Shared Professional Values and Ethical Issues in Cinema Direct and New Journalism
Shared Professional Values and Ethical Issues in Cinema Direct and New Journalism
2008.12 for Course Nonfiction Film
Introduction and Clarification
Both documentary and journalism to some extent possess the idea of truth, objectivity and facts in pieces of news or non-fiction films. Different genres in the field of documentary and journalism have different characters and are there any possibilities that a genre of documentaries matches a genre of journalism? Apart from that, some ethical issues can be raised when professional documentarists and journalists aggressively pursue the truth behind facts. Are journalists and documentarists in a similar dilemma when facing some ethical issues? If so, how does this situation happen and what are the similarities of the two kinds of genres that make them in a dilemma?
Before answering the questions I firstly identify the concepts I am going to discuss. The aforementioned genre of documentary in the paper particularly refers to Direct Cinema, and the genre of journalism refers to New Journalism. Only focusing on one genre in one field can avoid some imprecise comparison. Before starting the main body an abstract is given.
By comparing New Journalism with Direct Film some characters are shared in their production, such as no narratives and observational perspectives and etc. The essential values shared in the two professions make them do their works with such characters. Since their goals of consistent pursuit of truth behind facts they often face some ethical dilemmas. An ethical dilemma happens when the professional requirements are in conflict with the basic human morals, which makes them choose in a dilemma. Because they have the right to publicize the so-called truth, they must be sensitive when they treat their victims. Here are three dilemmas: 1. Get all facts in reality or responsibly inform the subjects of consequences. 2. Get truth out or show compassion to juvenile, the dead and etc. 3.Public interests or privacy. To guide the journalists when they are in a dilemma, some news agencies have developed written professional and ethical standards. However, nowadays those ethical issues originally specialized for professional people become more difficult to handle since the technology enables ordinary people to publicize.
Comparison of Direct Film and New Journalism and Their Values
The New Journalism Movements happened in the United States in the 1960s. Tom Wolfe published a book called The New Journalism, but there was no fixed definition of New Journalism. In his book, Wolfe introduced the new reporting tendency, including some of the best work in this genre[1]. In The New Journalism, instead of traditional fact-gathering, it is a practice of art of fact, the literary journalism[2]. “The first rule of New Journalism as laid down by Tom Wolfe was that whenever the style roamed freely, the facts had to be unassailable. Otherwise, the technique collapses, and the legitimacy along with it”[3]. Wolfe insisted New Journalists witness events first hand and use literary techniques to recreate them for audiences. Another requirement of this genre is to fully record dialogue of speakers that contributes to establishing characters. That means readers can understand what the protagonists are thinking in order to return to the original condition. Furthermore, some background information can be given such as the surroundings. Through those techniques the New Journalism genre can give the readers a sense of vividness as well as objectivity.
Direct Cinema or the observational mode culminated around 1960s in the United States. The development of technology made it possible that the camera and tape recorder could move freely about a scene and record what happened as it happened. The fly-on-the-wall mode resulted in the films with no voice-over commentary, no supplementary music or sound effects, no intertitles, no historical reenactments, no behavior repeated for the camera, and not even any interviews. [4]The goal of the filmmakers is to use the scenes, like fiction, to reveal aspects of character and individuality. Thus the views can take an active role in determining the significance of what is said and what is done. [5]
Both the production of Direct Film and New Journalism give us a sense of objectivity partially because of the observational perspective. No interviews in Direct Film in order to create the atmosphere that audience are watching what was happening as it was. Although the New Journalists actually have to do interviews to get the truth out, the form of conversation between journalists and interviewees seldom appears in the piece of news and large amounts of quotations are used. Besides, the aforementioned techniques make the news of New Journalism more readable and readers seem to be at the scene to know what is happening.
