As a film maker, when you make a film documentary, you have to incorporate lots of rules in order to make sure the target audience doesn’t get offended and that the documentary is not biased in any way. It is difficult to be totally unbiased when making a documentary, because there will always be risk that you will be influenced by your own views on the subject and you will never be completely sure whether you are being too one sided. Usually a media company has guidelines to help the media staff make sure their programs are fair and not biased. For example, BBC has guidelines for factual programmes.
Here are the first three guideline rules;
- The BBC must serve the nation as a whole. This means recognising the differing tastes, views and perspectives in millions of house holds.
- They have to be served through a very diverse range of programme
- The makers of objective factual programmes need to be most scrupulous
Being biased, particularly when dealing with a sensitive subject, can earn you a bad reputation and can result in legal action by those parties that feel that they, or their subject areas, have been either misrepresented, or treated unfairly. It can also weaken your original argument, because people will assume that you are being biased.
When gathering information as a film maker, you have to be really careful about how you go about this and which sources you use. This relates to the privacy laws that protect people in and outside the United Kingdom. For example, to use information about another person, you usually have to ask their permission.
The accuracy of information that you provide as a film maker is vital because it is the foundation on which your argument is based. Quite rightly, inaccuracy in film making is heavily criticised and can, again, end up with legal proceedings if people feel that they have been misrepresented, or that you have harmed them, or their reputations, by providing false information.
I’ll be looking at three words which cause many issues in the media industry. These words are bias, accuracy and privacy. There are many factors that could prevent these words from becoming issues in the media but, film makers choose not to take note of them. Some of the ways that Media companies have tried to stop staff from causing harm and breaking the law are by having lots of rules and policies, but they always seem to be broken for one reason or another.
One of these words which are often used against the media is that they are biased. In the oxford dictionary, the definition of bias means ‘’inclination, or prejudice for, or against one person or group, especially in a way considered to be unfair’’. This means that basically one person, or group, is intending to be unfair against another person, or group. An example of where I have seen this in the media is a programme on BBC 4 radio. This programme was called ‘The Cannabis Trade’. Below is a snippet of why I believe it was biased;
“Now, this is important: The complaint was not that the programme should have presented the case for legalisation, that was made utterly clear, simply that the reason for the growth in organised crime is well understood as being a result of the prohibition regime and that by not drawing attention to this essential fact the programme presented a distorted view of the true situation.”
This shows that the programme failed to include all the relevant information when presenting their argument, or case against the legalisation of cannabis. This shows that the programme is biased because it is leaning heavily to one side of the argument. To pick this up from a documentary is quite unusual, compared to other biased stories, because the structure behind documentaries normally helps them to present opposing arguments and this helps them to at least appear to be unbiased.
Another example of bias in the media is propaganda. Propaganda is a rather extreme demonstration of bias. An example of how effective propaganda could be was during World War 2, where it was used a lot by both sides. The Americans used propaganda to persuade the American civilians that they should to go to war against Japan. Evidence to support this is from the Journal of Advertising where, regarding the number of recruiting posters used during the war, they said that ‘’Almost 200,000 different designs were printed during the war.’’ This shows that the US government recognised that the use of visual and creative mediums (in this case posters) was a way of helping US citizens towards a certain political goal, in this case going to war.
The next term which causes many issues in the media industry is ‘Privacy’. There is a limit how far media companies can go to obtain information. Many media companies do anything just to get a valid source of information, standing outside buildings for hours, or using various computer techniques to gain information. One common method which is used today and is illegal is Phone Hacking. Phone hacking is a way of gaining information from a conversation, without those involved in the conversation being aware that they are being listened to. This is an extreme method of obtaining information because you’re invading someone’s privacy unnecessarily. You can only use someone else’s information if they give you permission to do so. The media can usually get away with this because they are protected by the liberal law which says’’ Issue #1 – Truth: The law says they can defame you and get away with it if the story is true. Truth is an almost perfect defence in a libel suit. How do you prove something is true? How many witnesses does it take what kind of evidence? There are no rigid rules. Truth is what a jury will believe.’’ This shows that because of the liberal law, it’s hard to sue media newspaper companies. However, if you have a good lawyer and strong evidence you can win. One case recently in the news was about phone hacking by the ‘News of the World.’ Here is an extract;
“Rupert Murdoch's News International has issued a public apology to eight victims of phone hacking, including the actor Sienna Miller and former culture secretary Tessa Jowell and admitted for the first time that the practice was rife at the News of the World.” This case is very much in the favour of the ‘victims’ and against the ‘News of the World’ because of the strong evidence presented by a number of witnesses.
