Annotated Bibliography

A month ago, a painting went on display in The Goodman art gallery in Johannesburg of President Jacob Zuma entitled “The Spear”. This painting is part of a collection called “Hail to the Thief II” and depicts the president with his genitals exposed. This caused great controversy in South Africa, with the ANC insisting it be taken down as it Zuma felt “felt personally offended and violated” and says that “the portrait depicts me in a manner that suggests I am a philanderer, a womaniser and one with no respect. It is an undignified depiction of my personality and seeks to create doubt about my personality in the eyes of my fellow citizens, family and children”. While some insist this is disrespectful to the president, others insist that it is the artist right to freedom of expression that it not be taken down.

(http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/africa/south-africa/120522/the-spear-jacob-zuma-painting-defaced)

This annotated bibliography will investigate the different mediums in which the story of the defacement of the painting was communicated to the public; through an online news article, a radio broadcast and online video.

CNN, (2012, May 22), Men deface controversial Zuma painting [Online Video], retrieved from http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2012/05/22/sot-safrica-zuma-painting-defaced.enews-channel

In an online CNN video broadcast, a reporter explains how the infamous “The Spear” painting of Jacob Zuma was defaced. The video is recorded by an E-News reporter, and shows the act of vandalism. E-News is a South African public program and the video is rebroadcasted on CNN’s website. The information the reporter gives is enforced by the visual of the men painting over the painting and being apprehended. The video shows rough footage of one man painting a red cross over the painting and then another man covering it in black paint. The men are then apprehended by security. The entire video is narrated by an e-news reporter. The video is clearly roughly shot, as indicated by shaky movement of the camera and the background talking, and gives the story credibility as the audience can see that the reporter’s explanation is accurate. The entire story of the painting is told towards the end of the video. This is likely because the focus of this story is the defacement of the painting, not the controversy surrounding it. As it has recently been an important story in South Africa, it is assumed that the audience would already know about the painting, and the broadcast fittingly focuses on the current news. This video gives a thorough account of the vandalism, and has the greatest information on the actual vandalism compared to the other mediums that the story was published in, as it shows the actual events.

Brush Taken to Zuma’s Exposed Weakness, (2012, May 23), The Australian, retrieved from http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/brush-taken-to-zumas-exposed-weakness/story-e6frg6so-1226363999425

The Australian’s online article covered the story of the vandalism of “The Spear” at the Goodman gallery. It gave an accurate account of the events that took place concerning the two men that painted over “The Spear” and another man painting the first three letters of ‘respect’ outside the gallery. The author also reported that Iman Rappetti, the reporter who was on the scene and who took the footage of the vandalism, initially thought it was a performance art piece, which is why the staff took so long to react. The author then gave some background to the controversy surrounding the painting, explaining that the painting was a comment on President Zuma’s previous sexual transgressions and the ANC’s ‘abuse of power’. It is also explained that the ANC was set to challenge the rights of the gallery in High Court. It then ends with the opinion of someone who saw the painting being defaced. As it is a short article, it does not go as in depth into the story as the radio broadcast for example, but merely states the important facts. It also gave a broader view of the story than the video, as the video was more of a live narration of the event.

Crook, G., (Producer). (2012, May 23). The Midday Report [Radio podcast]. South Africa: Talk Radio 702

Chris Gibbons, the broadcaster, is a well known and respected radio journalist. The Midday Report is the winner of the MTN News and Actuality Show of 2012, which verifies the high standard of this program and its credibility in presenting and analysing South African news. The program starts by giving an overview of the events surrounding the defacement of “The Spear” and how three men were detained (two who vandalised the painting and another man who painted the first three letters of ‘respect’ outside the gallery). Gibbons then interviews several guests; a reporter at the court where the culprits’ cases were heard, Ayanda Mabula, an artist that had created a similar controversial painting of Zuma a few years before, Cape Town premier Helen Zille about her thoughts on the painting, and the City Press editor about her claims that the Film and Publication Board were biased. Hearing the opinions of different people that are involved in the case gives a wider look at the story than any of the other mediums. Instead of focusing on the actual act of vandalism, this program goes into more detail about the motives of the perpetrators and the events after the defacement. Gibbons raises the questions of the ANC’s involvement in the case, as they provided lawyers for the perpetrators, which none of the other mediums mentioned. The program heard different opinions but only investigates one side of the controversy; people who are on the gallery and artist’s ‘side’. A more balanced program would have interviewed someone who thought the painting was disrespectful.

