Why Inclusion of Photographs to News Stories Is Considered Essential
| IEM1201L Kodak to Instagram: | Do news photographs support the ideas presented in the newspaper article? | |
Olivia Tang| 4/3/2013 |
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The dramatic deaths of Nicolae Ceausesu, a former Romania dictator and his wife Lena Ceausesu were televised on Christmas Day in 1989. Pictures of their bloodied bodies provided direct visual evidence to the masses. Even with the photographs, many of the older Romanians firmly believed in conspiracy theories that the dictator cheated death by escaping at the very last minute. In 2010, their bodies were exhumed and were tested for DNA testing. The results quashed remaining conspiracy theories. Imagine if news of their deaths were only announced to the public without photographs, would anyone have believed it?
The inclusion of photographs to accompany news stories is almost considered to be essential in this era. It serves to be a form of visual confirmation to the news story. Considering ethical issues, photographs that are too graphic in portraying violence or disrespectful to the subject of the picture are not published in newspapers. Instead, new agencies publish related photographs that do not provide direct visual evidence to the story. Hence, news agencies tend to employ visual symbolism in order to create the illusion that these published photographs are direct visual evidences to the news story (Huxford, 2001). However, even if photographs may not provide direct visual evidences, they are still crucial in supporting the news story. Photographs are able to evoke strong emotions of its viewers which reinforce the news story in a way that even visual writing cannot. (Zillmann, Gibson, & Sargent, 2009). The resolution which reconciles these two opposing arguments will be discussed in the essay.
The key concept, visual symbolism, is created using 3 main conventions which are temporal, metaphorical and synthetic. This essay will focus primarily on the temporal
Olivia Tang| 4/3/2013 |
|
The dramatic deaths of Nicolae Ceausesu, a former Romania dictator and his wife Lena Ceausesu were televised on Christmas Day in 1989. Pictures of their bloodied bodies provided direct visual evidence to the masses. Even with the photographs, many of the older Romanians firmly believed in conspiracy theories that the dictator cheated death by escaping at the very last minute. In 2010, their bodies were exhumed and were tested for DNA testing. The results quashed remaining conspiracy theories. Imagine if news of their deaths were only announced to the public without photographs, would anyone have believed it?
The inclusion of photographs to accompany news stories is almost considered to be essential in this era. It serves to be a form of visual confirmation to the news story. Considering ethical issues, photographs that are too graphic in portraying violence or disrespectful to the subject of the picture are not published in newspapers. Instead, new agencies publish related photographs that do not provide direct visual evidence to the story. Hence, news agencies tend to employ visual symbolism in order to create the illusion that these published photographs are direct visual evidences to the news story (Huxford, 2001). However, even if photographs may not provide direct visual evidences, they are still crucial in supporting the news story. Photographs are able to evoke strong emotions of its viewers which reinforce the news story in a way that even visual writing cannot. (Zillmann, Gibson, & Sargent, 2009). The resolution which reconciles these two opposing arguments will be discussed in the essay.
The key concept, visual symbolism, is created using 3 main conventions which are temporal, metaphorical and synthetic. This essay will focus primarily on the temporal
Bibliography: Huxford, J. (2001). Beyond the referential : Uses of visual symbolism in the press. Sage Publications. Zillmann, D., Gibson, R., & Sargent, S. L. (2009). Effects of Photographs in News Magazine Reports on issue perception. Routledge.