“Documenting Journalism:
Using Documentary Modes to Rethink Journalism”
Natalie Puchalski
Bachelor of Communication (Journalism)
Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the Bachelor of
Communication (Journalism) (Honours)
Supervisor: Alex Wake
RMIT University
School of Media and Communication
October 2010
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Statement of Authorship
3
Abstract
4
Acknowledgements
5
INTRODUCTION
6
CHAPTER ONE:
Bill Nichols’ documentary modes
9
CHAPTER TWO:
Overview of journalism
27
CHAPTER THREE:
How journalism can be considered in modes
30
CONCLUSION:
63
List of Works Cited
66
2
Statement of Authorship
This thesis contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other
degree or diploma in any tertiary institution, and that, to the best of my knowledge
and belief, contains no material previously published or written by another person,
except where due reference is made in the text of this thesis.
Signed:
Date:
3
Abstract
“The journalism landscape is constantly changing, with new technologies and
mediums re-defining the relationship between the news media and the public.
Since journalism also seeks to function as a documentary practice, this thesis will
explore how the modes Bill Nichols initially devised to categorise documentary
film could be applied to describe the changing nature of journalism.
Transposing these documentary film forms may lead to new theories and ideas
about the role of journalists and their evolving relationship with the audience.”
4
Acknowledgement
My sincere thanks to my supervisor, Alex Wake, for her support and always
constructive feedback. I really appreciate your patience and support in a thesis that
challenged both of us at times.
I’d also like to thank the Honours coordinator, Adrian Miles, for his encouragement
and motivation throughout the year, and for inspiring me to think in different ways.
To my classmates, thank you for making my Honours experience both intellectuallystimulating and enjoyable − I wish you all the best!
5
INTRODUCTION
From its beginnings in print, to the introduction of radio, television and most
recently, the internet, “journalism has always been shaped by technology”.1 As John
Pavlik argues, “distributing information about the important events of the day has
been enabled, if not often driven, by technological advances”.2 Over the years, the
impact of new mediums and technologies has led to a shift in the nature of the
journalism profession and its relationship with both the subjects of news stories and
the audience. Pavlik states that Gutenberg’s printing press “laid the foundation for
mass literacy and the invention of the newspaper”, while Alexander Graham Bell’s
invention of the telephone “not only made widespread telecommunications possible
but also transformed how journalists gather and report the news”.3 However, it is the
emergence of the internet, which Sreenath Sreenivasan, from the Columbia
University School of Journalism, argues has had “the single biggest impact on
journalism since the telephone” and which “has changed journalism in every
conceivable way”.4 The emergence of the online medium has altered the one-to-many
model of communication which dominated older technologies, such as print, radio
and television.5 Brian Trench and Gary Quinn argue that the move to internet news
publishing is the latest in a series of technological shifts which have not only required
journalists to adapt their daily practice but which have also recast their role in
society.6
1
John Pavlik, “The Impact of Technology on Journalism,” Journalism Studies 1, no. 2 (2000): 229.
ibid.
3
ibid.
4
Quoted in Katherine Noyes, “Journalism 2.0: Power to the People,” TechNewsWorld, May 3, 2010.
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/57193.html (accessed April 10, 2010).
5
Chris Lapham, “The Evolution of the Newspaper of the Future,” CMC Magazine 2, no. 7 (July 1,
1995). http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1995/jul/lapham.html (accessed May 17, 2010).
6
Brian Trench and Gary Quinn, “Online news and changing models of journalism,” Irish
Communications Review 9 (2003). http://www.icr.dit.ie/volume9/articles/Trench_and_Quinn.pdf
(accessed May 17, 2010).
2
6
The evolution of journalism draws parallels with the development of
documentary film, which similarly functions as a record of factual events.7 In 1983,
film theorist Bill Nichols first suggested the concept of documentary modes, which
has now become one of the most significant theories in documentary film. His modes
of representation in documentary film are a way of “organizing texts in relation to
certain recurrent features or conventions”, such as the use of voice-over or the
filmmaker’s interaction with the subject.8 Each documentary mode is brought about
from the “limitations and constraints of previous forms” and the changing approaches
to the “representation of reality”,9 as well as technical innovations in sound and
camera equipment, such as the mobile cameras developed in the early 1960s, which
“completely revolutionized the documentary film”.10
Australian media and communication professor Terry Flew argues, “As with
all media, the study of new media needs to be interdisciplinary and multiperspectival, drawing upon the insights of fields as diverse as media and
communication studies, sociology, psychology, cultural studies, economics and
political economy, politics, discourse analysis, history, and the visual arts”,11 and in
this case, documentary film.
So while documentary film can be seen as “a sub-species of journalism”,12
this thesis will explore how modes of documentary can be transposed to the overall
profession of journalism across all mediums, in a western liberal context, in order to
chart the similar changing nature of representing the historical world. In order to
7
Foluke Ogunleye, “Television Docudrama as Alternative Records of History,” Documentary is Never
Neutral, http://www.documentaryisneverneutral.com/words/docalthis.html (accessed May 17,
2010).
8
Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1991), 32.
9
ibid.
10
Kevin Macdonald and Mark Cousins, “The Grain of Truth,” in Imagining Reality: The Faber Book
of Documentary, ed. Kevin Macdonald and Mark Cousins (Faber and Faber: London, 1996), 249.
11
Terry Flew, New Media: An Introduction (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2008), 20.
12
Quoted in Stella Bruzzi, New Documentary (Routledge: London, 2000), 5.
7
adapt the documentary modes to the practice of journalism, this thesis will review the
current literature in both documentary and journalism and apply it to journalism
practice.
This thesis tackles two main areas of study – documentary film and
journalism.
Chapter One introduces one of the most significant theories in documentary
film − Bill Nichols’ concept of documentary modes. Each of his six modes (the
poetic, expository, observational, participatory, reflexive and performative) is
described and illustrated with an example.
Chapter Two discusses the aims of journalism and how journalists ultimately
function as documentarians. The emergence of new mediums, such as online, has also
affected the nature of journalism and changed its relationship with the subject and
audience, in the same way the dynamics between the filmmaker, subject and audience
have evolved in each new mode of documentary film.
Chapter Three categorises journalism into modes, in order to highlight
emerging trends and provide a new way of thinking about the profession. Similarly to
Nichols’ typology of documentary film, this theory of journalism modes is not
intended as a linear chronology of mutually exclusive modes (as each mode is still in
existence). Rather, it is a way of demonstrating the general move towards
interactivity and self-reflexivity that is occurring in both professions.
The last section draws the work together to form the basis of the thesis. By
framing the documentary practice of journalism in the modes used to categorise
documentary film, this thesis illustrates the ways journalists can take advantage of the
distinct characteristics in each medium in order to communicate the news more
effectively, as well as prepare for the challenges of the future.
8
CHAPTER ONE:
Bill Nichols’ documentary modes
It has been stated by Nichols that “every film is a documentary” as it “gives
evidence of the culture that produced it and reproduces the likenesses of the people
who perform within it”.13 In this sense, Nichols points out that the term
“documentary” can encompass two main kinds of film: documentaries of wishfulfillment, deemed as fiction, and those of social representation, referred to as nonfiction.14 For these purposes, however, the term ‘documentary’ will be used to refer to
the latter category of non-fiction films which are seen as using the images and stories
of real life as their subject.15
Nichols identified distinctive styles of documentary in his 1983 essay “Voice
of Documentary”, but it was in his 1991 book, Representing Reality: Issues and
Concepts in Documentary, where he first outlined his four modes of documentary
film — expository, observational, interactive (later renamed as ‘participatory’) and
reflexive — in order to help organise and categorize documentary films in relation to
certain recurrent features or conventions.16 These were the original four modes
Nichols introduced but since then he has added two others: the poetic and
performative because “the four modes of documentary production that presented
themselves as an exhaustive survey of the field no longer suffice”.17
13
Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 1.
ibid.
15
Lahav, Gil. “An Interview with Ross McElwee.” The Harvard Advocate Spring 1994.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/news/ross/harvard.html (accessed May 17, 2010).
16
Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1991), 32.
17
Bill Nichols, Blurred Boundaries: Questions of Meaning in Contemporary Culture (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1994), 93.
14
9
Nichols states that documentary film is “guided by a fundamental
preoccupation with the representation of the historical world”,18 and thus, the modes
represent different concepts of historical representation.19 Each mode arises from the
limitations and constraints of previous forms and as a result, aims to convey a “fresh,
new perspective on reality”.20 For instance, expository documentaries “seek to
challenge the invitation to escape from the social world implicit in much fiction”,
while observational documentaries “reject the argumentative pitch of the expository
mode”.21 Nichols points out that documentary modes may co-exist at any moment in
time and do not follow an orderly succession since established modes are not
rendered inoperative or incapable of producing results by newer ones.22 I have created
a table of the modes (on the next page), which shows their characteristics, gives
examples and offers some limitations. Each mode is more fully described within the
body of this thesis.
18
Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1991), 15-16.
19
ibid., 23.
20
ibid., 32.
21
ibid., 23.
22
ibid.
10
Bill Nichols’ documentary modes
Modes
Characteristics
Examples
Limitations
Poetic
− focuses on rhythm and
tone
 Rain (Joris Ivens, 1929)
 Pacific 231 (Jean Mitry,
1949)
− can be too
abstract
Expository
− directly addresses the
viewer through devices
such as voice-overs
 The Plow That Broke The
Plains (Pare Lorentz, 1936)
− overly
didactic
Observational
− “fly-on-the-wall”
approach
 Don’t Look Back (D.A.
Pennebaker, 1967)
 Primary (Robert Drew,
1960)
− lack of
context
Participatory
− filmmaker interacts
with subject
 In the Year of the Pig (Emile
de Antonio, 1969)
− excessive
faith in
witnesses
Reflexive
− looks at problems and
issues of representation
 Roger and Me (Michael
Moore, 1989)
 The Thin Blue Line (Errol
Morris, 1991)
− loses sight
of actual
issues
Performative
− demonstrates how
knowledge is subjective
 Super Size Me (Morgan
Spurlock, 2004)
− can blur the
boundaries
between fact
and fiction
11
The Poetic Mode
The earliest mode of documentary Nichols introduced was originally the
expository mode, however, after revising his theory in 1994, he added the poetic
mode, which then became the first mode in the series. Nichols claims the poetic mode
“shares a common trait with the modernist avant-garde”23 and developed “as a way of
representing reality in terms of a series of fragments, subjective impressions,
incoherent acts, and loose associations”.24 In response to Hollywood fiction films of
the early 1900s, this documentary mode explores “associations and patterns that
involve temporal rhythms and spatial juxtapositions”,25 focusing on the mood and
tone of the film rather than “displays of knowledge or acts of persuasion”.26 Nichols
also explains that this mode opens up “the possibility of alternative forms of
knowledge to the straightforward transfer of information, the prosecution of a
particular argument of point of view, or the presentation of reasoned propositions
about problems in need of solution”.27
An example of a documentary film that Nichols classifies within the poetic
mode is Joris Ivens’ Rain.28 In this film, Nichols states that while the audience does
not get to know any of the social actors in the film, “we do come to appreciate the
lyric impression Ivens creates of a summer shower passing over Amsterdam”.29 Jean
Mitry’s Pacific 23130 is another film identified by Nichols as “in part a poetic
evocation of the power and speed of a steam locomotive as it gradually builds up
23
Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 102.
ibid., 103.
25
ibid., 102.
26
ibid., 103.
27
ibid.
28
Rain, film, directed by Joris Ivens (Netherlands: Capi-Holland, 1929).
29
Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary, op. cit.,102-103.
30
Pacific 231, film, directed by Jean Mitry (France: Tadié Cinéma, 1944).
24
12
speed and hurtles towards it (unspecified) destination”.31 The film’s opening credits
state: “This film is not a ‘documentary’, but an attempt to create an atmosphere by
associating visual impressions and familiar sounds, intimately mingled with a music
score”. Nevertheless, the fact that there are apostrophes around the word
‘documentary’ suggest that the film is not a documentary in its traditional sense.
Poetic documentaries “draw on the historical world for their raw material but
transform this material in distinctive ways.32 Mitry’s avant-garde film draws on the
historical world for its raw material of a travelling steam locomotive but as Nichols
points out, the “editing stresses rhythm and form more than it does the actual
workings of a locomotive”.33 As a result, the poetic mode can be characterised by the
emphasis on “visual associations, tonal or rhythmic qualities, descriptive passages,
and formal organization”.34
The Expository Mode
The next Nichols outlines is the expository, which he states has been around
since at least the 1920s. In contrast to the poetic mode, the expository text addresses
the viewer directly, often through voice-overs or titles that advance an argument
about the historical world, stressiong the relationship between the filmmaker and the
viewer.35 It seeks to emphasise the impression of objectivity and well-supported
argument,36 with an omniscient narrator who provides context and often interprets
31
Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 102.
ibid., 103.
33
ibid.
34
ibid., 33.
35
Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1991), 34.
36
ibid., 35.