Lynn Rivers, P. (2006). Governing Sounds: Hate, Race, and Responsibility in Post-Apartheid Broadcasting. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 23(3), 219-231. doi: 10.1080/07393180600800783

The author, Patrick Lynn Rivers, is an Assistant Professor of Visual and Critical Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which gives him authority in analysing the actions of the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa (BCCSA) in the post-apartheid era. He investigates how the BCCSA handled the complaints towards one song ‘AmaNdiya’ by Mbongeni Ngema. The song portrays Afro-Indians in a negative light, in regards to Zulus. The founding of the BCCSA is outlined, and how freedom of expression section in South Africa’s Bill of Rights relates to the case of ‘AmaNdiya’. The author discusses how the BCCSA had difficulty dealing with racial complaints and ignored the apartheid history of South Africa when handling cases that do not directly involve whites. He states that this should not be done, as the racial history still influences such cases. He then states that the BCCSA conceptualizations of race and gender were awkward when deciding how to regulate the media. His statement is definitely supported by many previous examples of complaints of race in media that he mentioned. The author concludes by saying that regulatory bodies, such as the BCCSA, have the power to decide what elements in history are to be preserved by how they react to media complaints. This article thoroughly investigated the regulation on the BCCSA in racial complaints of media by using apt examples and justified reasoning.

Conclusion

For every different media that a story can be told in, there are different aspects that are looked at. Every medium has different elements to their disposal. In the defacing of ‘The Spear’, the online article covered the broad facts of the story, as well as giving background to the events and what happened after the arrest. The video was more of a ‘raw’ account of the actions, as it showed exactly what happened and gave a broad overview of the background surrounding the defacement. The video is most credible of the actual events as it shows the audience exactly what happened. The radio broadcast took a different approach, and gave a short overview of the events and then went on to hear different people’s opinions about the controversy surrounding the story. By looking at different media platforms, it can be concluded that each medium has a different role to play in communicating the story to the public.

News Values

When I first heard the term "news values" this year, I thought it mean the moral and ethical values that newspeople have. But now I have been corrected.

News values are actually the "newsworthiness" of a story. The importance that a media outlet gives to a story and how much attention the audience will give to said story. I feel like I should have thought of this element of journalism before. It is one of those things where, after you learn about it, you go "ohhhhhh, but I knew that already!".

Because there is a MASS of news out there everyday, every second, all the time. And it is so logical that there must be some way to prioritize what to publish and what to omit. It reminds me of the Page One documentary we watched in the tutorial today; where someone said (forgive me for paraphrasing, I cannot remember all the words) that Journalists take the avalanche of news and information and shape it into the next morning's newspaper. And another great quote was used in the lecture about how "A sense of news 
values” is the first quality of editors – they are the “human sieves of the torrent of news”, even more important even than an ability to write or a command of language." (Harold Evans) And it is true, journalists need to take all this new information and decide what goes to the public. It is quite a responsibility, actually.

And to get to the actual news values; they are what drives every story. Something has to be in that story to make the busy modern person stop and read. And these values have been defined by several people, but obviously there is nothing set in stone. Nothing in journalism is set in stone.

In 1965 Galtung and Ruge defined the news values as being 12 big factors (and I may have stolen this off the lecture slides):

As the years passed many other people revised these news values, always keeping with the same idea, but explaining them in another way. Golding and Elliot created another list of news values in 1979:

Drama

Visual attractiveness

Entertainment

Importance

Size

Proximity

Negativity

Brevity

Recency (exclusives, scoops)

Elites

Personalities

And I could go on and on listing more news values. But you get the idea.

