Chapter 4: Journalist discourse and the Press photograph

 

 

 

4.1  Theories of journalist discourse

 

The importance of discourse for thesaurus construction: It is a basic assumption in this paper that social discourse influences thesaurus design. Thus, Press photographs are discussed according to a specific domain or field, as presented by, for instance, Jacob & Shaw (1998).

 

To improve communication between author and user/searcher, we must improve the tools used by indexers and information intermediaries. Jacob & Shaw describe how a shift has occurred from considering these problems from an individualistic, cognitivistic viewpoint to seeing them from the so-called socio-cognitivistic viewpoint in which it is recognised that knowledge and representations of knowledge are created in the space between individuals - an inter-subjective space.

 

According to this latter viewpoint, the design of thesauri should be done in consideration of the following:

 

"The thesaurus is a tool that helps individual users to get an understanding of the vocabulary of the collective knowledge domain. Thus, the thesaurus should reflect the characteristics of the information environment in order to present the perspective of that particular knowledge domain."

- Lykke Nielsen (2001), p. 778 

 

In the case of Press photographs, it is perhaps more difficult to speak of a "knowledge domain" and its vocabulary, since they typically do not include verbal elements. One could fear that the index terms in the thesaurus would become arbitrary, as the jargon in the domain of the Press photograph consists mainly of codes whose meanings are implicit[1]. Nonetheless, we still operate in a domain of social discourse. At the expressive level, a photograph presents lexical signs. This happens in the culture of which the viewer is a member (Hall, 1973, p. 177). The viewer reads or decodes these signs based on his social or cultural knowledge, and this takes place whether he is in contact with reality or only with a truncated, visual representation of this reality. Arbitrary index terms have no such contact - here we use a verbal tool to describe the non-verbal. Some signs can readily be described and written down in the thesaurus, others can only be described in arbitrary terms since we normally don't have any words for them.

 

In the following, journalism is described as a type of social discourse. The theory will be supported by examples from the Aalborg newspaper Nordjyske Stiftstidende (NS).

 

 

Hypotheses regarding journalist discourse

 

Stuart Allan (1999) describes how the introduction of the telegraph in the 1840s, according to news historians, spurred "objectivity" as a professional ideal.  A new standard came about to mediate pure facts, weeding out values. The telegraph made it possible, for the first time, to spread news instantaneously. It became important not only to present the news itself, but also a sense of the present. Facts got spread via the telegraph from the American centralised telegraph service, Associated Press (AP), to the local newspapers that bought and resold the news. Any ideological colouring happened at the local newspaper, but the activities of AP couldn't help but influence the way in which the Press thereafter chose to look at the mediation of news.

 

Press photographs reinforce the acclaimed "objectivity" of the Press in the way it   portrays the world (Allan, 1999, p. 94). Photographs taken "on location" are a powerful tool to this end. As mentioned above under the heading "Photo typology", the Press photograph has certain conventions regarding framing, angles, light and colour saturation that support a process of "naturalization", a validation of the claim that what is seen really has happened. The illusion works, because we, as consumers of news, have grown accustomed to the fact that it is so. Thus we perceive the Press photograph as a carrier of authoritative truth. In order to maintain this illusion, the goal of the photographer is to maintain the transparency of the photograph and hide the photographic possibilities and strategies. As said two Barthean citations:

 

• "A photograph is always invisible. No matter what it shows or how it does it, it is not the photograph that we see (Barthes, 1996, p. 15, my translation)
• "... the Press photograph ... is never an "artistic" photograph" (Barthes 1982, s.18).

 

Because of this, pictorial elements, which unambiguously link the photograph to a point in time, persons, places or preferably all of these, are valuable. Allan (1999, p. 62) mentions "news value" as one of the implicit "codes" of the Press. Elements of this "code" include relevance (news should preferably be related to the sphere of the reader, that is, pertinent to the reader in real and social space) and proximity in time (the news should preferably have happened within the last 24 hours).