32
13
events for the viewer.37 The authoring presence of the filmmaker is represented by the
commentary of the (usually unseen) voice of authority, which is often the
filmmaker.38 While expository documentaries can accommodate elements of
interviews, those tend to be subordinated to an argument offered by the film itself,
contributing evidence to someone else’s argument.39
According to Bill Nichols, the expository mode seems to have begun with
John Grierson.40 Grierson himself pointed out the reasons why there was “no great
development” of the poetic documentary in the 1930s: “I think it’s partly because we
ourselves got caught up in social propaganda… We got on to the social problems of
the world, and we ourselves deviated from the poetic line”.41 As Barbash and Taylor
point out, Grierson’s first film, Drifters,42 was a clear example of the expository
mode of documentary that “stunned spectators with its dignified representation of a
heroic working class, depicting “Scottish herring fisheries of the time as ‘an epic of
steam and steel’”.43 Grierson considered cinema as a “pulpit” and “urged
documentary filmmakers to consider themselves propagandists, making socially
engaged films about ‘the drama of the doorstep’ in the service of national culture”.44
As a result, Grierson’s films characterised the expository mode and rather than
37
Andy Opel, “Paradise Lost I & II: Documentary, Gothic, and the Monster of Justice,” Jump Cut:
A Review of Contemporary Media 47 (Winter 2005).
http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc47.2005/goth/2.html (accessed May 17, 2010).
38
Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1991), 37.
39
ibid.
40
ibid., 23.
41
Elizabeth Sussex, “Grierson on Documentary: The Last Interview,” Film Quarterly 26 (Fall 1972):
24.
42
Drifters, film, directed by John Grierson (UK: New Era Films, 1929).
43
Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Taylor, Cross-cultural filmmaking: A Handbook for Making Documentary
and Ethnographic Films and Videos (California: University of California Press, 1997), 18.
44
ibid.
14
function as a “mirror” to the historical world, were more like a “hammer”, pounding a
message or argument into their audience.45
Pare Lorentz’s The Plow That Broke The Plains46 − a film about the dust
storms in American during the 1930s − is another example of an expository
documentary. Nichols states that the viewer of expository documentaries “generally
holds expectations that a commonsensical world will unfold in terms of the
establishment of a logical, cause/effect linkage between sequences and events”, and
as a result “recurrent images of phrases function as classic refrains, underscoring
thematic points or their emotional undercurrents”.47 For instance, in The Plow That
Broke The Plains, Nichols claims the “refrain of images of rich farm land turned to
dust… gives affective emphasis to the thematic argument for reclamation through
federal programs of conservation”.48 Nichols discusses how editing in the expository
mode “generally serves less to establish a rhythm or formal pattern, as it does in the
poetic mode, than to maintain the continuity of the spoken argument or perspective”,
sometimes sacrificing spatial and temporal continuity in the process.49 The shots of
“arid prairie landscapes” in The Plow That Broke The Plains, “came from all over the
Midwest… to support the claim of widespread damage to the land”,50 illustrating how
the expository mode “assembles fragments of the historical world into a more
rhetorical or argumentative frame than an aesthetic or poetic one”.51
45
ibid.
The Plow That Broke The Plains. Film. Directed by Pare Lorentz. USA: Resettlement
Administration, 1936.
47
Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1991), 37.
48
ibid
49
Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 107.
50
ibid.
51
ibid., 105.
46
15
The Observational Mode
In contrast, the observational mode, which is thought to have originated
around the 1960s,52 sought to simply observe what was occurring in front of the
camera, emphasising the non-intervention of the filmmaker,53 who becomes like a fly
on the wall.54 Also known as “direct cinema”, observational documentaries suggest a
boundary between the subject and filmmaker, and instead focus on the viewer’s
relationship with and perception of the subject.55 Nichols points out that observational
films rely on editing to enhance the impression of lived or real time56, however, this is
continuity editing, rather than the evidentiary editing of the expository mode.
Nichols states that, in its purest form, the observational mode avoids voiceover commentary, external music, intertitles, re-enactments and even interviews.57
Instead, documentaries of this mode are usually characterised by indirect address,
speech overheard rather than heard (since the subject does not “speak” directly to the
camera), synchronous sound and relatively long takes.58 In observational
documentaries, Nichols claims filmmakers cede “control” over the events that occur
in front of the camera more than in any other mode, in an effort to be unobtrusive,59
and therefore this mode of documentary conveys the sense of “unmediated and
unfettered access to the world”.60 As Stephen Mamber claims, this kind of
52
Bill Nichols, Blurred Boundaries: Questions of Meaning in Contemporary Culture (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1994), 95.
53
Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 38.
54
Realism as a Style in Cinema Verite: A Critical Analysis of "Primary"Author(s): Jeanne HallSource:
Cinema Journal, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Summer, 1991), pg28.
55
Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary, op. cit., 38.
56
ibid.
57
ibid.
58
ibid., 39.
59
ibid., 34.
60
ibid., 43.
16
documentary involves “a faith in unmanipulated reality, a refusal to tamper with life
as it presents itself”.61
An example of an observational documentary is Robert Drew’s Primary,62 a
film that about the 1960 Wisconsin Primary election between John F. Kennedy and
Hubert Humphrey. Primary was praised as “a revolutionary step and a breaking point
in the recording of reality in cinema”,63 in the way the camera follows Kennedy in
real-time and gives the viewer the feeling of being there alongside him. Hall claims
that “part of the project of a film like Primary is to prove that the filmmakers’
diminished control over shooting would ultimately increase spectators’ access to the
truth”.64 The style of this observational film aims to be transparent by “capturing
people in action and letting the viewer come to conclusions about them unaided by
any implicit or explicit commentary”.65 Primary features many innovations of
documentary film at the time, such as “the restless, wandering movements of
lightweight, handheld cameras; the dark, grainy images of fast, monochrome film;
and the impromptu performances of apparently preoccupied social actors”.66 As
director Robert Drew stated: “I’m determined to be there when the news happens. I’m
determined to be as unobtrusive as possible. And I'm determined not to distort the
situation”.67 Primary was described as “the beginning of a major change in the way
human events at all levels were recorded and reported” and was a film that “would
irrevocably change the face of documentary, in America and abroad”.68
61
Quoted in Jeanne Hall, “Realism as a Style in Cinema Verite: A Critical Analysis of ‘Primary’,”
Cinema Journal 30, no. 4 (Summer 1991): 25.
62
Primary, film, directed by Robert Drew (USA: Drew Associates, 1960).
63
“Third Independent Film Award.” Film Culture 22-23 (Summer 1961): 11.
64
Jeanne Hall, op. cit., 33.
65
ibid., 26.
66
ibid., 29.
67
Quoted in ibid., 24.
68
ibid., 29
17
Another film described as an example of the observational mode of
documentary is D.A. Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back,69 which “chronicles Bob
Dylan’s triumphant 1965 tour of England on the heels of his third album”.70 Don’t
Look Back “follows in the tradition of Robert Drew’s Primary”,71 and similarly to the
way Primary tracks Kennedy, Don’t Look Back “follows the singer as he strolls out
of the shadows and onto the stage” in one continuous take, rather than cutting from
Dylan in his dressing room to him performing on stage. As Hall states, one of the
motifs of the film is its “systematic critique of traditional newsgathering and
reporting practices”.72 This is particularly clear in the scene when Bob Dylan
challenges a reporter from TIME magazine: “I know more about what you do… just
by looking, than you’ll ever know about me. Ever.”73 Hall points out that this scene
“celebrates Pennebaker’s ‘alternative’ documentary aesthetic” and the “notion that we
might have greater access to the truth ‘just by looking’, highlighting the role of the
observational documentarian as “a neutral observer, not a polemicist”.74
The Participatory Mode
The “claim to a new privileged grasp of reality” in the observational mode of
documentary was later described as “somewhat naïve”75 − documentary scholars
dismissed these documentaries for not being “windows on the world” and denounced
69
Don’t Look Back, film, directed by D.A. Pennebaker (USA: Leacock-Pennebaker, 1967).
Barry Keith Grant and Jeannette Sloniowski, Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of
Documentary Film and Video (Detriot: Wayne State University Press, 1998), 223.
71
ibid.
72
ibid., 226.
73
ibid., 225-226.
74
Jeanne Hall, “Realism as a Style in Cinema Verite: A Critical Analysis of ‘Primary’,” Cinema
Journal 30, no. 4 (Summer 1991): 28.
75
ibid., 25.
70
18
filmmakers “for believing or pretending they were”.76 As a result, the next mode that
developed, what Nichols defines as the participatory mode (and which he had initially
labelled as the interactive mode), blurs the boundary between filmmaker and subject,
as the filmmaker openly interacts with their subject, stepping out from behind the
cloak of voice-over commentary, and down from a fly-on-the-wall observational
perch, almost becoming another actor.77 This mode, which Nichols identifies as
dominant between the 1960s and 1970s,78 became technologically viable in the late
1950s with the availability of portable sound recording equipment, which made
interaction possible during filming, as it did not rely on having to add speech in postproduction.79 Textual authority in participatory documentaries shifts toward the social
actors and subjects, as their comments and responses provide a central part of the
film’s argument.80 Instead of hiding the fact that the filmmaker’s presence may be
unintentionally affecting the subject being filmed, as in the observational mode, the
participatory mode introduces a sense of partialness, of “situated presence and local
knowledge [original emphasis]” that derives from the actual encounter of filmmaker
and their subject.81
Nichols describes Emile de Antonio’s In the Year of the Pig82 as a
“pioneering” example of the participatory mode.83 He explains how it “builds around
a series of interviews with various observers or participants in the American
involvement in the war in Vietnam”, helping to establish “the genre of historical
76
Jeanne Hall, “Realism as a Style in Cinema Verite: A Critical Analysis of ‘Primary’,” Cinema
Journal 30, no. 4 (Summer 1991): 27.
77
Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 116.
78
Bill Nichols, Blurred Boundaries: Questions of Meaning in Contemporary Culture (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1994), 95.
79
Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1991), 44.
80
ibid.
81
ibid.
82
In the Year of the Pig, film, directed by Emile de Antonio (USA: Emile de Antonio Productions,
1968).
83
Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary, op. cit., 48.
19
reconstruction based on oral history or witness testimony and archival footage rather
than on a voice-over commentary”.84 Nichols points out that while we do not see
Antonio on camera and only hear him once (in an interview with Senator Thurston
Morton), his presence is “relatively oblique but constantly implied both by editorial
commentary”, such as the opening shots of statues of Civil War soldiers, “and by the
interview format itself”.85 As Nichols concludes, “the argument is his but it arises out
of the selection and arrangement of the evidence provided by witnesses rather than
from a voice-over commentary [original emphasis]”.86 Thus, as Nichols points out,
participatory documentaries are the opposite of the premise behind observational
documentaries − any “truth” in participatory documentaries is derived from an
“interaction that would not exist were it not for the camera”.87
The Reflexive Mode
Though the two previous modes are centred on the filmmaker’s engagement
with their subject (or lack of), reflexive documentaries bring to light a new focus on
the relationship between the filmmaker and viewer that was originally introduced in
the poetic and expository modes. However, in the reflexive mode, the filmmaker
speaks to the viewer not only about the historical world, but about the problems and
issues of representing it as well.88 Nichols explains that while most of the previous
modes had been concerned with talking about the historical world, “the reflexive
mode addresses the question of how we talk about the historical world [original
84
Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1991), 48.
85
ibid.
86
ibid.
87
Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 118.
88
Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary, op. cit., 125.
20
emphasis]”.89 These types of documentaries, which have become increasingly popular
since the 1980s,90 are self-conscious not only about form and style but also about
strategy, structure, conventions, expectations and effects.91 As a result, participatory
and reflexive films stand in contrast with expository and observational films, which
tend to mask the work of production.92 While participatory films may draw attention
to the process of filmmaking when it poses a problem for the participants, the
reflexive mode draws attention to this process when it poses problems for the
viewer,93 often exploring the difficulties or consequences of representation.94 So
while this mode uses many of the same devices as other documentary modes, it sets
them on edge so that the viewer’s attention is drawn to the device as well as the
effect.95
For example, Nichols points out Errol Morris’ The Thin Blue Line,96 which
“tells the story of events leading up to and following the murder of a police officer”,97
as an example of a reflexive documentary. He explores how the film “relies heavily
on the conventions of the interview with its affinities for the confessional, but also
draws attention to the tensions that arise when statements contradict one another”.98
Nichols argues that in The Thin Blue Line, “Morris dramatizes the quest for evidence,
and underlines the uncertainty of what evidence there is”.99 He “reminds us of how
every documentary constructs the evidentiary reference points it requires” by
89
Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1991), 57.
90
Bill Nichols, Blurred Boundaries: Questions of Meaning in Contemporary Culture (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1994), 95.
91
Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary, op. cit., 57.
92
ibid., 56.
93
ibid., 57.
94
ibid., 59.
95
ibid., 39.
96
The Thin Blue Line, film, directed by Errol Morris (USA: American Playhouse, 1988).
