“In the "photo opportunity," […] an event is created for the specific purpose of being represented in a media image, to be consumed by viewers as reality.” (Gramson 387) This essay will explain how a mass society formerly enchanted by photojournalism has become subject to control by the transfer to biased television newscasts. This will be explained using evidence from Ulrich Keller to explore how the introduction of photojournalism created a false sense of truth and reality. Furthermore, I will explain the change which ensued with the birth of television newscasts using Mitchell Stephens’ writing on the matter. I will then connect the shift from photojournalism to televised newscasts to explain the ability for the latter to possess massive social control over society using evidence from James Beniger, as well as John Fiske.
Although photojournalism was introduced to media outlets as early as 1867 in weekly magazines and 1880 in daily papers, the real sensationalism it caused did not appear until 1890 (Keller 146). Photojournalism in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s was a new and sensational means to convey a message to mass societies within America and other technologically advanced countries becoming renowned for its ability to deliver proof of reality to otherwise unsubstantiated text. Within thirty years photojournalism captivated a daily national audience, in 1910 in New York City alone, fourteen newspapers contained an average of 903 pictures per week (Schunemann 102). This steep rise in photojournalism enabled the illusion of reality and truthfulness believed by mass societies. By providing pictorial proof people were subjected to believe what was being shown. Unfortunately, photojournalism had numerous biases and was not ...
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...telle. Visual Communication and the Graphic Arts: Photographic Tehnologies in the Nineteenth Century. 2nd Edition. New York: R. R. Bowker, 1974, 1938.
Keller, Ulrich. "Early Photojournalism." Crowley, David and Paul Heyer . Communication in History: Technoloy, Culture, Society. Sixth Edition. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, c2011. 144-152.
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Stephens, Mitchell. "Television Transforms the News." Crowly, David and Paul Heyer. Communications in Hisoty: Technology, Culture, Society. Sixth Edition. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, c2011. 245-251.
William A. Gamson, David Croteau, William Hoynes and Theodore Sasson. "Media Images and the Social Construction of Reality." Anual Review of Sociology. Vol. 18. Palo Alto: Annual Reviews, 1992. 387.
When discussing the media, we must search back to its primal state the News Paper. For it was the News paper and its writers that forged ahead and allowed freedoms for today’s journalism on all fronts, from the Twitter accounts to the daily gazettes all must mark a single event in the evolution of media in respects to politics and all things shaping. Moving on in media history, we began to see a rapid expansion around 1990. With more than 50% of all American homes having cable TV access, newspapers in every city and town with major newspaper centers reaching far more than ever before. Then the introduction of the Internet; nothing would ever be the same.
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Rosenblum, Naomi . A History of Women Photographers . New York, NY: Abbeville Press Publishers, 2000.
The mass media carries with it unparalleled opportunities to impart information, but also opportunities to deceive the public, by misrepresenting an event. While usually thought of as falsifying or stretching facts and figures, manipulation can just as easily be done in the use of photography and images. These manipulations may be even more serious – and subtle – than written manipulations, since they may not be discovered for years, if ever, and can have an indelible and lasting impact on the viewer, as it is often said, “a picture is worth a thousand words”. One of the most significant images of Twentieth Century America was the photograph of a migrant mother holding her child. The photograph was taken during the Great Depression by photographer Dorothea Lange, and has remained an enduring symbol of the hardship and struggle faced by many families during the Depression Era. This image was also an example of the manipulation of photography, however, for it used two major forms of manipulation that remain a problem in journalistic photography.
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Today’s mass media has been molded by hundreds of years of reporting, journalism, and personal opinions. America’s mainstream media thrives upon stretching the truth and ‘creating’ interesting stories for the public. Tactics like this can be credited to people such as William Randolph Hearst, a newspaper mogul from the late 19th to the 20th centuries. Hearst greatly influenced the practice of American journalism through his wealth, short political career, and use of unorthodox reporting methods such as yellow journalism.
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This investigation asks the question "How did photography shape public reactions to the American Civil War?” The investigation will take into account the leading photographers’ works of the time, such as Matthew Brady and Alexander Gardner, and how the public responded to the images that were shared and what value the images had. It will assess the public reaction by looking at press publications similar to those of The New York Times and Harper's Weekly. Publications such as these evaluated the galleries of the artists what they provided for the viewers. The value of the photographs to today's historians is also taken into account.
"A photograph is not merely a substitute for a glance. It is a sharpened vision. It is the revelation of new and important facts." ("Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History."). Sid Grossman, a Photo League photographer expressed this sentiment, summarizing the role photography had on America in the 1940’s and 50’s. During this era, photojournalism climaxed, causing photographers to join the bandwagon or react against it. The question of whether photography can be art was settled a long time ago. Most major museums now have photography departments, and the photographs procure pretty hefty prices. The question of whether photojournalism or documentary photography can be art is now the question at hand. Art collectors are constantly looking to be surprised; today they are excited by images first seen in last week’s newspapers as photojournalism revels in the new status as art “du jour” or “reportage art”.
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Schwartz, Donna. “Objective Representation: Photographs as Facts.” Picturing the Past: Media History & Photography. Ed. Bonnie Brennen, Hanno Hardt. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999. 158-181.
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Television and journalism have a relatively short history together, yet over the last sixty years, the two have become increasingly intertwined, perhaps even irreversible so. But this merger is between two opposing forces–one, a mass medium that inherently demands entertainment and the other, a profession most people hold responsible for information, for facts, which, for the most part, are inherently boring. So has television been beneficial for the American people? The people that our country’s founding fathers chose to hold responsible for electing those to be responsible for our country’s government? By exploring the history of television journalism, discovering how it came to be, and looking at current trends in the industry, I only hope to be able to give my own informed opinion.