Another aspect that links the New Journalism and Direct Cinema together cannot be ignored is that they both happened in 1960s, when liberal values of the Kennedy era are dominating. Direct cinema films are described as the vehicles of a distinctive ideology and the product of institutional pressure and opportunities.[6]
Direct cinema filmmakers (Drew, Leacock, Pennebaker, and the Maysleses) feared that interaction between filmmakers and interviewees would somehow contaminate the “truth” believed to exist independently somewhere out there. For them the truth lies with the subject, not with the filmmaker.[7] However it doesn’t mean these filmmakers cannot manipulate the footage, as Brain Winston wrote, these films were edited, mostly with great skill and care”.[8] In Salesman (1969), the least successful salesman became the surrogate drawing out intimate details of salesman and clients live in the course of their sales pitch. Direct Cinema uses there skills to reach persuasive effect instead of commentary and analysis.[9] The same goes for New Journalism, the first hand evidences are the basis and literary techniques are only used for making readers see what was said and done. They believe truth can be achieved by discovering facts and reporting them objectively, however they also cannot avoid being criticized as manipulating facts when doing literary description. Since films and journalism have the function of publicity and they reveal reality letting the spectators to judge, they should be sensitive that the facts they select to speak out in their production are only the truth in their eyes. Also, the appearance of greater truth in Direct Cinema and New Journalism put documentarists and journalists in a critical position when facing some ethical problems and they also need to take the effect on victims after publicity into consideration.
Why Ethical Issues Appear and What are the Issues?
Ethical issues are about the moral dilemmas documentarists and journalists are in, because their professions requiring them aggressively pursue the truth lying behind the facts are often in conflicts with some basic general human morals. The morality and ethics are not the same, because morality refers to behavior that is socially accepted and ethics deal with the criteria by which decisions about right and wrong are made.[10] In conflicts of professional morality and general morality, also meaning an ethical dilemma, whatever documentarists and journalists choose suits a criterion that is morally right.
“Ethics become a measure of the ways in which negotiations about the nature of relationship between filmmaker and subject have consequences for subjects and viewers alike.”[11] The effects of a documentary film on the subjects are unforeseen to some extent but it is moral to inform the subjects the possible results. In Chen Weijun’s To live Is Better Than To die(2003), portraying the struggle for life of a Chinese AIDS family in rural area, the oldest girl was not infected with AIDS. When the filmmaker made her the subject of his work, the girl was not mature enough to estimate the possible effects. Since the film is influential on the international scale, she possibly would live with the identity publicized by the documentary for the rest of her life. In the interview with Chen Weijun, he said he just brought the viewers to a story in his eyes and that was the story attracted many viewers. Yes, if the girl is missing from the film, it will not be striking as much as she is there. A similar dilemma of reporting the story or responsibly informing the subjects happened when the journalist, Zhang Yanping, literary reported the story of a great postman in mountainous area in south-western part of China.[12] The unsophisticated postman didn’t expect the impacts of his story widely known and all he wanted was to go back to normal life. Should the journalist take the responsibility to let the victim know the entire thing even after publishing the story or give up the professionalism when discovering stories? It is difficult to answer especially on the ethical concern. They are not in equal position with the subjects in the above situations and it is another question to concern whether they can interrupt their original life.
Some reporters believe compassion runs counter to objectivity, and the concern is that compassion will cause reporters to become weak willed and forget their obligations to keep the public informed. Louis Boccardi, the former president of the Associated Press, recalled that he was asked not to put certain things in the paper when he was a young reporter covering court news.[13] Compassion, the moral of humaneness, is sometimes in the way of a good story that will impress the readers. This recalled me a scene from Tammy Cheung’s film Moving(2003)that a old man is crying in his new apartment after moving because he couldn’t pay off the bill for water and power usage. The scene was very touching, but on a second thought I felt if I were the old man I would feel shameful to lose dignity. Even though adopting the observational perspective the filmmaker can humanize the social problems and provoke a sympathetic response from audience, like using a camera angle shooting his back instead of front. In aforementioned Chen Weijun’s film, I was shocked to watch the scene that some flies on a dying woman who was lying in a cart. The scene actually helped to build up the theme about life expressed in the film, however the way conducted by the filmmaker is cruel. He indeed chose to maintain professional criteria to pursue the truth in an ethical dilemma.
The dilemma of whether documentarists and journalists should reveal the intimate details about lives of people is an ethical issue. Decisions should be made between the choice of public interests and the protection of subjects’ privacy. There was the scene in a Chinese documentary Senior Year(2007), directed by Zhou Hao, that a couple, high school students, was talking in the classroom, and later they were called into teacher’s office. The impression left on me is that a common fact in high school is portrayed by intruding their privacy. In the Maysles’ film, Salesman(1968), Paul was the least successful salesman among his companions, and also he was the one thinking negatively. I am wondering whether he was happy to see his failure of career of salesman portrayed in the film. Other scenes in Salesman are also controversial about the problem of privacy, for example, the conversation between salesmen and potential consumers indicates their economic level of household. In the balance of public interests and privacy, Fred Wiseman “took the position that if an institution receives tax support, citizens have a right to know what happens in it, and reportorial access is a constitutional right”.[14]A similar statement was popular in American journalism after World WarⅡ; that was “the public’s right to know”.[15]So, it raised a question to journalists and documentarists who seek truth behind events that what line the invasion of privacy passes from reasonable to unreasonable.