 

Proximity in time is especially important. Hall (1973, p. 188-9) mentions that the type of history that the Press writes is not written in a simple past tense. He names the notion of time used in the Press discourse "actuality time", and terms the corresponding linguistic form the "historic instantaneous". All history is converted into "today" and presented in terms of the immediate moment. Obviously, not all articles in a newspaper fit this type. Summary articles also exist which more readily write traditional history and remain in the past tense, but the identification of the "historic instantaneous" is important in this context because it emphasizes a trend within the Press to connect news (and thus, the Press photograph) with "actuality time".

 

The ideal of objectivity can also be used in the typology of newspapers. Newspapers can be characterized on a scale ranging from "tabloid" to "quality" broadsheet newspaper (Allan 1999, s. 90). The vocabulary and the use of language- in newspaper offices are, of course, influenced by the type. "Tabloids" use a more emotional jargon from which the "quality" newspapers distance themselves. They do not employ emotionally laden terms and are therefore viewed as more "authoritative" and "objective" in relation to the ideal. Likewise, the use of language can be analysed via the form of address. In cases where a formal tone is used, the newspaper is viewed with a higher degree of modality or truth value than those papers that address the reader directly.

 

 

4.2  The regional newspaper "Nordjyske Stiftstidende"

 

The Nordjyske Stiftstidende can be characterized as a "quality" broadsheet newspaper, and the linguistic style is formal, in line with the above theory, since it doesn't address the reader in a direct manner. The language used includes colloquial, not too sophisticated terms. Usage of value-laden adjectives occurs, but an underlying tone of objectivity appears to be the norm of the newspaper. The linguistic style has a natural influence upon the terms of a thesaurus, not only with regards to the choice of terms for the controlled vocabulary, but also for the construction of a lead-in vocabulary. I intend to analyse the use of language by means of two associative methods and a verbal analysis of caption texts. These analyses and their results are presented in the chapter "Association tests".

 

In the following, the Nordjyske Stiftstidende is seen as an informational system consisting of three groups of actors: The photographers, as the producers of the object of study (the Press photograph), the archivists as the information intermediaries and the journalists (the writers) as the users.

 

The producers: The photographers

 

The photographers distance themselves from the journalists in many ways. They have their own jargon and their own focus:

 

Quote 1: "If it was up to the journalists to take photos, we would only get pictures of crowds. They do not focus on aspects of the whole as we do, and that is probably what separates us." (Michael Koch)

 

 

They are viewed as very conscious about visual means and the total expression of the photograph. They enthusiastically discuss the professional aspects among themselves and continue to educate themselves via course activity.

 

The photographers produce very few images of the type described by the archive as genre photographs, and enjoy capturing people. Because of this, it is often a problem to retrieve common images of buildings that are "clean" and out of context:

 

Quote 2: "If the journalist orders an image with a certain subject, then we must create it, but often we do not have the time for it anymore. Things have changed since we have gone digital. We no longer have that category we used to call "for the archives". (Per Kolind). (Note: "For the archive" refers to the  "scrap" photographs taken out of context during an assignment).

 

When the photographer delivers his final product to the archive, he doesn't take too kindly to any tinkering with it. Cropping, light or angles are all within the domain of the photographers, and it is an unwritten rule that the picture remains "as is" after having been treated by its photographer:

 

Quote 3: "The photographers are furious when anyone tinker with their images." (Dissing)

 

Quote 4: Interviewer: "But isn't the text of a journalist also often cut?" "Well, yes, but cropping the text of a journalist, that is a journalist doing that. The problem is that many of those that evaluate and crop our images have no formal education with pictures." (Michael Koch)

 

In this way, photographs in the newspaper express the photographers' way of seeing.  The following quotes describe the attitude of the photographers towards manipulation of the image:

 

Quote 5: "We have to tell a story. One cannot call it manipulating, but we have to tell a story. As an example, if you tell of a man with a beautiful view, it is no good showing the back of this man looking out of the window. You purposely have to instruct him to turn around, even though this is not what he would do in reality when he is looking out. You have to make him represent this: "This is me and my view". (Per Kolind)

 

Quote 6: "Manipulating in Photoshop, entering and removing something - that is manipulation. Cropping is not. (Michael Koch)

 

Quote 7: "If you change reality, then it is manipulation. To see part of reality is not. Cropping can also happen through choice of angle, which the human eye likewise does!" (Per Kolind)

 

Cropping, as such, appears to be okay even in report photographs (see below). Other types of manipulation are not ethical with regards to the report photograph - contrasting feature and model photographs, whose expression it is allowable to "play with" (see below for a definition of these).