97
David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004),
447.
98
Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary, op. cit., 57-58.
99
ibid., 58.
21
returning us to the scene of the crime “by means of a re-enactment that highlights…
completely inconclusive aspects of the event”, such as a milkshake being spilt in slow
motion.100 Bordwell and Thompson state that The Thin Blue Line is shot with
“smooth camera work, dramatic lighting, and vibrant colour” which work to
“dramatize witnesses’ alternative versions of how the crime took place”.101
Ultimately, the film “not only seeks to identify the real killer but also raises questions
about how fact and fiction may intermingle”.102 Grant and Sloniowski add that Morris
“stylizes his hypothetical re-enactments and never offers any of them as an image of
what actually happened”.103
As Miles Orvell discusses, Michael Moore’s Roger and Me104 “eschews the
tradition of observational documentary” and is instead a hybridisation of the
interactive (or participatory) and reflexive modes.105 The film is about “the plant
closings of the 1980s by General Motors and their effect on the company town of
Flint, Michigan”.106 Orvell argues the film is “part historical narrative, focusing on
the fate of Flint, Michigan, following the GM plant closings, and dealing with the
workers’ plight” but “it is also part autobiography, beginning with childhood footage
and first-person narration by the film-maker”.107 As a result, “we are most struck by
the filmmaker’s presence as interviewer and as self-conscious maker of the film”,108
100
Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1991), 58.
101
David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction (New York: McGraw-Hill,
2004), 132.
102
ibid.
103
Barry Keith Grant and Jeannette Sloniowski, Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of
Documentary Film and Video (Detriot: Wayne State University Press, 1998), 385.
104
1989
105
Miles Orvell, “Documentary Film and the Power of Interrogation: “American Dream” & “Roger
and Me”,’ Film Quarterly 48, no. 2 (Winter 1994-1995): 10.
106
ibid., 15.
107
ibid.
108
ibid.
22
with Moore implicitly making “a powerful point about documentary form”.109 Grant
and Sloniowski highlight the fact that “Moore makes his point of view… clear from
the outset of the film”, thus operating on the model of the “limited knowledge and
constrained perspective of the interactive mode of documentary”.110 As a result, Grant
and Sloniowski point out the reflexivity of the film: “we are strongly aware here, as
we cannot be in expository or observational films, of how Moore has constructed the
film, because of his intercutting of different kinds of footage and Moore’s selfdeprecating ironic narration”.111
The reflexive mode of documentary also encompasses mockumentary films,
as parody “can provoke a heightened awareness of a previously taken-for-granted
style, genre, or movement”.112 For instance, Rob Reiner’s This is Spinal Tap,113
parodies many of the innovations conventionalised in observational documentaries.114
Echoing the tracking shots used to follow Bob Dylan to the stage in Don’t Look Back,
This is Spinal Tap follows the rock band Spinal Tap “as they make their winding
journey through the corridors of an auditorium only to wind up in the boiler room”.115
In addition, the reflexive mode of documentary film takes into account the
changing environment of filmmaking. Craig Hight points out two main dynamics:
“the integration of digital technologies within conventional documentary practice”
and “the appropriation by digital platforms of aspects of documentary’s discourse and
109
Miles Orvell, “Documentary Film and the Power of Interrogation: “American Dream” & “Roger
and Me”,’ Film Quarterly 48, no. 2 (Winter 1994-1995): 17.
110
Barry Keith Grant and Jeannette Sloniowski, Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of
Documentary Film and Video (Detriot: Wayne State University Press, 1998), 405.
111
ibid., 407.
112
Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1991), 74.
113
This is Spinal Tap, film, directed by Rob Reiner (USA: Spinal Tap Prod., 1984).
114
Jeanne Hall, “Realism as a Style in Cinema Verite: A Critical Analysis of ‘Primary’,” Cinema
Journal 30, no. 4 (Summer 1991): 45.
115
ibid.
23
aesthetics, refashioning these especially within more participatory online cultures”.116
Shilo T. McClean states that filmmakers are “re-looking at their long-form content
with the idea of making it short again for delivery and viewing on computers and
mobiles (phones and other devices)”.117
The introduction of the internet has also provided “unparalleled opportunities
for alternative methods of immediate and widespread distribution of amateur
content”.118 As Hight points out, “the World Wide Web creates opportunities for the
distribution of independent documentary productions”, as well as a proliferation of
user-created material on Web 2.0 sites, such as YouTube119 and MySpace120.121
Hight concludes that both professional and amateur film-makers are
“exploiting the varieties of forms of interactive, cross-platform engagement through
DVD and the World Wide Web, as well as using these media as new avenues for
distribution of more conventional documentary texts”.122 The background, ‘making
of’ and update materials included as DVD ‘extras’ “provide an insight into the nature
of documentary practice employed by film-makers and television producers”.123
“Documentary is potentially ‘reframed’ by these new layers of information”,124 which
foster “reflexive perspectives toward mainstream documentary practice as a
whole”.125
116
Craig Hight, “The Field of Digital Documentary: A Challenge to Documentary Theorists,” Studies
in Documentary Film 2, no. 1 (2008): 4.
117
Shilo T McClean, “Futureyou: Documentary in a Youtube World,” discussion paper, Doco 2012:
Documentary And The Digital Future, Australia, 2008.
http://www.doco2012.com.au/docs/Discussion-Paper_FutureYou_McClean.pdf (accessed May 17,
2010): 1.
118
Jennifer Porst, “Awesome: I … Shot That!: User-Generated Content in Documentary Film,” Paper
presented to Media in Transition Conference 5, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, April 27-29,
2007. http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/mit5/subs/MiT5_abstracts.html (accessed June 15, 2010): 2.
119
YouTube. http://www.youtube.com (accessed September 1, 2010).
120
MySpace. http://www.myspace.com (accessed September 1, 2010).
121
Craig Hight, op. cit., 5.
122
ibid., 3.
123
ibid., 5.
124
ibid.
125
ibid.
24
The Performative Mode
Similarly to the reflexive mode, the performative mode also raises questions
about the nature of knowledge.126 According to Nichols, the performative mode
describes knowledge as being “concrete and embodied, based on the specificities of
personal experience”.127 In performative documentaries, meaning is “a subjective,
affect-laden phenomenon”,128 and things such as a “car or gun, hospital or person will
bear different meanings for different people”.129 Nichols argues that “experience and
memory, emotional involvement, questions of value and belief, commitment and
principle all enter into our understanding of those aspects of the world most often
addressed by documentary”, which include institutional framework (such as
governments, churches, families and marriages) and specific social practices (such as
love and war) that make up a society.130 So Nichols contends that in the same way “a
feminist aesthetic may strive to move audience members… into a subjective position
of a feminist character’s perspective on the world, performative documentary also
seeks to move its audience into subjective alignment or affinity with its specific
perspective on the world”.131
An example of a participatory film is Super Size Me,132 where, as
documentary scholar Maria Tan states, director Morgan Spurlock “places himself
(and his health) as the central subject of the documentary by embarking on a 30-day
‘McDonald’s only’ diet and conditioned lifestyle”.133 Before he begins, Spurlock
126
Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 130.
ibid., 131.
128
ibid.
129
ibid.
130
ibid.
131
ibid., 132.
132
Super Size Me, film, directed by Morgan Spurlock (USA: Kathbur Pictures, 2004).
133
Maria Tan, “A Primer on the Documentary,” unpublished paper, University of Newcastle,
Australia, 2009. http://issuu.com/maria.tan/docs/mariatancmns6040_assign2 (accessed June 15,
2010): 4.
127
25
introduces the basis of the film to the audience: “What would happen if I ate nothing
but McDonald’s for 30 days straight? Would I suddenly be on the fast track to
become an obese American? Would it be unreasonably dangerous? Let’s find out.”134
Tan points out that unlike in the reflexive mode, where the director “presents” the
documentary, in the performative mode, they are “immersed in the process”, and in
Spurlock’s case, “the subject of the experiment”.135 As Nichols summarises, the final
mode, the performative, is “highly suggestive, clearly fabricated, referential but not
necessarily reflexive”.136
134
Maria Tan, “A Primer on the Documentary,” unpublished paper, University of Newcastle,
Australia, 2009. http://issuu.com/maria.tan/docs/mariatancmns6040_assign2 (accessed June 15,
2010): 5.
135
ibid.
136
Bill Nichols, Blurred Boundaries: Questions of Meaning in Contemporary Culture (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1994), 93.
26
CHAPTER TWO:
Overview of Journalism
According to the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, “journalists describe
society to itself”, conveying information, ideas and opinions, and both informing
citizens and animating democracy.137 A profession that has existed for hundreds of
years, the first regularly published newspaper in England is believed to have been the
Weekly News in 1622, while the first in the United States was The Boston Newsletter,
which began in 1704. The first newspaper did not appear in Australia until the Sydney
Gazette in 1803.138
The central purpose of journalism is “to provide citizens with accurate and
reliable information they need to function in a free society”, according to media
lecturer Shafqat Munir.139 Journalism academics David Conley and Stephen Lamble
compare journalists to historians, claiming the profession acts as a “mirror reflecting
society back to itself”,140 in the same way Nichols argues that essentially every film is
a documentary, whether of the historical world or of actors at work.141 While
television new stories are already seen as a type of documentary film,142 this thesis
will consider the overall journalism profession as part of a larger documentary
practice and argue that regardless of the medium of television, radio, print or online,
137
Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, “MEAA Code Of Ethics.”
http://www.alliance.org.au/resources/download/code_of_ethics (accessed June 15, 2010).
138
David Conley and Stephen Lamble, The Daily Miracle (South Melbourne: Oxford University Press,
2006), 4.
139
Shafqat Munir, “Purposes, Functions and Obligations of Journalism,” talk presented to Journalists
for Democracy and Human Rights, 2008. http://www.jdhr.org/publications/media-anddevelopment/Purposes, functions and obligations of journalism-ISA.pdf (accessed June 15, 2010):
1.
140
David Conley and Stephen Lamble, op. cit., ix.
141
Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 1.
142
Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Taylor, Cross-cultural filmmaking: A Handbook for Making Documentary
and Ethnographic Films and Videos (California: University of California Press, 1997) 18.
27
the role of journalists is ultimately to record history and “describe society to itself”
and in this way, function as documentarians of the historical world.143
Stella Bruzzi maintains that the core of documentary film is “the notion of
film as record” and a struggle for objectivity centred on an ideal of original
unadulterated truth.144 Similarly, the origins of journalism stem from a desire to seek
“truth” and pass it to the community,145 through an ideal of objectivity.146 This pursuit
of truth is, as Shafqat Munir points out, a pursuit of truth in a practical sense − “a
process that begins with the professional discipline of assembling and verifying
facts”.147 From this, journalists try to convey a fair and reliable account of their
meaning and, as Munir states, “should be as transparent as possible about sources and
methods so audiences can make their own assessment of the information”.148
As journalism professor Brian McNair points out, “the form and content of
journalism is crucially determined by the available technology of newsgathering,
production and dissemination”.149 American communication academics George
Sylvie and Patricia Dennis Witherspoon argue that the telegraph, telephone, and
143
Suellen Tapsall and Carolyn Varley, ed., Journalism: Theory in Practice (Sydney: Oxford
University Press, 2001), 18.
144
Stella Bruzzi, New Documentary (Routledge: London, 2000), 11.
145
David Conley and Stephen Lamble, The Daily Miracle (South Melbourne: Oxford University Press,
2006), 31.
146
“Newspapers and the Rise of Modern Journalism,” Notes from Richard Campbell, Christopher R.
Martin and Bettina G. Fabos, Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication, Edition
7 (USA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009).
http://www.brewsterschools.org/brewster/brewsterhigh/meure/assets/Chapter%2008%20%20Newspapers.doc (accessed June 15, 2010).
147
Shafqat Munir, “Purposes, Functions and Obligations of Journalism,” talk presented to Journalists
for Democracy and Human Rights, 2008. http://www.jdhr.org/publications/media-anddevelopment/Purposes, functions and obligations of journalism-ISA.pdf (accessed June 15, 2010):
3.
148
ibid.
149
Quoted in Pablo Boczkowski, “The Construction of Online Newspapers: Patterns of Multimedia
and Interactive Communication in Three Online Newsrooms,” paper presented at the annual
meeting of the International Communication Association, Marriott Hotel, San Diego, California,
May 27, 2003.
http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/1/1/9/6/p111965_index.html
(accessed August 17, 2010): 3.
28
computer have changed the way people in the newspaper industry work.150
Meanwhile, anthropology professor Debra Spitulnik attributes the “explosion” of
media use in Aboriginal communities − which is discussed later in this thesis, within
the performative mode of journalism − largely to the “availability of inexpensive
handicams and VCRs, and the installation of communication satellite down-links in
areas previously untouched by large-scale media”.151 This draws links to the way
technology also affected the way filmmakers approached documentary films. The
participatory mode, for instance, was encouraged by the introduction of new
technology, such as handheld cameras, which allowed filmmakers to follow their
subjects and record their movements in real time, providing audiences with the
possibility of “unfettered access” to the subject, unlike the previously dominant
expository mode.152 Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, journalists and authors of The
Elements of Journalism, argue that whatever changes the news industry faces, its
purpose remains the same as it has always been: “to inform citizens by providing
them with verified, truthful information about the affairs of the day”.153 As a result, it
is the changing environment in which journalists aim to fulfil this purpose that is
explored in this thesis.