This evidence shows that the illegal behaviour, in this case phone hacking, of some newspaper companies does not go unnoticed. It’s hard to get evidence of phone hacking because there isn’t any device which can record a hacking device. Comparing these methods to the American methods around the invasion of privacy, they are a lot worse in the USA as they do it right in front of the camera. For example, Billy O’Reilly, from Fox News, doesn’t care about the emotions of people on his show. He is disrespectful in so far as he doesn’t show any respect to anyone he interviews on the show and therefore he doesn’t care about their privacy. Below is an example of how biased a news article can be:
“O’Reilly says: "the right to privacy is a basic constitutional tenet, and that is not ridiculous at all." Apparently this applies to celebrities, not people O'Reilly doesn't like.
“Jon Stewart's take this week on "The Daily Show" (see above) was a culmination of a long-standing quest on O'Reilly's part to invade the privacy of people with whom he disagrees. In typical O'Reilly cowardice, he does not do this work himself, but leaves the tacky, invasive behaviour to lesser-paid producers.
O'Reilly sent his producer to chase down and invade the privacy of Columbia Journalism Review Editor Michael Hoyt. Why? Because Hoyt wouldn't appear on O'Reilly's show.”
“Jon Stewart's take this week on "The Daily Show" (see above) was a culmination of a long-standing quest on O'Reilly's part to invade the privacy of people with whom he disagrees. In typical O'Reilly cowardice, he does not do this work himself, but leaves the tacky, invasive behaviour to lesser-paid producers.
O'Reilly sent his producer to chase down and invade the privacy of Columbia Journalism Review Editor Michael Hoyt. Why? Because Hoyt wouldn't appear on O'Reilly's show.”
This shows that there are more extreme cases of invading privacy in North America, when you are comparing this with the English Media. The next term which also, relates to the O’Reilly issues, is accuracy. Inaccuracy is a really bad habit, because if you don’t tell the truth, you’ll become a laughing stock of the media. Americans see O’Reilly’s interpretation of people’s words every day but, he always gets away with it because he expresses it as his own opinion in the media. Comparing the inaccuracy of the O’Reilly coverage stories during his daily show to the ‘UK the Guardian Newspaper’ stories it’s just as bad. Here is an example where ‘The Guardian’ publishes an inaccurate story and is untruthful. This article was about a pre-Christmas live, episode of Coronation Street being targeted by al-Qaeda which was false.
“It had that familiar Daily Star-ish ring of complete nonsense, and so it turns out, as yesterday's page 2 "correction" admits: "Further to our article about increased security at Coronation Street's studios for their live 50th anniversary episode... we would like to make clear that while cast and crew were subject to full body searches, there was no specific threat from Al-Qaeda as we reported. We apologise for the misunderstanding and are happy to set the record straight."
This shows that the media companies are just as bad as each other. A question comes that to mind is why is the media so inaccurate? It comes to my attention that they do this because they try and get as much content out of the story as possible to make bigger profits and have a higher price for their stocks. Looking into social media, here is an interpretation of James Seddon who is an online writer and editor; ‘Pragmatism and empiricism are tools of the crusty old world order. The social media expert is a master of narrativisation and the extrapolation of the anecdotal or rare event into a universal law.’ This explains that the media can take an unreliable source and information and turn it into something which is inaccurate and untruthful.
expository,
observational, interactive,
reflexive,
performative);
realism;
dramatisation;
narrativisation
Bibliography
“Almost 200,000 different designs were printed during the war”
Terrence H. Witkowski "World War II Poster Campaigns: Preaching Frugality to American Consumers." Journal of Advertising, Vol 32 No 1 Page 72
Also, in this unit, I have learnt the history about documentaries and different types editing which occurred during the 20th century. Watching some old documentaries off Harry you-tube channel, gave me a lot of inspiration on how to create a realistic documentary.
The next unit which I've also been completing was 'understanding the media industry'. In the first task I have completed, I have to research about two of the big media giants. I choose Walt Disney and BBC. I found this really interesting to do because it showed me how a company can expand quickly in a century.
The next task which I have been set to do is to reach some of the laws and the regulators which stop sectors from the media from breaking the law.
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