and reality, and obscures the significance of the picture-making process in the construction of a photographic message. Like Lady Eastlake, most contemporary viewers continue to think of the photograph as a transparent window on the world, capturing the reality in front of the camera lens.
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Top 50 Free Open Courseware Classes for Journalists
Jan 25, 2010 Photography, Photojournalism
Top 50 Free Open Courseware Classes for Journalists
If you write fiction, then you are not a journalist – although, many people might believe that mainstream media has moved more toward sensationalism than to the truth to gain ratings. Journalism is in trouble, if this is how this writing genre is depicted today. But, educators are seeking to turn the genre’s reputation around to a more reputable yet still exciting stance. This movement is reflected in many free online courses and in entire Websites dedicated to journalism ethics, editing and new media.
The following list of top 50 free open courseware classes for journalists includes classes offered by college and universities. But, it also includes entire Websites sponsored by nonprofit foundations and colleges, which are dedicated to teaching readers about journalism. This list is categorized and listed alphabetically by course name or Web site name within those categories, and the sponsoring college or foundation is listed after each description.
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Tags: Classes, Courseware, Fellowship, Grant, Journalism, Journalists