150
Quoted in Pablo Boczkowski, “The Construction of Online Newspapers: Patterns of Multimedia
and Interactive Communication in Three Online Newsrooms,” paper presented at the annual
meeting of the International Communication Association, Marriott Hotel, San Diego, California,
May 27, 2003.
http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/1/1/9/6/p111965_index.html
(accessed August 17, 2010): 3.
151
Debra Spitulnik, “Anthropology and Mass Media,” Annual Review of Anthropology 22 (1993): 304.
152
Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1991), 43.
153
Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and
the Public Should Expect (New York: Crown Publishers, 2001), 37.
29
CHAPTER THREE:
How journalism can be considered in modes
By considering journalism as a documentary practice, it is possible to draw
parallels between the evolution of documentary film and the general evolution of
journalism. Both have been significantly influenced by technological developments,
which have in turn, changed the way the historical world is represented. In addition,
the concept of objectivity is also evolving as journalism experiences a gradual move
towards interactivity and self-reflexivity that sees the audience play an increasingly
significant role in the news process. Transposing Nichols’ documentary modes onto
journalism can help to highlight trends in the profession that may suggest new ways
of thinking about its future.
The Poetic Mode
Although the inverted pyramid style is now the most widely used form of
reporting the news, journalist and blogger Chip Scanlan states that before the end of
the 19th century, “stories were almost always told in the traditional, slow-paced (some
might say long-winded) way”, beginning with “a signal that something important,
useful, inspiring or entertaining was about to begin”.154 This early style of reporting
may not demonstrate all of the features which Nichols describes as characteristics of
the poetic mode of documentary, such as sacrificing continuity and “the sense of a
very specific location”.155 However, many elements of the poetic mode can be
adapted to think about this style of journalism. As Nichols points out, the poetic mode
opens the possibility of “alternative forms of knowledge to the straightforward
154
Chip Scanlan, “Birth of the Inverted Pyramid: A Child of Technology, Commerce and History,”
Poynter Online, June 23, 2003. http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=52&aid=38696 (accessed
April 10, 2010).
155
Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 102.
30
transfer of information” and “prosecution of a particular argument or point of
view”.156 Similarly, this poetic mode of journalism is more closely linked to
storytelling than the straightforward transfer of news, and can thus be considered as
encompassing journalism which is not written in the traditional inverted-pyramid
style.
Scanlan describes early journalists as narrators or storytellers who “started at
the beginning and continued to the end, leaving the outcome until the last”.157 To
illustrate this, Scanlan gives the example of an article about the Battle of Balaklava
written by British correspondent William Howard Russell in 1854, which begins: “If
the exhibition of the most brilliant valor, of the excess of courage, and of a daring
which would have reflected luster on the best days of chivalry can afford full
consolation for the disaster of today, we can have no reason to regret the melancholy
loss which we sustained in a contest with a savage and barbarian enemy”.158 As
Scanlan discusses, Russell does not get to the “news” − that 100 people died because
of a mix-up in orders − until the end of the story.159 As a result, this article
demonstrates a key feature of the poetic mode of journalism, which like its
documentary counterpart, “stresses mood, tone, and affect much more than displays
of knowledge of acts of persuasion”.160
Australian journalist and academic Matthew Ricketson discusses how an 1852
news story − “if we can call it that” − of the American President’s State of the Union
address, begins: ‘It is a bright and beautiful day, and the galleries of the House are
156
Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 103.
Chip Scanlan, “Birth of the Inverted Pyramid: A Child of Technology, Commerce and History,”
Poynter Online, June 23, 2003. http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=52&aid=38696 (accessed
April 10, 2010).
158
ibid.
159
ibid.
160
Bill Nichols, op. cit., 103.
157
31
crowded with ladies and gentlemen; all is gaiety’.161 Thus, “the idea of highlighting
the most significant piece of information from the address had not yet crystallized…
the point is that history shows us the notion of the objective journalist simply
reporting the facts is at best misleading, at worst a dangerous myth”.162
While the inverted-pyramid style of reporting then became the dominant
structure of modern newspaper stories, the 1960s saw a re-emergence of a poetic
mode of journalism, with the rise of the movement dubbed as literary journalism, or
“New Journalism” – a phrase made popular by Tom Wolfe in his 1974 book of the
same name.163 With the complex events that emerged during the 1960s, such as the
Vietnam War and civil rights protests, the “public began to distrust those who had
traditionally held the power”.164 Newspapers began losing credibility and the
“complete impartiality of journalists”, which was implied through the invertedpyramid style of reporting, was increasingly scrutinized.165 Cindy Royal, journalism
professor at Texas State University, states that “in contrast to standard reportage,
which is characterized by objectivity, direct language, and the inverted pyramid style,
literary journalism seeks to communicate facts through narrative storytelling and
literary techniques”,166 and as researcher David Duwe Stanton adds, literary
journalists differed from traditional reporters by “going beyond just reporting the
161
Matthew Ricketson, Writing Feature Stories: How to Research and Write Newspaper and
Magazine Articles (New South Wales: Allen & Unwin, 2004), 3.
162
ibid.
163
Cindy Royal, “The Future of Literary Journalism on the Internet,” paper presented at the Northeast
Regional Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Fordham University,
New York, February 10, 2001. http://www.cindyroyal.com/litjour_croyal.doc (accessed August 17,
2010): 3.
164
“Newspapers and the Rise of Modern Journalism,” notes from Richard Campbell, Christopher R.
Martin and Bettina G. Fabos, Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication. Edition
7 (USA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009).
http://www.brewsterschools.org/brewster/brewsterhigh/meure/assets/Chapter%2008%20%20Newspapers.doc (accessed June 15, 2010).
165
ibid.
166
Cindy Royal, op. cit., 2.
32
facts in traditional, dry, inverted-pyramid style and structure”.167 Some of the most
prominent writers associated with the literary journalism style include Gay Talese,
Jimmy Breslin, Truman Capote, Hunter S. Thompson, Joan Didion, Norman Mailer,
Stephen Crane, George Orwell, Charles Dickens and John Hersey.168
Literary journalists are described by author Charles Flippen as “deep-see
reporters” who immersed themselves to get to the bottom of issues, topics and events
while still paying attention to the surface perceptions.169 For instance, John Hersey
wrote a 31,000-word article, “Hiroshima”, which traced the experiences of six
residents who survived the atomic blast of 1945, occupying the entire issue of The
New Yorker on August 31, 1946. Resisting the pressure to “give free rein to his
horror at the dropping of the atomic bomb”, Hersey instead wrote “clinical, almost
detached prose”, which enabled to see “with chilling clarity the bomb’s impact”.170
Ricketson states that Hersey’s achievement was “to be the first of the Second World
War’s victors to tell what had actually happened to the vanquished and show them
not as evil but as fellow human beings”.171 As historian Paul Boyer notes, in
“Hiroshima”, the reader is “not stirred to action, but left with the feeling that he has
gained a deeper understanding of war’s human meaning”.172
In exploring the elements of literary journalism, Ricketson also points out that
this genre is “not tyrannised by the institutional voice” of daily journalism but instead
167
David Duwe Stanton, “The Miami Herald and the Miller Effect: Literary Journalism in the 1980s,”
Master of Arts thesis, University of Florida, 2005.
http://etd.fcla.edu/UF/UFE0012301/stanton_d.pdf (accessed August 17, 2010): 5.
168
Royal, Cindy and Dr James Tankard. “The Convergence of Literary Journalism and the World
Wide Web: The Case of Blackhawk Down.” Paper presented at the Dynamics of Convergent Media
Conference, Columbia, South Carolina, November 14-16, 2002.
http://www.cindyroyal.com/bhd.pdf (accessed August 17, 2010): 3.
169
Charles C. Flippen, ed., Liberating the Media: The New Journalism (Washington, D.C.: Acropolis
Books, 1974), 11.
170
Matthew Ricketson, “True Stories: The power and pitfalls of literary journalism,” in Suellen Tapsall
and Carolyn Varley, ed., Journalism: Theory in Practice (Sydney: Oxford University Press, 2001),
154.
171
ibid., 153.
172
Steve Rothman, “The Publication of ‘Hiroshima’ in The New Yorker,” unpublished paper, Harvard
University, 1997. http://www.herseyhiroshima.com/hiro.php (accessed August 17, 2010).
33
an “authorial voice” that gives “the writer freedom to be ironic, self-conscious,
informal, hectoring, self-aware and so on”.173 According the Nichols, “The poetic
mode has many facets, but they all emphasize the ways in which the filmmaker’s
voice gives fragments of the historical world a formal, aesthetic integrity peculiar to
the film itself”.174
Journalist and author Jack Fuller discusses how “all journalism owes New
Journalism a debt, for its adherents recognised early that television’s vivid and
instantaneous reporting required written journalism to change”.175 He argues that
since journalism could no longer count on being first with a fact, it had to provide
something more, which Fuller states was “the style and quality of its writing”.176 He
argues “people increasingly came to written journalism for the pleasures of reading
and less for simple facts”,177 drawing links with the way the poetic mode focuses on
the mood and tone rather than argument or displays of knowledge.
The Expository Mode
The origins of modern print journalism, and subsequently radio, echo the
approach of the expository documentary mode in the way they directly transmit a
message to their audience through a one-way model of communication.178 “The
beginning of the 1900s saw objectivity become the ideal of modern journalism”179
173
Matthew Ricketson, “True Stories: The power and pitfalls of literary journalism,” in Suellen Tapsall
and Carolyn Varley, ed., Journalism: Theory in Practice (Sydney: Oxford University Press, 2001),
157.
174
Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 105.
175
Jack Fuller, New Values: Ideas for an Information Age (USA: University of Chicago Press, 1996),
136.
176
ibid.
177
Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary, op. cit.,103.
178
Mark Briggs, “Raising the Ante: The Internet's Impact on Journalism Education,” J-Learning,
March 27th, 2008. http://www.j-learning.org/briggs_blog (accessed April 10, 2010).
179
“Newspapers and the Rise of Modern Journalism,” notes from Richard Campbell, Christopher R.
Martin and Bettina G. Fabosn Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication.
Edition 7 (USA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009).
34
and this was manifested in the inverted-pyramid style of reporting. This form of
writing involved supplying “brief, clear answers to the questions: Who?, What?,
Where?, When? and Why?, using quotations as evidence, and presenting conflicting
points of view”.180 It has been argued that one of the reasons the inverted-pyramid
model became standard was because of the unreliability of telegraph technology,
however, Horst Pöttker, journalism professor at the University of Dortmund in
Germany, argues that the inverted-pyramid style “resulted from the professional
effort to strengthen the communicative quality of news”.181
Academic and author Denis McQuail states that traditional mass media
originated as largely one-directional, impersonal one-to-many carriers of news and
information.182 This relationship includes little feedback between the journalist and
“relatively anonymous, heterogeneous audience”, with the intent of this
communication being “a combination of persuasion and information”.183 As Tanjev
Schultz, research fellow in the University of Bremen in Germany, points out,
initiatives such as the Letter to the Editor section in many traditional newspapers,
remain reactions to the information presented, rather than an interactive discussion.184
John Pavlik states that general news coverage has been shown to exert an agendasetting influence in society, “helping to shape public opinion in terms of which issues
http://www.brewsterschools.org/brewster/brewsterhigh/meure/assets/Chapter%2008%20%20Newspapers.doc (accessed June 15, 2010).
180
Edd Applegate, Literary Journalism: A Biographical Dictionary of Writers and Editors (USA:
Greenwood Publishing Group, 1996), xv.
181
Horst Pöttker, “News and its Communicative Quality: The Inverted Pyramid − When and Why did
it Appear?” Journalism Studies 4, no. 4 (2003): 501.
182
Quoted in Alfred Hermida, “From TV to Twitter: How Ambient News Became Ambient
Journalism,” M/C Journal 13, no. 2 (May 2010). http://journal.mediaculture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/viewArticle/220 (accessed April 10, 2010).
183
John Pavlik, “The Impact of Technology on Journalism,” Journalism Studies 1, no. 2 (2000): 234.
184
Tanjev Schultz, “Interactive Options in Online Journalism: A Content Analysis of 100 U.S.
Newspapers,” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 5, no. 1 (September 1999).
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol5/issue1/schultz.html (accessed April 10, 2010).