 

The intermediaries: The image librarians

 

The image archive at the NS is staffed by four employees. The archive resides in a quiet wing next to the huge editorial office, but close enough for the journalists to stop by a pick up photographs for themselves. There are large numbers of physical folders containing groups of analogue images, a  "back catalogue" placed in filing cabinets. Nowadays, however, most photographs are only handled in digital form and stored in an image database. At 1st of May 2002, this electronic archive in the NS held 206.027 digital pictures. Of these, by far the majority has been produced by NS photographers. Only a small part (1526 images) comprises so-called "4S photographs", which indicates that they have been bought at ScanPix (formerly Nordfoto) for permanent future possession. A sample was taken to suggest the level of reuse of photographs at the NS:

 

Date:	Indexed:	Reused (at least once):
14/2-2001	159	10
15/2-2001	124	18
17/2-2001	156	8
15/5-2001	111	23
17/5-2001	140	46
19/5-2001	133	38
% of reuse, average: (143/823*100) = ca. 20%

 

 

This can be said to justify the presence of an image archive at the NS. Some pictures are, of course, used more than others. This doesn't necessarily indicate the great re-usability of any of these photographs. It can just as well mean that no other images were readily available of the wanted category or for the required use.

 

The image librarians index about 150 pictures each day, and handle roughly 50 requests daily from the journalists in the editorial offices. When the archive receives photographs, they have already been cropped and adjusted by the photographers. The librarians then make their own selection from these, since the photographers produce more images from any given event than can be indexed and stored.

 

If no suitable image is found to respond to a request, ScanPix is contacted, and photographs are paid for and retrieved. These are used once, and then removed from the database. A few are bought for permanent possession if multiple reuses are expected but that doesn't happen often. Photographs with no indication of origin have been received from other sources, be it from private persons, local archives or PR material for movies or products.

 

Formal and informal indexing practise: The librarians then assign subject terms, descriptive data and catalogue data. Terms are taken from a "thesaurus", which is not a thesaurus in the technical sense but a modification of DK5 which is reminiscent of a subject index. It is often inadequate: terms are not controlled regarding word forms and several terms appear in a variety of forms. The fields being indexed include caption text (already filled), description (the photgraphers own description of the image), subject(s), persons (specific names are applied) and place (likewise, specific names). An important aspect with regards to catalogue data concerns height and width of the picture, because both journalists and graphical artists need these criteria when setting up a newspaper article and/or page.

 

Because of the state of the "thesaurus", uncontrolled terms are heavily used when applying subject terms. The employees have found that subtle differences between the eastern and western parts of Denmark affect term use. One example: terms like "marked" (the occasional open market) and "byfest" (provincial town festival) do not occur in the thesaurus, but are terms well-known in the Jutlandic area. Likewise, the list of terms does not allow the possibility of indexing people as having a certain expression such as "happy" or "angry", for example. Specificity is lacking, since terms like "børnehave" (kindergarten) and "vuggestue" (day nursery) would be preferable in place of the overall term "daginstitutioner" (day-care centres). Indexing is also hampered by the fact that the four image librarians think differently when they index and this, combined with the use of many uncontrolled subject index terms, results in inconsistent indexing. However, considerable time is spent on every photograph, and the librarians are very keen on maintaining a good indexing level.

 

Categorizing photographs in the image archive: Informally, images are split up into specific photographs and genre photographs. "Genre" has been used as a subject term in a few instances comprising only 724 of the total number of images in the database, but as a rule, it remains only as a manner of talking about images in the archive. "Specific" photographs make up the large majority of all images, and they are characterized by being depictions of specific persons, places or events. This type of photograph is generally simple to search in the database. Many journalists still request these images through the librarians and make a relatively small number of requests for genre photographs. Specific photographs can usually not be used for genre-type requests because of the possible recognisability of the depicted persons (or places). Often, the person would become associated with the new context, which can have undesirable results. In one example a picture was used as genre photograph, but the depicted person was deceased and was recognized by family. 