This actually explains a lot about my news digesting habits, as well as everyone else's. Just think of how you read a newspaper? Where you click on a news website? For me, I always head towards the world news, music news or huge happenings in the world. I really could not care less about the NRL or cricket or State of Origin (which people are VERY LOUDLY watching right now, as a matter of fact- something just happened, everyone is shouting...). Because even though there are universal news values, we each have our own set of values that determine what we think is important. And this kind of makes me forgive journalists a little, because I was upset that I read nothing about Zimbabwe or other places I care about. But all along they were just following news values.

Bruce mentioned another modern phenomenon in modern journalism: churnalism. 

This refers to the lazy, irresponsible, fast and shallow journalism that happens as a result of the growing need of having new news, now! Where journalism just recycles press releases to fill in the gaps. And this is the problem with journalism, the demand is to great, and the speed at which it needs to be produced is too great. And I honestly cannot think of a solution to this. We can only hope that journalist stay true to in their integrity. Hey! That actually brings me back to what I wrongly thought news values were- the ethical and moral handling of news. Maybe news values should have TWO meanings.

Ethics

This week's lecture started off a little differently than other lectures, we got pieces of paper where on we are supposed to decide if the ads that they were going to show us, were ethical, unethical or in good taste or in bad taste. And then we proceeded to see some very dodgy ads, mostly questionable because of their sexual innuendo's. Here are some of the ads we looked at:

It was actually an extremely interesting exercise, because I found it extremely difficult to pin point if the reason the ad is a bit uncomfortable, is because it is in bad taste or unethical. And sometimes I did not think, personally, there was anything wrong with it, but I knew why it would be questionable.

Which kind of demonstrates the point- everyone will see things differently. What I deem as inappropriate is very different to what other people might see. There was one ad we looked at, an ad about lamb chops that was banned. It feature Sam Kekovich making a political style speech about being 'truly Aussie':

(http://youtu.be/tt8wZ-xTKAU)

Now, I know that many people think it is funny or clever, because of it's exaggeration or for some unknown reason. But I HATE this ad. It makes me want to leave Australia on the first possible flight, and become a vegan just to spite the makers of this ad. Everything that it uses to make it funny, just makes me angry. I think it is because I am not Australian, and every day I have to adjust to this other culture. And what makes me like Australia is that it is so multi-cultural. But there are still people who think that it is alright to blame me for being different in the ways that I do things, and this ad reminds me of those people. It pretty much sums up everything I hate about Australia.

This ad is a prime example of how subjective ethics and taste can be. No one will agree on things if they all have different backgrounds and experiences. Which is why there are ethics codes.

The ethics codes are based on deontology- that there are rules to follow that show you what is right or wrong. The other options are consequentialism (that the ends justify the means, and what do you do fine as long as it ends up being the right thing) and virtue ethics (based on good character and virtue).

I understand what John Harrison meant when he said that it is better to have ethics based on virtue. And in a perfect, Utopian society, I agree. Things are not really black and white, and for every situation the right thing is different. But we don't live in a Utopian society. Not all people have moral values. Not everyone has the same idea of what is good and bad. People are too different, and unfortunately, too bad to let everyone follow their own moral compass when it comes to journalism. I honestly think that having ethics codes are the only practical solution.

I read an article about a journalist, Johann Hari, who wrote in his column how he had been unethical in his writing. He followed to say how he had taken words and quotes from other sources to help him write the whatever story he was writing about an interview when he did not have the right material.

"At the time, I justified this to myself by saying I was giving the clearest possible representation of what the interviewee thought, in their most considered and clear words."

(the whole story can be found at http://www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/2011/09/unethical-journalism)

This is a prime example of how what YOU might think is right, really is not. And the ethics code would make this transparent.