35
are most important”,185 while political scientist Bernard C. Cohen concluded, “The
press may not be successful much of the time in telling us what to think, but it is
stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about”.186
An example of news coverage that would be considered in the expository
mode of journalism, is an article which appeared on the front page of The Age
newspaper on December 2, 2009,187 a day after the Liberal Party leadership spill that
resulted in the election of Tony Abbott as leader of the party. Demonstrating many of
the qualities that characterise the expository mode of documentary as outlined by
Nichols, Michelle Grattan’s article begins with the latest developments in the story:
“The Liberals are poised to vote down the emissions trading legislation today, giving
the Government a trigger for a possible early election, after the party shifted
decisively to the right with the election of Tony Abbott as leader”. Unlike the
previous examples of poetic early print journalism explored in this thesis, Grattan’s
article has introduced the main details by the end of the second paragraph, including
the fact Abbott had taken over the leadership from Malcolm Turnbull and won by one
vote. So rather than trying to set the tone or mood of the story, this expository piece
of journalism has a clear message it communicates to the audience right from the first
line.
Though filmmaker Alfred Guzzetti was talking about the dominant expository
mode of documentary when he said it obstructed the path to critical reflection by
effacing the act of authorship and the circumstances of production,188 this echoes the
nature of both traditional print and radio journalism. Most journalists working in
185
John Pavlik, “The Impact of Technology on Journalism,” Journalism Studies 1, no. 2 (2000): 235.
ibid.
187
Michelle Grattan, “Abbott win dooms the ETS,” The Age (Melbourne), December 2, 2009, first
edition.
188
Gil Lahav, “An Interview with Ross McElwee,” The Harvard Advocate Spring 1994.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/news/ross/harvard.html (accessed May 17, 2010).
186
36
these mediums seek to present an objective account of the news, characterised by the
impersonal gathering and structuring of “facts”.189 Researcher Leon Sigal discusses
how this “convention of objectivity dictates that in writing a story the reporter leave
himself out of his account − that neither his person nor his point of view intrude
conspicuously.”190 Instead, as Nichols points out, the “professional commentator’s
official tone”, like the traditional, authoritative manner of reporters, “strives to build a
sense of credibility from qualities such as distance, neutrality, disinterestedness, or
omniscience”.191
The Observational Mode
Television news bulletins can also be considered as conforming to the oneway communication mode,192 as Nichols states that “network news with its
anchorperson and string of reporters in the field” is an example of an expository
text.193 However, this thesis will argue that the introduction of television, and the use
of live broadcasts in particular, allowed journalism to enter Nichols’ ‘observational’
mode, where it could provide coverage of events in real-time with minimal editing,
such as in the instance of breaking news. As journalist and author Philip Seib states,
“going live became the trademark for broadcast and then cable news”.194
189
Gaye Tuchman, “Objectivity as Strategic Ritual: An Examination of Newsmen’s Notions of
Objectivity,” The American Journal of Sociology 77, no. 4: 664.
190
Quoted in Julia R. Fox and Byungho Park, “The “I” of Embedded Reporting: An Analysis of CNN
Coverage of the “Shock and Awe” Campaign,” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media
(March 2006). http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/147216158.html (accessed May
17, 2010).
191
Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 107.
192
Tim Porter. “Young Minds.” First Draft, November 3, 2005.
http://www.timporter.com/firstdraft/archives/000513.html (accessed April 10, 2010).
193
Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1991), 34.
194
Philip M. Seib, Going Live: Getting the News Right in a Real-Time, Online World (Maryland:
Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), ix.
37
Film theorist and professor, Rudolf Arnheim, explains that the auditory world
of radio is poor in documentary qualities, rendering little physical reality and thus,
without a commentator or reporter, remains fragmentary and relies more on the
listener’s imagination to construct the experience.195 In contrast, television allows for
a direct experience through the gathering of sensory raw material, making us “witness
immediately what is going on in the wide world around us”, whether it is citizens
assembling in the market square or the Prime Minister making a speech.196
According to journalists and authors C. A. Tuggle and Suzanne Huffman, the
possibility of live television news reporting was suggested “as early as 1939 when
television was formally introduced to the nation at the New York World’s Fair”.197
As Australian journalism academics Suellen Tapsall and Carolyn Varley point out,
“television takes the audience to the news event or happening”, especially in current
affairs programming, and its “engagement of the senses of sight and sound gives the
viewer some idea of the actual look of the news event”.198 Seib argues that “audiences
are presumably more attentive to live coverage because they are caught up in the
suspenseful uncertainty of the moment”. “They do not merely learn about the story,
they experience it − seeing it unfold and being tugged by the ebb and flow of
events.”199
Similarly,
filmmaker
Robert
Drew,
who
made
observational
documentaries such as Primary, said the only approach he was interested in was “to
convey the excitement and drama and feeling of real life as it actually happens
195
Rudolf Arnheim, Film as Art (California University of California Press, 1957), 193.
ibid.
197
C. A. Tuggle and Suzanne Huffman, “Live Reporting in Television News: Breaking News or Black
Holes?” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 45, no. 2 (2001): 335.
198
Suellen Tapsall and Carolyn Varley, ed. Journalism: Theory in Practice (Sydney: Oxford
University Press, 2001), 247.
199
Philip M. Seib, Going Live: Getting the News Right in a Real-Time, Online World (Maryland:
Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), ix.
196
38
through film”.200 Live coverage allows viewers to be “more than distant observers”,
becoming like “real-time participants in the stories” because they have direct access
to the raw material as it unfolds.201
As Cheryl Fair, news director of Los Angeles television station KABC-TV,
contends, the technology of television “has progressed to the point that it allows the
viewer to see more of the process of gathering news”.202 Fair also explores the notion
of objectivity and transparency that is emphasised in the observational mode of
documentary film, which as University of California cinema lecturer Stephen
Mamber claims, involves “a faith in unmanipulated reality” and “a refusal to tamper
with life as it presents itself”.203 Fair suggests that live reporting “hits at some of the
criticism of the media for slanting the news” because “you can’t say it was slanted
when it’s live”.204 Instead, as she maintains, live reporting may in fact be a “purer
form of journalism”.205
Seib states that journalism is a process which involves “gathering information,
analysing its veracity and importance, acquiring supplemental information, and then
putting it in an understandable, useful form for delivery to the public”.206 Thus, he
argues that live coverage could “short circuit” that process, “going from gathering to
delivery with nothing in between”.207 However, Seib ultimately states that even if live
coverage aims to “mirror” what has or is happening, journalists must decide where to
200
Jeanne Hall, “Realism as a Style in Cinema Verite: A Critical Analysis of ‘Primary’,” Cinema
Journal 30, no. 4 (Summer 1991): 46.
201
Philip M. Seib, Going Live: Getting the News Right in a Real-Time, Online World (Maryland:
Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), 16.
202
ibid.
203
Quoted in Jeanne Hall, op. cit., 25.
204
Philip M. Seib, op. cit., 44.
205
ibid.
206
ibid.
207
ibid.
39
place the mirror” or otherwise they could provide a product that is “‘unedited’ in the
word’s truest sense”, which is ultimately impossible.208
The Participatory Mode
The participatory mode (or interactive mode) in journalism not only refers to
the introduction of the newest online platform, but also encompasses the integration
of more interactive measures in other mediums, such as television and radio. As
Australian radio broadcasting lecturer Gail Phillips points out, “it was the broadcast
medium which invented audience interactivity when telephony was joined with
broadcasting technology and the first talkback caller was put to air”,209 which
happened as early as 1925 in Australia although, the two-way radio technique was not
formally permitted in the country until 1967.210
“Talkback made radio interactive by bringing the listener into the program”,
forging direct links with what had otherwise been an “assumed and voiceless
community of listeners”.211 When it was first introduced, the concept of talkback
radio “flouted the conventional (and restrictive) rules of access for public discourse
on radio”, encouraging interactivity between the public and the presenters.212 Former
BBC producer and media researcher David Hendy argues that these radio programs
function as the ‘voice’ of the people who ‘talkback’ to those in positions of influence
208
Philip M. Seib, Going Live: Getting the News Right in a Real-Time, Online World (Maryland:
Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), 44.
209
Gail Phillips, “The Interactive Audience: A Radio Experiment in Community-building,” Media
International Australia, Incorporating Culture & Policy 122 (February 2007): 174.
210
Liz Gould, “Talk, Telephone and the Radio: The Introduction of “Talkback” Radio in Australia,”
Australian New Zealand Communication Association Conference, ‘Making a Difference’, Sydney,
July 2004. http://conferences.arts.usyd.edu.au/viewabstract.php?id=144&cf=3 (accessed August 17,
2010): 3.
211
Gail Phillips, op. cit., 174.
212
Liz Gould, op. cit., 5.
40
and power and allows the medium of radio “to advertise itself to the world as a
democratic, reciprocal, two-way medium on a large scale”.213
In the field of television, journalism began the move towards being more
interactive with the rise of current affair programs, where quite often the reporter
covering the story would become part of the story, and as journalism researcher and
author Martin Conboy argues, the traditional neutrality of the journalist would also be
questioned.214 According to Graeme Turner, cultural studies professor at the
University of Queensland, while the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)’s
This Day Tonight, broadcast from 1967 until the late 1970s,215 has probably become
“the implicit ‘gold standard’ against which contemporary performance is
measured”,216 the program also featured “star reporters such as Peter Luck or Mike
Willesee… shamelessly self-promoting in the way they inserted themselves into their
stories” and thus, clearly placing television current affairs programs within the
participatory mode of journalism.217
More recently, programs such as A Current Affair, broadcast on the Nine
Network, continue this practice of participatory journalism, using the interaction
between the journalist and subject to gain a particular insight into a news story. For
instance, on the day of his election as leader of the Liberal Party, Tony Abbott was
interviewed by Tracy Grimshaw on A Current Affair.218 Grimshaw begins by
questioning Abbott’s confidence in his new role: “A couple of days ago you thought
Joe Hockey should lead the Liberal Party, are you sure that they made the right
213
David Hendy, Radio in the Global Age (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 195.
Martin Conboy, Journalism: A Critical History (London: SAGE Publications, 2004), 214.
215
David Conley and Stephen Lamble, The Daily Miracle (South Melbourne: Oxford University Press,
2006), 267.
216
Graeme Turner, Ending the Affair: The Decline of Television Current Affairs in Australia (New
South Wales: UNSW Press, 2005), 28.
217
ibid., 32.
218
A Current Affair, television program (Australia: Nine Network, December 1, 2009).
214
41
decision today?” Kerry O’Brien, on the ABC’s The 7:30 Report, similarly puts
Abbott on the spot by questioning his position on climate change in an interview that
was also broadcast on the day of Abbott’s election.219 He challenges Abbott by
quoting his statements from a previous interview, as well as statements he made in his
recent book. As a result, these journalists are able to gain particular responses and
information that is a distinct product of their interaction with the subject, thus relating
to Nichols’ concept of “situated knowledge [original emphasis]”.220 The fact that
their interactions are broadcast and form part of the news story also suggest a greater
transparency in the process − rather than asking these questions off-camera then
constructing them into an argument as part of an expository text, the participatory
mode allows the audience to see how the journalist conducts their interview.
It was the introduction of the online medium as a platform for journalism,
which has made the most significant impact in the development of interactivity in
news. As John Pavlik discusses, the “once basic inverted pyramid news-writing style
is becoming obsolete in the online news world”, being increasingly supplanted by
“immersive and interactive multimedia news reports that can give readers/viewers a
feeling of presence at news events like never before”.221 Many news websites have
added another layer to traditional reporting by allowing reader interaction through
commenting, blogging, hyperlinks, live chats and multimedia. This ultimately results
in a multi-faceted and fragmented news experience, where citizens can produce and
contribute small pieces of content to the news being reported, acknowledging the
219
The 7.30 Report, television program (Australia: Australian Broadcasting Corporation, December 1,
2009).
220
Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1991), 44.
221
John Pavlik, “The Impact of Technology on Journalism,” Journalism Studies 1, no. 2 (2000): 232.
42
audience as both a receiver and a sender.222 Terry Flew defines interactive media
forms as “those that give users a degree of choice in the information system, both in
terms of choice of access to information sources and control over the outcomes of
using that system and making those choices”. So the World Wide Web, he states, “as
an electronic database of text, images, sound, video, and voice communication, is the
exemplar of interactivity in new media technologies, where each pattern of use leads
the user down a distinctive ‘pathway’, creating what is termed a hypertext, or a text
made up of other texts”.223
Introduced by computer visionary Ted Nelson in the 1960s, the concept of
“hypertext” was defined as non-sequential writing with reader-controlled links.224
Since then, this definition has been refined by scholars, to denote a narrative form
“that does not exist until readers produce it through a series of choices made
according to their desires and interests”.225 This immediately draws attention to the
process of narrative construction, and enhances the involvement of readers by putting
them in the role of the creator.226 As online journalism educator Mindy McAdams
and journalism researcher Stephanie Berger discuss, hypertext enables writers to
“skirt issues raised by the use of predefined writing formulas such as the inverted
pyramid of traditional news stories which present facts in decreasing order of
importance, the narrative path fixed and loaded with value judgments”.227 “Some
newspaper readers stop after a few paragraphs, satisfied that they’ve read the “most
222
Alfred Hermida, “From TV to Twitter: How Ambient News Became Ambient Journalism,” M/C
Journal 13, no. 2 (May 2010). http://journal.mediaculture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/viewArticle/220 (accessed April 10, 2010).