 

 

Ill. 2 and 3: The images here are (Henrik Bo (NS). They are examples of what the archive names "genre" or "model" photographs. Note the absence of identity through lighting and cropping techniques.

 

Genre photographs can be recognised by markers like blurry or non-existent background, and especially by the fact that the identity of depicted persons (or places) is not known (neither locally nor nationally) (see Ill. 2 and 3 above). Typically, we would also see model photographs of compromising events or actions such as violence blurred by using special effects so that the entire image including the depicted persons is distorted perhaps to protect the person(s) posing. This also happens in specific photographs in the cases where individuals' reputations could be compromised as in, for example, a mention of trouble in the nightclubs and bars of Jomfru Ane Gade or the like. Other criteria for genre photographs include the fact that images do not show unique events, for example, the Aalborghallen[2] with the square empty versus the Aalborghallen during a demonstration against a sex fair being held there. Genre photographs are known to be very difficult to work with, and there seems to be no way of indexing them consistently. One of the problems is that the same facial expression can equally well be interpreted as meaning anger or depression. As another example, anger or loneliness can be expressed via many visually different images. However, when asked how loneliness could be described visually, the librarians had an answer ready immediately:

 

Quote 8: "Old man sitting in his dark room, looking out of the window" (Karen Marie Foldager)

 

"Portrait" was also mentioned as an image type. This term is informal, but used consistently.  About 7.3% of the digital images are listed as being of this type. This means that angle and distance to the subject also influence the way photographs are being described.

 

Intermediation: When the material is analogue, journalists typically receive a whole searchable folder of pictures in answer to a library request. If the answer to the request is digital images, the copy is sent directly to the journalist's workstation, where he or she can choose the final photograph. Thus, the image librarians retain the librarian aspect of intermediation and guidance, which is seen as important. Except for the initial selection (see above), photographs are not affected by the image archiving function.

 

The users: the journalists

 

There are two groups of journalists at the NS: common and editing journalists. Editing journalists have the final responsibility for their section, including choice of imagery to fit articles.

 

Journalists search a lot for themselves in the online database, which is adequate for most requests. This leaves the more complex searches to the image librarians, who enter into dialogue with the journalist to clarify the requirement. Often, knowledge of the in-house journalists and the section in which the image is to be used can replace the dialogue.  Evidence of this could be the fact that the newspaper section "Lev Godt" ("Live Well") as well as Saturday and Sunday papers have more genre photographs. During searches for genre photographs, the dialogue with journalists refines the requests further since needs like "unspecific seniors" are very imprecise. Generally, the journalists are seen as very open about their requirements, and do not feel the need to "protect their story".

 

The journalists express themselves in a very generic manner, using phrases like "unspecific seniors" or "teenagers that can be recognized/unknown teenagers". This shows that the journalists understand the differentiation of images between specific/known and unknown/unidentifiable subjects as mentioned above. Whether journalists are, largely, speak in the abstract or down-to-earth in their requests cannot be determined with any degree of certainty. Each journalist is different in the way he expresses himself.

 

The following is an example of an assignment given to a journalist that can be difficult to support with visual imagery:

 

Quote 9: "One gets the task of writing about the first day of spring, and the photograph obviously has to express something similar." (Dissing)

 

Image categorization by journalists: Elsebeth Dissing identified the following as being the present informal categorization of photographs used by journalists, here enriched with my attempts at a definition[3]: 

 

1)     The Press photograph in its pure form is informally known as "the snapshot". These images show reality objectively, like it is. It is seen as extremely unethical to manipulate this type of photograph. The photographers call this type report photographs:

 

Quote 10: "We have the report photo - that is for tomorrow. The feature photo - that can wait." (Michael Koch)

 

2)     The feature photograph is a freer form, in which the photographer is "permitted" to experiment with all aspects of placement of subject, angle etc. Both pre- and post-manipulation of the photograph is acceptable and is often done.

 

3)     The model photograph satisfies a practical need. They are anonymous, both with regards to depicted persons and places, and are often made on request.

