Barbie Zelizer knows that war is not a happy topic. On Thursday, August 31, the former journalist thanked students for coming out to the Science Center during the first week of classes to think about heavy issues. Zelizer hoped that thinking about images of war would inspire students beyond her talk.
Today's war differs greatly from its historical counterparts, most notably in the lack of designed practices. War reporting has changed similarly, and individuals covering war are a motley crew, according to Zelizer. No longer "an aspired-to high ground of journalism," war correspondence is a dangerous field in which many agencies no longer partake. It is a litmus test for the state of all journalism, she said.
Zelizer contends that a sustained belief in the higher order of journalism during war has blinded us to realities on the ground. News about war has deeply reaching impact on those affected by battle, yet many agencies believe the risk/yield ratio does not justify sending journalists out of the newsroom. When war does receive field coverage, journalists are called upon to make the extraordinary ordinary in precarious environments of formidable language barriers and uncertain resources, Zelizer explained.
Without the infrastructure and support that comes with long-term stability, war reporters are expected to be experts about new scenes, passionate yet impartial and distanced; authoritative, yet open to cracks in the stories that unfold, she said. War correspondents are afflicted with high rates of alcoholism and divorce. Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder affects one in four, and agencies rarely provide adequate life and health insurance to their frontline eyes.
The reporters who take the most risks are also the least likely to be protected. In Baghdad, there was a horrendous disparity between what occurred and what the news agencies chose to report, Zelizer recalled. Many agencies reported only safely from the newsroom, but even in field coverage was effected by risk/yield ratios. Young, less internally connected unilateral journalists receive less attention than reporters embedded with the protection and perspective alteration of U.S. troops. While embedded reporters are marketed and viewed as a clear window to the full story on the ground, they are only seeing what Zelizer estimates to be 20% of the real action.
Impartiality can only occur when there is clarity of positions on both sides, viability of patriotism, hierarchies of journalists and information, and no evidence of partisanship among reporters or public need for perspective, she said. Such conditions are never met. The idea of perspective as an affliction rather than an inescapable reality has magnified the voice of the political right, yet America is almost the only country in the world that doesn't have some degree of explicit partisanship in its news media.
Advancement of technology has driven a focus on immediacy that demonizes time and due process of details. As John Stewart and Stephen Colbert continue to lampoon on Comedy Central, surveys reveal that young people are just as likely to get news from political satires as from traditional news broadcasts. To Zelizer, this proves that journalism has not listened to the public and its clamoring need for perspective. We value the Daily Show precisely because it tries to make sense of what is happening.
Zelizer said the widespread use of the verisimilitude of photos is a serious setback to journalistic truth. Journalists need photographs to substantiate their claims about accountability for the real world, but captions, page placement, cropping, and outright Photoshopping are used to imply untruth. The widely circulated photograph of the toppling of the Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad stirred up association with similar images taken from Eastern Europe as symbols of mass rebellions against autocratic rule. However, while the statue of Stalin was toppled by students in the surge of a revolutionary movement, a wider angle lens on the Hussein photo shows an uncrowded circle guarded and populated solely by foreign troops, according to Zelizer. When more contextual imagery is seen, it becomes clear that the revolutionary fervor implied by the cropped photo is a farce.
Modern journalists lack sufficient standards on how to connect images with text, and photographers have no voice in describing their images. Zelizer pointed out that photo editors who don't necessarily know the circumstances under which photographs were taken decide how images are used. While we get more photographs in times of war (50 as opposed to 20 on average in the LA Times), more photographs do not always mean more information. The additional images of wartime often repeat already familiar and overrepresented ideas by recycling residual associations. Overzealous focus on the past often distracts citizens from the gross reality of atrocities that are occurring now. Worse yet, photographs are often printed more for their aesthetic appeal than for their intrinsic ability to portray information clearly.
Reporting war is more imagined than real. We see journalists who wrestle with their patriotism, who have opinions and voice them, who learn new news practices readily and energetically from outside members of the community. Journalists worry about their physical safety and form stronger relationships with those who offer protection from kidnapping and murder. In a world where it is impossible for journalists to be impartial, we need to include their perspectives and biases in our understanding of journalism. For Americans to understand what is really going on in war, journalists have an obligation to provide context for their stories. No news organization can tell the entire story alone. However, it is the reader's responsibility to read broadly to gather multiple perspectives of the same event or issue to develop a more complete picture and understanding, Zelizer said.