223
Terry Flew, New Media: An Introduction (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2008), 13.
224
Quoted in Robert Huesca and Brenda Dervin, “Hypertext and Journalism: Audiences Respond to
Competing News Narratives,” paper presented to MIT Communications Forum, October 1999.
http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/papers/huesca.html (accessed August 17, 2010).
225
ibid.
226
ibid.
227
Mindy McAdams and Stephanie Berger, “Hypertext,” Journal of Electronic Publishing 6, no.3
(March 2001). http://www.journalofelectronicpublishing.org/hypertext/index.html (accessed Jun 20,
2010).
43
important” information. But what they got is the part of the story the writer believes
is most important. Other readers skip through an article, trying to find a perspective
relevant to them”.
228
As a result, hypertexts generally offer multiple possible entry
points, many internal threads, and no clear ending, unlike linear stories, which have
distinct beginnings, middles and endings.229
Another benefit of the online medium is that hypertext makes it possible to
show all the parts of a story in relationship to one another, which, as McAdams and
Berger conclude “can lead to more objective journalism”.230 Trench and Quinn point
out that in the online medium, many government and commercial organisations,
which are among the most-used sources of news, can publish their statements on the
internet at the same time as they release them to the media and thus, not only can
users view the material released to the media, but can also compare the published
news stories with the original material and invite comment and discussion.231 Users
can read official documentation, parliamentary reports and speeches to construct their
own versions of the story and as a result, “the relationship between reader and author
undergoes a shift that inverts traditional understandings of the construction of
meaning and reshapes some of the values that underpin it”.232 Hall argues that an
“impossible objectivity” is replaced by “reasoned subjectivity”, within which
“readers will be able to make up their minds for themselves”.233
American journalism professor David T.Z. Mindich claims journalists often
use the term “objectivity” as a shorthand to represent all matters concerning fairness,
228
Mindy McAdams and Stephanie Berger, “Hypertext,” Journal of Electronic Publishing 6, no.3
(March 2001). http://www.journalofelectronicpublishing.org/hypertext/index.html (accessed Jun 20,
2010).
229
ibid.
230
ibid.
231
Brian Trench and Gary Quinn, “Online news and changing models of journalism,” Irish
Communications Review 9 (2003). http://www.icr.dit.ie/volume9/articles/Trench_and_Quinn.pdf
(accessed May 17, 2010): 3.
232
Quoted in ibid.
233
Quoted in ibid.
44
credibility, and accuracy, and the idea of journalistic objectivity retains currency “as
an ideal and sometimes as a competitive weapon”.234 According to Australian
journalism professor Robert O’Sullivan, objectivity is about preventing “personal
prejudices, beliefs or emotions from influenc[ing] the spread of information or the
interpretation of events”.235 French-Canadian journalism scholar Gilles Gauthier
argues that “the way the journalist processes information” by both selecting and
presenting it, is a situation in which objectivity can be applied.236 As journalism
scholar Eric S. Fredin argues, “the structure of a news story is largely determined by
the values of the journalist and journalism institutions” − these values affect the
decisions made in the act of authoring.237 Similarly, documentary filmmaker and
educator Dirk Eitzen points out that “[e]very representation of reality is no more than
a fiction in the sense that it is an artificial construct, a highly contrived and selective
view of the world, produced for some purpose and therefore unavoidably reflecting a
given subjectivity or point of view”.238 Even “brute” perceptions of the world, such as
those aimed for in the observational mode, are “inescapably tainted by our beliefs,
assumptions, goals, and desires”.239 Ronald Weber, Professor of American Studies at
the University of Notre Dame, adds that: “To deny the shaping presence of the
reporter because of the theoretical demands of detachment and objectivity is to be
fundamentally dishonest with the reader as well as oneself”.240 “Truth isn’t
234
Quoted in Mindy McAdams and Stephanie Berger, “Hypertext,” Journal of Electronic Publishing
6, no.3 (March 2001). http://www.journalofelectronicpublishing.org/hypertext/index.html (accessed
Jun 20, 2010).
235
Robert O’Sullivan, “Exploding The Objectivity Myth: A case study of participatory journalism.”
eJournalist 4, no. 1 (2004). http://ejournalist.com.au/v4n1/osullivan.pdf (accessed Jun 18, 2010): 2.
236
Quoted in Mindy McAdams and Stephanie Berger, op. cit.
237
Quoted in ibid.
238
Dirk Eitzen, “When Is a Documentary?: Documentary as a Mode of Reception,” Cinema Journal
35, no. 1 (Autumn, 1995): 82.
239
ibid.
240
Quoted in Cummings, Corin. “Shades Of Journalism: An Apprenticeship in Literary Journalism.”
Marlboro College Plan of Concentration. http://www.onewordlowercase.com/plan/PREFACE.HTM
(accessed May 17, 2010): 18.
45
guaranteed by style or expression. It isn’t guaranteed by anything”, claimed
documentary filmmaker Errol Morris and thus, the participatory mode of journalism
relies on a similar concept of “situated presence and local knowledge [original
emphasis]”, introduced in Nichols participatory documentary mode.241
In participatory documentaries, textual authority shifts toward the social
actors recruited, and their comments and responses provide a central part of the film’s
argument.242 Similarly, in participatory journalism, there is a greater emphasis on the
audience’s comments and responses. This encourages, what Munir states, is one of
the purposes of journalism: the promotion of a multi-perspectival approach, in order
to encompass all the important viewpoints from people with different values and
interests.243
Freelance writer Josh Catone discusses how in order to report on the fires that
ravaged part of the United States in October 2007, many news outlets solicited, and
subsequently used, submissions from people capturing news with cell phone cameras
and on blogs. For instance, multimedia platform Veeker reported that NBC San Diego
received over 2,000 picture and video submissions related to the wildfires, with a
similar number received in CNN’s i-Report 244 section.245 As a result, while Nichols’s
participatory mode of documentary stresses the changing relationship between the
filmmaker and subject, the participatory mode of journalism explored is expanded to
241
Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1991), 44.
242
ibid.
243
Shafqat Munir, “Purposes, Functions and Obligations of Journalism,” talk presented to Journalists
for Democracy and Human Rights, 2008. http://www.jdhr.org/publications/media-anddevelopment/Purposes, functions and obligations of journalism-ISA.pdf (accessed June 15, 2010):
1.
244
“CNN iReport,” Cable News Network. http://www.ireport.com (accessed September 1, 2010).
245
Josh Catone, “The Rise of Twitter as a Platform for Serious Discourse,” ReadWriteWeb, January
30th, 2008.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_rise_of_twitter_as_a_platform_for_serious_discourse.p
hp (accessed May 17, 2010).
46
cover two different types of interaction: the one between the journalist and subject, as
well as between the journalist and audience.
The Reflexive Mode
Journalism is also seeing the emergence of a reflexive mode of reporting
which, drawing links with Nichols’s documentary modes, focuses more on the
process of representation than the historical world itself.246 The emergence of what is
now referred to as Web 2.0, around the year 2004, can be seen as marking the
beginning of this mode of journalism, where there is a blurring of the boundaries
between users and producers, consumption and participation, and the traditional
dynamics of the news process begin to change significantly.247 Tim O’Reilly defined
Web 2.0 as the “revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the
Internet as a platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new
platform”.248 As Australian media academic Terry Flew explains, the transition from
Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 was a shift “from personal websites to blogs and blog site
aggregation, from publishing to participation, from web content as the outcome of
large up-front investment to an ongoing and interactive process, and from content
management systems to links based on tagging”.249
Rather than being about the public contributing pictures or videos to
journalists for stories, as in the participatory mode, the reflexive mode can be seen as
246
Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1991), 56.
247
Michael Zimmer, “Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0,” First Monday 13, no. 3 (March 3, 2008).
http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2137/1943 (accessed May 17,
2010).
248
Quoted in Renee Verdier, “The Rise of Web 2.0 Technology and its Implications for Democracy,”
Honours thesis, Wesleyan University, Connecticut, April 2009.
http://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1300&context=etd_hon_theses
(accessed April 10, 2010).
249
Terry Flew, New Media: An Introduction (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2008), 36.
47
the next level of interaction and discussion, where the public has greater impact on
the news process itself. Robert Niles discusses the idea of “crowdsourcing” − the use
of a large group of readers to report a news story − that has developed out of the
online revolution.250 Blogger Steve Buttry studied the value of Twitter251 in breaking
news during the Texas terrorist attack this year,252 while Mitch Joel looked at the
instance of the Mumbai attacks in 2008 and how Twitter created “a virtual network of
reporters who were feeding real-time information, updates and news to the entire
world, in 140 characters or less”. He claims the “river of news streaming through
Twitter added a complex layer to our understanding of ‘news’ and ‘journalism’”, with
instant eyewitness reports from people on the street available to the public.253 During
the Iran protests in 2009, Sky News journalist Ruth Barnett said Twitter became “one
of the only sources of information about life inside Iran, with the US state department
intervening to keep it online and news organisations mining it for the latest
updates”.254 While SMS text messaging, mainstream news sites and social networks,
such as Facebook, were all shut down, “Twitter was one of the only communications
not to fail”, enabling users to report “what they say they have seen, the rumours they
have heard, and their feelings as events unfold”, as well as “discuss strategies,
250
Robert Niles, “A Journalist’s Guide to Crowdsourcing,” The Online Journalism Review (July 31,
2007). http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/070731niles (accessed Jun 20, 2010).
251
Twitter. http://www.twitter.com (accessed September 1, 2010).
252
Steve Buttry, “@statesman: A Case Study in Using Twitter on Breaking News,” Pursuing the
Complete Community Connection, February 23, 2010.
http://stevebuttry.wordpress.com/2010/02/23/statesman-a-case-study-in-using-twitter-on-breakingnews (accessed April 10, 2010).
253
Mitch Joel, “Now Everyone Can Be A Citizen Journalist,” Six Pixels of Separation, December 4,
2008. http://www.twistimage.com/blog/archives/now-everyone-can-be-a-citizen-journalist/
(accessed April 10, 2010).
254
Ruth Barnett, “Why Twitter Leads Coverage Of Iran Protests,” Sky News, June 17, 2009.
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Iran-And-Twitter-How-The-Web-Has-InformedSky-News-Coverage-Of-The-ElectionProtest/Article/200906315310777?lpos=World_News_First_Home_Page_Feature_Teaser_Region_
0&lid=ARTICLE_15310777_Iran_And_Twitter%3A_How_The_Web_Has_Informed_Sky_News_
Coverage_Of_The_Election_Protest (accessed May 17, 2010).
48
arrange meet-ups and offer advice on how to stay safe at rallies”.255 Patrick Ruffini
claims Twitter is rapidly becoming “a serious platform for discourse and discussion”,
and is being used as a first alert mechanism for the dissemination of news and for
immediate discussion surrounding that news.256 Reporter Jo Geary from The
Birmingham Post sees Twitter as a great way of building a relationship with contacts
and her target audience − “It’s also become a support network of people who help
me, and vice versa. It moves into the crowdsourcing thing – if you want to do
something you can put out questions and get answers”.257 An American survey by
The George Washington University found the majority of journalists depend on social
media sources when researching their stories, with 89 per cent looking to blogs for
story research, 65 per cent drawing on social media sites, such as Facebook258 and
LinkedIn259, and 52 per cent using Twitter.260
So while the participatory mode marked the beginning of the public’s
contribution to the news, as Katie King argues, the technology in the reflexive mode
allows the audience “to interact with and become part of the news process”, giving
them a greater role.261 Julie Posetti explores how “the spectacular demise of the
255
Ruth Barnett, “Why Twitter Leads Coverage Of Iran Protests,” Sky News, June 17, 2009.
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Iran-And-Twitter-How-The-Web-Has-InformedSky-News-Coverage-Of-The-ElectionProtest/Article/200906315310777?lpos=World_News_First_Home_Page_Feature_Teaser_Region_
0&lid=ARTICLE_15310777_Iran_And_Twitter%3A_How_The_Web_Has_Informed_Sky_News_
Coverage_Of_The_Election_Protest (accessed May 17, 2010).
256
Josh Catone, “The Rise of Twitter as a Platform for Serious Discourse,” ReadWriteWeb, January
30th, 2008.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_rise_of_twitter_as_a_platform_for_serious_discourse.p
hp (accessed May 17, 2010).
257
Paul Bradshaw, “BASIC Principles of Online Journalism: I is for Interactivity,” Online Journalism
Blog, April 5, 2008. http://onlinejournalismblog.com/2008/04/15/basic-principles-of-onlinejournalism-i-is-for-interactivity (accessed May 17, 2010).
258
Facebook. http://www.facebook.com (accessed September 1, 2010).
259
LinkedIn. http://www.linkedin.com (accessed September 1, 2010).