 

4)       The expression and manipulation of the photograph: The expressions inherent in images are not touched upon during the handling of requests, but are often discussed during the morning editorial meetings. This is where ethics in photographs are discussed: 

 

Quote 11: "...we had to show the face of a broken man, and discussed whether to present it in colour or greyscale. We decided that colours would render a very "raw" image, while greyscale would depict the face more "clean". Another example could be if you really should show the dead person lying motionless in the middle of the roadway..." (Dissing)

 

It is frowned upon for journalists to crop the photograph, but when the right expression can only be reached by cropping then it is done (according to quote 3 and 4).

 

Photograph usage: When the image is displayed in the newspaper, the source has to be quoted, but this is not always done consistently.  NS photographers are credited correctly, but photographs bought from ScanPix often only display the text "ScanPix" and no photographer. Reused images have the note "archive", while genre photographs created specifically have the note "model photograph" (and these can be created by own or ScanPix' photographers). The journalists are aware of the power that image has over text as well as the meaning of the photograph, but they concentrate more on the text, and are more likely to subconsciously utilize the possibilities of the photograph to create meaning[4]. Anything regarding the visual effect is discussed at editorial meetings. Rules of thumb such as "one good picture on the front page" are not followed anymore. Now, the total look of the newspaper counts more, and front pages are discussed on an individual basis.

 

Quote 12: "It is optimum, if the photo presents its own aspect of the story, not just remaining an illustration of the text." (Dissing)

 

4.3  Discussion and preliminary conclusion

 

The subject index term list with which the archive operates is called a "thesaurus", but does not fulfil the basic requirements for such a tool. It does not operate with relations between terms, for example, and there is no morphological control. The use of uncontrolled terms flourishes. That makes indexing inconsistent, a fact that also has been noted by the four image librarians. There is no doubt that the image archive at the NS would benefit from a properly designed thesaurus.

 

 

Categories used in subject indexing	Share of archivists
Miscellaneous	100%
Specific names	76%
Background information	72%
Atmosphere and feelings	56%
Specific events	44%
Themes	36%
Surroundings	16%
After Ørnager (1995), p. 213

Ørnager (1995) has identified categories or facets the indexing made by image archivists.  At right are listed answers by 25 picture archivists questioned on which categories they use in subject indexing.  The answers are listed in order of most frequent use. It is evident that subject indexing as such remains difficult for most archivists, since the "miscellaneous" category tops the list. Atmosphere and feelings as a category can be associated with facial expressions, and this is also used. If this is correct, it supports the claim that there is a need for indexing facial expressions as a visual element. Not surprisingly, specificity in photographs is highly ranked, and this supports the theory that Press photographs understand the idea of the "historic instantaneous". "Surroundings" as an indexing term type is ranked low. However, "surroundings" could be assumed to provide the image with context that helps place the depicted subjects in time and space. One explanation for this could be that this kind of information is already present in the information provided by the journalists. Why "background information" is important as an index term category must again be due to the theory of the "historic instantaneous". There is a need to gather images pertinent to a specific story.

 

Ørnager also analysed the requests of journalists and found that named people, background information and named events ranked highest. At the same time, 50% of the requests were about named people, 40% were about broad themes such as sports, movies, politics etc. Ten per cent belongs to the category of complex requests in which an interview is required to clarify a request. One specific category of requests concerned only the size of the image (for use when a certain area needs to be filled on the newspaper page), and in these instances it is left to the archive to decide the content. Size data, however, should not be considered subject or content data, but belongs to the category of descriptive data.

 

In order to define a typology for photographs as it is used in journalistic discourse, I will name all types as being "Press photographs", and divide this into the sub-divisions of report, feature and model photographs, as presented in the discussion above.

 

The NS archive does not contain many model photographs in digital form. These exist in greater numbers in the analogue collection because, during the time of the analogue technology, the photographers produced a greater number of "scrap" photographs that they bundled in envelopes marked "for the archive". Today, there is no time to register these, but it was evident from a visit to the work area of the photographers that they are still being produced.  Barthes (1982) claims that Press photographs are never art. However, it is obvious that the Press uses model photographs, which have been both arranged and manipulated. This does not conform with the ideal of objectivity used by the Press. Apparently the Press sometimes needs to step out of the "historic instantaneous" and enter the past, for example when setting up theme pages or making historical summaries when presenting more complex news. It could be assumed that those images which have to illustrate the past benefit from being model photographs, since they have to illustrate a longer time period.