When dealing with ethical issues filmmakers and journalists are stuck into other various dilemmas, such as, whether to maintain fairness in their work or to develop relationship with subjects, and whether to stop working when injury, murder and death happen or to only continue observing or reporting. Just as lawyers and doctors have special responsibilities, documentarists and journalists too need to have obligations that define their profession.
Conclusion and new challenges
Many news agencies and press associations have developed written norms to deal with ethical problems, symbolizing the profession is self regulated and practice of codes. PCC is a press association in Britain, which developed some codes of good practice in the profession, such as “pupils should not be approached or photographed while at school without the permission of the school authorities.”[16] However, some argue that “codes in and of themselves are little more than lists of virtues to be applied and vices to be avoided, of scant use when making demanding decisions in difficult circumstances… Codes can do little to promote ethical thinking.”[17] Norms of practice are only effective when they are conducted by journalists and filmmakers who also need to seek out their practice of a balance between professionalism and humanism.
What’s more, nowadays those ethical issues originally specialized for professional people become more difficult to handle since the technology enables ordinary people to publicize. The popularity of the Internet gives us a sense that anyone can share his own video after shooting with his camera. It is still a question whether ordinary people are sensitive enough when they are already in an ethical dilemma.
Bibliography
Mckeen, William. Tom Wolfe. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1995.
Weingarten, Marc. Who’s Afraid of Tom Wolfe? : How New Journalism Rewrote the World. London: Aurum, 2005.
Nichols, Bill. Introduction to Documentary. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2001.
Izod, John, and Richard Kilborn. “The Documentary.” In World Cinema: Critical Approaches, edited by John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson, 42—49. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Ward, Paul. Documentary: the margins of reality. London: Wallflower, 2005.
Winston, Brian. Claiming the Real: the Griersonian Documentary and its Legitimations. London: British Film Institute, 1995.
Arthur, Paul. “Jargons of Authenticity (Three American Movements),” In Theorizing documentary, edited by Michael Renov, 118—202. New York: Routledge, 1993.
Seib, Philip, and Kathy Fitzpatrick. Journalism Ethics. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1997.
Yanping, Zhang. “Why Soma Flower is so red?” Xinhua News Agency, June 2, 2005.
Smith, Ron F. Groping for Ethics in Journalism. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1999.
Barnouw, Erik. Documentary: a History of the Non-fiction Film. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Sanders, Karen. Ethics and Journalism. London: SAGE, 2003.
[1] William Mckeen, Tom Wolfe (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1995), 35.
[2] Marc Weingarten, Who’s Afraid of Tom Wolfe? : How New Journalism Rewrote the World (London: Aurum, 2005), 7.
[3] Marc Weingarten, Who’s Afraid of Tom Wolfe? : How New Journalism Rewrote the World (London: Aurum, 2005), 258.
[4] Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2001), 110.
[5] Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2001), 111.
[6] John Izod and Richard Kilborn, “The Documentary,” in World Cinema: Critical Approaches, ed. John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 46.
[7] Paul Ward, Documentary: the margins of reality (London: Wallflower, 2005), 15.
[8] Brian Winston, Claiming the Real: the Griersonian Documentary and its Legitimations (London: British Film Institute, 1995), 156.
[9] Paul Arthur, “Jargons of Authenticity (Three American Movements),” in Theorizing documentary, ed. Michael Renov (New York: Routledge, 1993), 123.
[10] Philip Seib and Kathy Fitzpatrick, Journalism Ethics (Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1997), 3.
[11] Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2001), 9.
[12] Zhang Yanping, “Why Soma Flower is so red?” Xinhua News Agency, June 2, 2005.
[13] Ron F. Smith, Groping for Ethics in Journalism (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1999), 233.
[14] Erik Barnouw, Documentary: a History of the Non-fiction Film (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 246.
[15] Ron F. Smith, Groping for Ethics in Journalism (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1999), 9.
[16] Karen Sanders, Ethics and journalism (London: SAGE, 2003), 173.
[17] Karen Sanders, Ethics and journalism (London: SAGE, 2003), 147.