260
Jack Loechner, “Where Do Stories Come From?” MediaPost Publications, February 15, 2010.
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=122499&lfe=1
(accessed March 26, 2010).
261
Katie King, “Journalism as a Conversation,” Nieman Reports 62 (Winter 2008).
http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/article/100670/Journalism-as-a-Conversation.aspx
(accessed Jun 20, 2010): 11.
49
Australian conservative party’s leadership in November 2009 was a turning point for
political journalism in the country”.262 She looks at the “transformative impact” of the
event in the way it was being discussed on Twitter through the hashtag #spill. She
argues that the leadership spill “highlighted the emergence of a new form of political
communication via Twitter”, characterised by “instant, multi-contributor, usercontrolled information feeds” which enabled the “transmission of breaking news;
instant reaction, critiques and analysis; and live interaction between the Fourth Estate
and citizens, with occasional input from politicians”. For instance, Posetti states that
“during the #spill, one of the conservative leadership contenders, Joe Hockey,
interacted with constituents via Twitter”, although the practice is yet to catch on as
“too many Australian politicians use Twitter like an old telex service for distributing
press releases”.263
She concludes from her study of the coverage of the event on Twitter, that it
had a “leveling effect” as “tweets of Press Gallery journalists intermingled with those
of political scientists, politicians, bloggers and ordinary citizens using Twitter as a
platform for democratic participation”.264 “While talk show hosts are used to having
direct contact with audiences, professional journalists − particularly those occupying
well-insulated senior positions inside large news organizations − have historically
been shielded from direct engagement with their audiences and, to an extent, the
reactions of people on whom they report”. Posetti claims that Twitter as a reporting
tool, was “sharpening competitiveness, collectivizing reporting efforts, and rendering
262
Julie Posetti, “Aussie #Spill Breaks Down Wall Between Journalists, Audience,” MediaShift, May
24, 2010. http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2010/05/aussie-spill-breaks-down-wall-betweenjournalists-audience144.html (accessed June 17, 2010).
263
ibid.
264
ibid.
50
processes transparent”, breaking down the barriers between “the professional
journalist and the media consumer”.265
American journalism educator Dan Gillmor looks at how the proliferation of
digital media tools has “spawned a massive amount of creation at all levels, most
notably from the ranks of the grassroots”.266 The possibility for anyone to create their
own content has led to a rise in what is known as citizen journalism, where “people
without professional journalism training can use the tools of modern technology and
the global distribution of the Internet to create, augment or fact-check media on their
own or in collaboration with others”.267
Australian academic Axel Bruns has explored the role of citizen journalism in
the 2007 Australian federal election.268 He argues that the election marked “a
transformation of the Australian mediasphere, towards a substantially greater role for
online and citizen media forms – a trend also observed in the 2004 U.S. presidential
campaign, but here, with its own, uniquely Australian inflection”.269 Bruns looks at
left-of-centre group blog “Larvatus Prodeo”,270 which was founded by Brisbane
sociologist Mark Bahnisch and has about a dozen regular contributors, and “can be
seen perhaps as a quintessential example for the mainstream of Australian political
265
Julie Posetti, “Aussie #Spill Breaks Down Wall Between Journalists, Audience,” MediaShift, May
24, 2010. http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2010/05/aussie-spill-breaks-down-wall-betweenjournalists-audience144.html (accessed June 17, 2010).
266
Dan Gillmor, “Principles for a New Media Literacy,” Berkman Center for Internet and Society at
Harvard University paper, 2008.
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/sites/cyber.law.harvard.edu/files/Principles%20for%20a%20New%20
Media%20Literacy_MR.pdf (accessed April 10, 2010): 2.
267
Mark Glaser, “Your Guide to Citizen Journalism,” MediaShift, September 27, 2006.
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2006/09/your-guide-to-citizen-journalism270.html. (accessed April
10, 2010).
268
Axel Bruns, “Citizen Journalism in the 2007 Australian Federal Election,” Paper presented to
AMIC Journalism Conference: Convergence, Citizen Journalism and Social Change, Brisbane,
Queensland, March 26-28, 2008.
http://snurb.info/files/Citizen%20Journalism%20in%20the%202007%20Australian%20Federal%20
Election.pdf (accessed March 26, 2010).
269
ibid., 1.
270
Larvatus Prodeo. http://larvatusprodeo.net (accessed September 1, 2010).
51
blogs”.271 As well as being a “central site for the Australian blogosphere”, which
many other blogs link to, “Larvatus Prodeo” contributors “also conduct gatewatching
of a more conventional form… by observing, analysing, and critiquing the
information which becomes available in mainstream news publications and from
government and other official sources”.272
Meanwhile, the “Youdecide2007” project took “a very different approach to
its attempt to foster Australian citizen journalism”.273 As the first phase of a threeyear ARC Linkage research project into participatory journalism and citizen
engagement”, “Youdecide2007” employed a “hyperlocal methodology to its election
coverage: it provided contributors with the tools and platform to cover their local
electoral races for a wider audience”.274 As Bruns explains, “Youdecide2007”
contributors were encouraged to interview their local candidates (including but not
limited to those of the major parties), conduct vox-pops with local voters, and report
on the issues central to their own electorate, with these reports posted on the site in
text, audio, and video format.275 In a number of cases, Bruns states that “such
reporting became newsworthy on a wider level”. For instance, in an interview on
“Youdecide2007”, the Liberal member for the Queensland seat of Herbert, Peter
Lindsay, “blamed young people’s “financial illiteracy” for the credit crunch
experienced by many younger voters”: “I remember my own case… We sat on milk
crates in the lounge room until we could afford chairs. We had makeshift shelves to
put ornaments on and so on, but you did that in those days. You waited until you
could – you didn’t live beyond your means and you didn’t try to keep up with the
271
Axel Bruns, op. cit., 2.
ibid.
273
ibid., 5.
274
ibid.
275
ibid.
272
52
Joneses. Things were more responsible.”276 Bruns points out that these comments
“became the basis for a question in parliament to then Prime Minister John Howard
by Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd, who asked, ‘apart from the milk crate solution,
what is your plan to deal with Australia’s housing affordability crisis or is it simply to
blame the states?’”277
As a result, “this incident highlights the potential inherent in hyperlocal and
other forms of citizen-journalistic news reporting, especially where citizen journalists
are able to build on a solid set of resources and tools for their work”. It also “makes
elected representatives and rival candidates more directly accountable to reporters
who act in a double role as both citizens and journalists” and by relying on a broader
community of citizen journalists, “is able to uncover a wider range of stories than is
accessible to the limited workforce of the journalism industry”.278 Some of these
stories, Brun argues, “may prove to be of significance beyond the local environment,
but even where they are of interest to locals only, such citizen journalism offers an
important addition to the material available from the mainstream press”.279
As argued earlier, while the audience may have had certain avenues of
communication in previous “modes” of journalism, such as the Letter to the Editor
and the radio phone-in, the staging, shaping, editing and distribution of that was still
up to professional media producers and it is this dynamic that is gradually shifting in
the current reflexive mode of journalism.280 Gillmor points out that the newest media
276
Axel Bruns, “Citizen Journalism in the 2007 Australian Federal Election,” Paper presented to
AMIC Journalism Conference: Convergence, Citizen Journalism and Social Change, Brisbane,
Queensland, March 26-28, 2008.
http://snurb.info/files/Citizen%20Journalism%20in%20the%202007%20Australian%20Federal%20
Election.pdf (accessed March 26, 2010): 6.
277
ibid.
278
ibid.
279
ibid.
280
Paul Bradshaw, “BASIC Principles of Online Journalism: I is for Interactivity,” Online Journalism
Blog, April 5, 2008. http://onlinejournalismblog.com/2008/04/15/basic-principles-of-onlinejournalism-i-is-for-interactivity (accessed May 17, 2010).
53
model is one that moves “from a lecture to a conversation” and thus, should be more
concerned about how control can be given to readers – who are now users. 281 As Jane
Singer states, “interactive media blur the lines between the receivers and senders of a
mediated message”.282 The use of a medium, such as the internet, “obviously involves
not only active participation in the traditional audience roles of selecting and
processing media messages, but active participation in creating them, as well”.283
However, as Singer discusses, the traditional senders of media messages − the
journalists − are also “profoundly affected by this change” and are faced “not just
with a new delivery method but with what may be a fundamental shift in their role in
the communication process”.284
Another characteristic of the reflexive mode is an increasing transparency of
the news-gathering process − something that Mark Ciocco encourages in his
exploration of how the media should take on the approach of reflexive documentaries,
which “seek to contextualize themselves, exposing their limitations and biases to the
audience”.285 As Gillmor explores, “One of most serious failings of traditional
journalism has been its reluctance to focus critical attention on a powerful player in
our society: journalism itself.”286 He argues that the profession “rarely gives itself the
same scrutiny it sometimes applies to the other major institutions”.287 While
sometimes the media might focus on the reportage of celebrities, for instance,
281
Quoted in Paul Bradshaw, “BASIC Principles of Online Journalism: I is for Interactivity,” Online
Journalism Blog, April 5, 2008. http://onlinejournalismblog.com/2008/04/15/basic-principles-ofonline-journalism-i-is-for-interactivity (accessed May 17, 2010).
282
Jane B. Singer, “Online Journalists: Foundations for Research into Their Changing Roles,” Journal
of Computer-Mediated Communication 4, no. 2. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol4/issue1/singer.html
(accessed Jun 20, 2010).
283
ibid.
284
ibid.
285
Mark Ciocco, “A Reflexive Media,” Kaedrin Weblog, September 15, 2004.
http://kaedrin.com/weblog/archive/000866.html (accessed March 26, 2010).
286
Dan Gillmor, “Principles for a New Media Literacy,” Berkman Center for Internet and Society at
Harvard University paper, 2008.
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/sites/cyber.law.harvard.edu/files/Principles%20for%20a%20New%20
Media%20Literacy_MR.pdf (accessed April 10, 2010): 3.
287
ibid.
54
Gillmor claims that “very occasionally do journalists for major media organizations
drill in on each others’ successes and failures as journalists”.288
A prominent example of a television program that aims to scrutinize the news
industry is the ABC’s Media Watch. The program, which was first broadcast in 1989,
describes itself as “Australia’s leading forum for media analysis and comment”,
“turn[ing] the spotlight onto those who literally ‘make the news’”, such as the
reporters, editors and producers, as well as “those who try to manipulate the media”,
including PR consultants and spin-doctors.289 The program reflects on the journalism
profession and aims to expose “media shenanigans” surrounding issues like conflicts
of interest, plagiarism, abuse of power, deceit and misrepresentation.290
Other programs that could be classified as within the reflexive mode of
journalism, include The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report. As
Bruns argues, as revenues and readerships for traditional publications, such as
newspapers and broadcast news, are declining, “journalistic content is being
overtaken by a flotilla of alternative options”, such as the news satire of The Daily
Show in the United States”291 or similar programs in Australia, such as The 7PM
Project and Hungry Beast. Bruns discusses how these new competitors “frequently
take professional journalists themselves to task where their standards have appeared
to have slipped”, and as a result, are beginning to match the news industry’s
288
Dan Gillmor, “Principles for a New Media Literacy,” Berkman Center for Internet and Society at
Harvard University paper, 2008.
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/sites/cyber.law.harvard.edu/files/Principles%20for%20a%20New%20
Media%20Literacy_MR.pdf (accessed April 10, 2010): 3.
289
“Media Watch: About Media Watch.” Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/more.htm (accessed April 10, 2010).
290
ibid.
291
Axel Bruns, “News Blogs and Citizen Journalism,” in Kiran Prasad, ed., e-Journalism: New
Directions in Electronic News Media (New Delhi: BR Publishing, 2009).
http://snurb.info/files/News%20Blogs%20and%20Citizen%20Journalism.pdf (accessed March 26,
2010): 1.
55
incumbents in terms of insight and informational value.292 Aaron McKain, PhD
student in English at The Ohio State University, looks at how the format and formal
structural features, such as the “live” reports of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
“mimic those of traditional television newscasts” with the intention of “skewering
broadcast and cable network television news coverage of politics as well as
politicians’ efforts to spin that coverage”.293 Indiana University lecturers Julia R. Fox,
Glory Koloen and Volkan Sahin conducted a study comparing the political coverage
of the first US presidential debate and the political conventions in 2004 on The Daily
Show with Jon Stewart and broadcast television networks’ nightly newscasts. 294 They
found that as voter turnout among the under-30 age group increased, “news sources
of political information for these voters shifted away from the broadcast television
networks and toward comedy programs such as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart”.295
According to a 2004 Pew Research Center survey, the percentage of under-30
respondents (21 per cent) who said they relied regularly upon comedy shows such as
The Daily Show for campaign information was around the same as the percentage of
under-30 respondents (23 per cent) who said they regularly relied upon the television
network’s evening news for campaign information.296 The percentage of respondents
who relied on comedy shows was more than double the percentage found in a similar
Pew Research Study in 2000, while the percentage of respondents who relied on
292
Axel Bruns, “News Blogs and Citizen Journalism,” in Kiran Prasad, ed., e-Journalism: New
Directions in Electronic News Media (New Delhi: BR Publishing, 2009).
http://snurb.info/files/News%20Blogs%20and%20Citizen%20Journalism.pdf (accessed March 26,
2010): 1.