Zelizer, a former Guggenheim Fellow, is the Raymond Williams Professor of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication.
-- by Mariam Ballout '10
Today's war differs greatly from its historical counterparts, most notably in the lack of designed practices. War reporting has changed similarly, and individuals covering war are a motley crew, according to Zelizer. No longer "an aspired-to high ground of journalism," war correspondence is a dangerous field in which many agencies no longer partake. It is a litmus test for the state of all journalism, she said.
Zelizer contends that a sustained belief in the higher order of journalism during war has blinded us to realities on the ground. News about war has deeply reaching impact on those affected by battle, yet many agencies believe the risk/yield ratio does not justify sending journalists out of the newsroom. When war does receive field coverage, journalists are called upon to make the extraordinary ordinary in precarious environments of formidable language barriers and uncertain resources, Zelizer explained.
Without the infrastructure and support that comes with long-term stability, war reporters are expected to be experts about new scenes, passionate yet impartial and distanced; authoritative, yet open to cracks in the stories that unfold, she said. War correspondents are afflicted with high rates of alcoholism and divorce. Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder affects one in four, and agencies rarely provide adequate life and health insurance to their frontline eyes.
The reporters who take the most risks are also the least likely to be protected. In Baghdad, there was a horrendous disparity between what occurred and what the news agencies chose to report, Zelizer recalled. Many agencies reported only safely from the newsroom, but even in field coverage was effected by risk/yield ratios. Young, less internally connected unilateral journalists receive less attention than reporters embedded with the protection and perspective alteration of U.S. troops. While embedded reporters are marketed and viewed as a clear window to the full story on the ground, they are only seeing what Zelizer estimates to be 20% of the real action.
Impartiality can only occur when there is clarity of positions on both sides, viability of patriotism, hierarchies of journalists and information, and no evidence of partisanship among reporters or public need for perspective, she said. Such conditions are never met. The idea of perspective as an affliction rather than an inescapable reality has magnified the voice of the political right, yet America is almost the only country in the world that doesn't have some degree of explicit partisanship in its news media.
Advancement of technology has driven a focus on immediacy that demonizes time and due process of details. As John Stewart and Stephen Colbert continue to lampoon on Comedy Central, surveys reveal that young people are just as likely to get news from political satires as from traditional news broadcasts. To Zelizer, this proves that journalism has not listened to the public and its clamoring need for perspective. We value the Daily Show precisely because it tries to make sense of what is happening.
Zelizer said the widespread use of the verisimilitude of photos is a serious setback to journalistic truth. Journalists need photographs to substantiate their claims about accountability for the real world, but captions, page placement, cropping, and outright Photoshopping are used to imply untruth. The widely circulated photograph of the toppling of the Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad stirred up association with similar images taken from Eastern Europe as symbols of mass rebellions against autocratic rule. However, while the statue of Stalin was toppled by students in the surge of a revolutionary movement, a wider angle lens on the Hussein photo shows an uncrowded circle guarded and populated solely by foreign troops, according to Zelizer. When more contextual imagery is seen, it becomes clear that the revolutionary fervor implied by the cropped photo is a farce.
Modern journalists lack sufficient standards on how to connect images with text, and photographers have no voice in describing their images. Zelizer pointed out that photo editors who don't necessarily know the circumstances under which photographs were taken decide how images are used. While we get more photographs in times of war (50 as opposed to 20 on average in the LA Times), more photographs do not always mean more information. The additional images of wartime often repeat already familiar and overrepresented ideas by recycling residual associations. Overzealous focus on the past often distracts citizens from the gross reality of atrocities that are occurring now. Worse yet, photographs are often printed more for their aesthetic appeal than for their intrinsic ability to portray information clearly.
Reporting war is more imagined than real. We see journalists who wrestle with their patriotism, who have opinions and voice them, who learn new news practices readily and energetically from outside members of the community. Journalists worry about their physical safety and form stronger relationships with those who offer protection from kidnapping and murder. In a world where it is impossible for journalists to be impartial, we need to include their perspectives and biases in our understanding of journalism. For Americans to understand what is really going on in war, journalists have an obligation to provide context for their stories. No news organization can tell the entire story alone. However, it is the reader's responsibility to read broadly to gather multiple perspectives of the same event or issue to develop a more complete picture and understanding, Zelizer said.
Zelizer, a former Guggenheim Fellow, is the Raymond Williams Professor of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication.
-- by Mariam Ballout '10