 

Here, we find the justification for the model photograph.  It is void of references to the moment of "actuality time" and thus better fits those article types that are not really "news". It was expressed by the NS archive that it should be possible, hypothetically, to create model photographs out of specific ones by simply removing elements that refer to specific names, persons or places. However, it is not being done at present, since images are not normally manipulated after they have been received from the photographer.

 

I have made a crude attempt at categorizing the digital collection of the image archive according to the sample mentioned above. It has been sorted according to the presence of different elements in the picture, including:

 

• The structures of visual grammar. All images can be assumed to contain conceptual structures, so only the presence of narrative structures has been noted.
• Absence of identity, which could indicate the possibility of using the image as a model photograph. At the same time, this indicates the percentage of report + feature photographs.
• Surroundings, which often are responsible for connecting the photograph to "historic instantaneous".
• Distance to the subject, divided into short, medium, long and extra long distance. These are photo-technical terms, and are defined as the distance to the human subject or, in the NS case, other types of subjects such as animals and buildings. Short distance includes the head and shoulders, medium shows the body from the knees up, long distance includes all the body in the picture (and until the body covers 50% of the height of the image) and extra long distance is everything beyond that.

 

 

Narrative structures	Absence of identity	Humans	Surroundings	Distance to subject
43%   (61/143*100)	13%   (18/143*100)	83%   (118/143*100)	73%   (105/143*100)	Short: 49%  (17/143*100) Medium: 17%  (24/143*100) Long: 25%   (35/143*100) Extra long: 10%  (14/143*100)

 

We see that only 13% of the reused images are potential model photographs. The great majority therefore consists of report and feature photographs and, of these, many feature photographs are being entered as portrait photographs in the current terminology of the archive (this amounts to 7.3% of all photographs).

 

To view journalism as "a study of man" is not far off[5]. Eighty three percent of all photographs show humans in different contexts, 43% of all photographs contain narrative structures, and most depict this with short distance to the subject. At the same time Ørnager has established that unique names of persons rank highest among those index terms used in practice. Therefore, a thesaurus must reflect the fact that:

 

Design principle 3: Humans (unique) and their actions are the most important in a classification of Press photographs.

 

The most important form of Press photograph is the report photograph. This type has "historic instantaneous" as an integrated element, and its objectivity is enforced by both journalists and photographers. Elsebeth Dissing was asked whether it would be possible to crop the report photograph, in effect, those with absence of identity, with the intent of covering a need for a model photograph:

 

Quote 13: "You can do that. However, it doesn't happen often. We do not wish to tamper with "snapshot" photos". (Dissing)

 

As such, one is adjusting the modality of the image, after which it gains practical value as a model photograph. I conclude that there must be a need for this, since it is evident that it is being done (see quotes 3 and 4). The extent of this need is not known and has not been examined.

 

"Historic instantaneous" signifies those pictures that cannot be used as model photographs because of the presence of identifiable elements in the image such as subjects or localities. Likewise, absence of identity increases the possibility of reusing a Press photograph in another context. Report and model photographs appear to be categories that mutually exclude each other. The consequence of this for indexing will be touched upon in the sections "Retrieval of Press photographs" and "Indexing Press photographs" in the next chapter. There exists a need to be able to search for "clean" subjects that do not refer to any "historic instantaneous" - this being the typical feature photograph offering journalists" unspecific" images of known subjects. For thesaurus design this means that

 

Design principle 4: The design should include a tool to indicate and correct the absence of unique names.

 

In connection with subject index terms the archive mentions two interesting problems concerning the subjects of a photograph which might sound obvious, but which are of great importance:

 

1)     The same visual expression can denote several things (one facial expression can express several feelings, for example)

2)     The same concept can be visualized in more than one way (see quote 8).

 

On the basis of this, there is a need for further elaboration of the relationship between the index term and the underlying concept, especially since feelings are concepts that indexers feel the see to index (see also the studies of Ørnager). This will be elaborated upon in the section "The index term and the photograph" in the following chapter.