293
Quoted in Julia Fox, Glory Koloen, and Volkan Sahin, “No Joke: A Comparison of Substance in
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Broadcast Network Television Coverage of the 2004
Presidential Campaign,” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 51, no. 2 (Summer 2007):
215.
294
ibid.
295
ibid., 215.
296
Quoted in ibid.
56
broadcast network news declined to almost half what it was in the previous study.297
The growing influence of news satire programs is also evident in the way content is
occasionally first presented on The Daily Show, such as John Edwards announcing his
candidacy on the show, which was later covered as “legitimate news by traditional
news outlets”.298 While Jon Stewart himself describes the purpose of the show to
“entertain, not inform”, it is clear The Daily Show has nevertheless become a source
of news for many Americans.299 A 2007 Pew Research Center poll found Jon Stewart
was voted the fourth most-admired journalist, tied with news anchors from CBS,
NBC and CNN. A TIME magazine poll saw him voted as the most trusted
newscaster,300 demonstrating how more transparent modes of journalism, such as
satire, can potentially elicit a greater level of trust from the audience than traditional
sources. Another Pew Research Center study concluded that “The Daily Show is
clearly impacting American dialogue”, “getting people to think critically about the
public square”,301 and as a result, demonstrating its place in a reflexive mode of
journalism.
Another element of the reflexive journalism mode is the digitisation of production
in media organisations, which has facilitated changes in the organisation and
practices of journalism, according to media and communication researcher Ivar John
Erdal.302 He says the emergence of digital media has resulted in technological
convergence, media convergence and organizational convergence, which have
297
Julia Fox, Glory Koloen, and Volkan Sahin, “No Joke: A Comparison of Substance in The Daily
Show with Jon Stewart and Broadcast Network Television Coverage of the 2004 Presidential
Campaign,” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 51, no. 2 (Summer 2007): 215.
298
ibid.
299
Michiko Kakutani, “Is Jon Stewart the Most Trusted Man in America?” The New York Times,
August 17, 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/arts/television/17kaku.html (accessed April
10, 2010).
300
“Poll Results.” TIME Magazine, July, 2009.
http://www.timepolls.com/hppolls/archive/poll_results_417.html (accessed April 10, 2010).
301
Quoted in Michiko Kakutani, op. cit.
302
Ivar John Erdal, “Researching Media Convergence and Crossmedia News Production: Mapping the
Field,” Nordicom Review 28, no. 2 (2007): 51.
57
ultimately changed the way in which news is made.303 The news output of
broadcasters, in particular, has expanded rapidly since the early 1990s, and now
covers a wide range of media platforms, from television and radio to the web and
mobile phones.304 For instance, radio and television reporters, “who used to exist in
separate worlds”, are now working together across media boundaries due to the
digitisation of production systems.305 In this process of convergence, television
footage and radio sound bites can be published on the Web, while television sound is
frequently used on radio.306
Erdal also talks about the idea of cross-media communication, where more than
one media platform is engaged at the same time in communicating related content.307
For instance, he discusses a television program that is integrated with mobile phone
and web platforms for audience feedback.308 An example of this is the Australian
interactive current affairs talk show, Q&A, which airs on the ABC. As well as
encouraging viewers to SMS or upload video questions which may be answered on
the show, the program has also sought to merge social networking and television by
using Twitter to publish viewers’ commentary while the program is being broadcast
live.309 According to Mark Scott, Managing Director of the ABC, the August 16
episode of Q&A, which featured Tony Abbott, attracted 35,836 tweets with the
#qanda hashtag.310
303
Ivar John Erdal, “Researching Media Convergence and Crossmedia News Production: Mapping the
Field,” Nordicom Review 28, no. 2 (2007): 51.
304
ibid.
305
ibid., 52.
306
ibid.
307
ibid.
308
ibid.
309
“Q&A: About the Show.” Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/about-the-show.htm (accessed April 10, 2010).
310
Mark Scott, Twitter post, 5:16am August 17, 2010.
http://twitter.com/abcmarkscott/status/21398422820 (accessed April 10, 2010).
58
As a result, the reflexive mode of journalism encompasses various different
elements, which, similarly to Nichols’ reflexive documentary mode, aim to address
the question of “how we talk about the historical world [original emphasis]” rather
than just the historical world itself.311 This includes the blurring of boundaries
between users and producers and the greater role the audience is having in the news
process, through initiatives such as crowdsourcing and citizen journalism. In addition,
the reflexive mode of journalism is also about greater transparency and self-reflection
within the news media, demonstrated in programs such as Media Watch and The
Daily Show with Jon Stewart, as well as the impact of technology and media
convergence, which has instigated changes in the way news is reported.
The Performative Mode
Performative documentaries underscore the complexity of our knowledge of
the world by emphasizing its subjective and affective dimensions.312 As Nichols
points out, this mode of documentary is suited to stressing “subjective aspects of a
classically objective discourse”,313 and thus, the performative mode of journalism can
be thought of as encompassing ethnic, minority and oppositional publications. In a
study of alternative publications in Australian, Susan Forde points out the difficulties
in establishing what is ‘alternative’, ‘radical’ and ‘counter-culture’ “without including
the entire spectrum of non-mainstream publishing”.314 As a result, Forde applies a
definition given by the peak US body for alternative publications, the Association of
Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN), which requires members to provide “a clear
311
Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1991), 57.
312
Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 131.
313
Bill Nichols, Blurred Boundaries: Questions of Meaning in Contemporary Culture (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1994), 95.
314
Susan Forde, “Monitoring the Establishment: The Development of the Alternative Press in
Australia,” Media International Australia, Incorporating Culture & Policy 81 (May 1998): 114.
59
alternative to mainstream journalism ... [and possess] a distinct identity that sets it
part from the mainstream press of its area”.315 AAN members must “exhibit sufficient
public service through journalism and editorial distinction and excellence to merit
designation as a positive editorial alternative to mainstream journalism”.316 Forde
argues that “the origins of some of Australia’s contemporary alternative publications
can be found in the working-class press of the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries”, such as Australia’s first regular socialist newspaper, the Radical,
established in 1887 and the first trade union-owned daily paper in the world, the
Barner Daily Truth, which was established in Australia in 1898.317 She also points
out that “the Aboriginal print media was even further advanced than the radical
working-class press, with the emergence of the first Aboriginal newspaper, a weekly
newsletter called the Flinders Island Weekly Chronicle, as early as 1836”.318 In her
study of alternative media, Forde discusses the Aboriginal publications of the 1960s
and 1970s, which includes Koorier and Black Action − “their emergence was clearly
due in part to the increasing profile of new political movements such as land rights,
environmentalism and feminism during this counter-culture era”.319 As Michael
Meadows and Christine Morris discuss, “within a framework of the continuing
misrepresentation of Indigenous people and issues, many communities have begun to
develop alternative media systems with alternative approaches to information
management”.320 “From the small, remote communities in Central Australia linked by
an interactive videoconferencing network (the Tanami Network)”, to the 100,000
315
Quoted in Susan Forde, “Monitoring the Establishment: The Development of the Alternative Press
in Australia,” Media International Australia, Incorporating Culture & Policy 81 (May 1998): 115.
316
Quoted in ibid.
317
ibid., 117.
318
ibid.
319
ibid., 122.
320
Michael Meadows and Christine Morris, “Into the New Millennium: The Role of Indigenous Media
in Australia,” Media International Australia, Incorporating Culture & Policy 88 (August 1998): 67.
60
listeners of the Brisbane community station, 4AAA Murri Country,321 Indigenous
control of media technologies is steadily growing. Meadows and Morris describe the
Indigenous media sector, which incorporates radio, television, film, print and
multimedia technologies, as “an influential cultural resource”. However, though “the
range of Indigenous media being produced across Australia is extraordinary”, they
claim it “remains essentially unknown to most of the non-Indigenous population”.322
Forde describes the contemporary Australian alternative press industry as
“extremely diverse”, comprising of “political publications in the tradition of the early
working-class press”, as well as ‘alternatives’ − “independently owned publications
competing commercially with the mainstream, and offering a community-oriented,
unobjective type of journalism”.323 “The alternative and independent press industry of
the late 1990s varies from the low-key, 20-page A5 publication The Stirrer, published
by the Universalist Association of New South Wales, to the glossy social justice
magazine Eureka Street and through to the commercially successful political
comment and arts newspaper Adelaide Review”.324 Forde suggests that “the
Australian alternative press is about to experience a resurgence” as “the mainstream
media is experiencing a decrease in the number of outlets and there is general public
dissatisfaction with the reportage of the mainstream media”.325 Forde states that “the
industry is continuing to provide a true alternative to the mainstream version of
current events”.326 The “massive concentration of ‘symbolic power’” − “the power of
321
Quoted in Michael Meadows and Christine Morris, “Into the New Millennium: The Role of
Indigenous Media in Australia,” Media International Australia, Incorporating Culture & Policy 88
(August 1998): 69.
322
ibid.
323
Susan Forde, “Monitoring the Establishment: The Development of the Alternative Press in
Australia,” Media International Australia, Incorporating Culture & Policy 81 (May 1998): 130.
324
ibid., 124.
325
Quoted in ibid., 130.
326
ibid.
61
constructing reality” that is concentrated in mainstream media327 − is challenged by
alternative media, thus, echoing a key feature of Nichols’ concept of the participatory
mode.
327
Nick Couldry, “Mediation and Alternative Media, or Relocating the Centre of Media and
Communication Studies,” Media International Australia, Incorporating Culture & Policy 103 (May
2002): 24-31.
62
CONCLUSION:
This research set out to ask if it was possible to apply Bill Nichols’ concept of
documentary practice to journalism. While I knew it would not result in a clearlydefined paradigm through which to consider journalism, I sought to extract the main
characteristics of Nichols’ six documentary modes (the poetic, expository,
observational, participatory, reflexive and performative) and apply them to journalism
to provide an preliminary framework that can encourage further discussion and
exploration.
Before I began, I believed there were significant learnings that could be made by
applying theoretical understandings from one discipline to another. While there is a
large body of research about the profession, most of it is limited to a journalism
context. As a result, I believed it would be worthwhile to approach the subject from a
different angle, such as through documentary theory. While this proved to be a
complex task, ultimately, this interdisciplinary approach mirrors the increasingly
cross-platform and converging nature of journalism itself.
In Chapter One I introduced Bill Nichols’ modal theory and showed its significance
in film history. Nichols is considered one of the leading film theorists and his work
on modes is considered by many in the industry to be one of the most important
theories in documentary film. In this chapter, I described the key characteristics of
each mode and illustrated them using examples of relevant documentaries.
In Chapter Two I outlined the current state of journalism and explored its
fundamental aims of documenting society, on which I was able to draw similarities
63
with the role of documentary filmmakers. While television new stories can already be
considered as documentaries, this thesis explores the idea of journalism as a wider
documentary practice that operates across all mediums: television, radio, print and
online. This chapter also detailed the complex media environment in which
journalists are currently working and the way that technology has shaped the nature
of journalism, affecting the journalist’s relationship with their subject and audience.
In Chapter Three I discussed the significance of looking at journalism through the
prism of documentary practice. I categorised journalism into the same six modes first
used by Nichols to classify documentary film, illustrating the characteristics of each
by analysing specific examples of journalism. Through this process, I suggested the
general move towards interactivity and self-reflexivity that is occurring in journalism
and highlighted the challenges facing the industry due to increasing convergence of
text, audio and visual elements.
I believe that the task has been worth it. By using knowledge gained from two distinct
disciplines (journalism and film) I believe I have illustrated trends that are relevant
for journalists working across all platforms in 2010. For instance, rather than looking
at the future of individual mediums, I have highlighted the importance of considering
overall trends such as increasing audience participation, which should be encouraged
across all mediums.
There are of course problems and challenges with thinking about journalism in this
way. Many in the journalism industry are not used to thinking “outside the box” and
would not normally turned to the works of a film historian to find answers to the
64
industry’s future. But as Australian cultural studies theorist Terry Flew points out,
“the study of new media needs to be interdisciplinary and multi-perspectival” and
draw upon diverse fields.328
The limits of an honours thesis stopped me from further developing my theory. If I
am allowed an opportunity to further develop this work into a PhD thesis, I would
perhaps focus on particular modes in more detail, such as the participatory, reflexive
and performative modes, which the current journalism environment seems to be
situated in, and which would therefore be most relevant to future discussions. While I
do not realistically expect my approach to journalism to be taken up by the industry,
the exercise in itself has been beneficial by making me think about a familiar topic in
an unfamiliar way.
328
Terry Flew, New Media: An Introduction (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2008), 20.
65
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