Woodward and Bernstein

Woodward and Bernstein are the two risk taking journalists from the Washington Post who took down President Nixon. In light of these events, the two reporters were groundbreaking in their exposure of the highly ranked president of the United States.

In August 1974, Nixon was the first president to ever resign due to the Watergate scandal. After months of trying to conceal evidence, he made the decision to resign when it was about to be made public.

The Watergate scandal was a form of political sabotage, which was break in at the Democratic National Committee.

On their first report on Watergate, Woodward and Bernstein raised awareness of the link between the burglars and the presidents re-election committee. The journalists discovered that the break in had been orchestrated and it included wiretapping and disruption of Democratic Party activities.By sharing their findings with the public, they spread the rightful word that he President was untrustworthy.

The two journalists had a famous source named “Deep Throat”. His anonymity was protected for over thirty years. The authorities threatened Woodward and Bernstein with imprisonment if they didn’t reveal their sources identity, and they did the right thing by refusing to do so. It wasn’t until 2005 when Mark Felt revealed his own identity. Personally, I think Woodward and Bernstein should have kept their source anonymous. As journalists, I believe it’s important to be loyal to sources and sustain trust. By doing so, it sustains the trust people will have in you and your good reputation as a journalist.

 

Emily Bell

Emily Bell has made a huge impact to journalism and she has pioneered many ways that we digital reach out to audiences. Without her, journalism wouldn’t be the way it has recently changed.

Bell is the director of the Tow Centre for digital journalism at Columbia Journalism School. She started her career working for the Big Farm Weekly, then she went on to work for the Observer and the Guardian. Emily Bell worked for the Guardian for 20 years, she set up mediaguardian.co.uk in 2000, became editor-in-chief of Guardian Unlimited in 2001 and was promoted to the new position of the Guardian online in September 2006.

The most influential thing Emily Bell has done is pioneer open journalism. This involved:

• people becoming more involved in journalism and contributing, making people more than just consumers
• digital engagement i.e different online storytelling techniques such as live blogging and interaction through social media
• creation of a two-way relationship between readers and the media
• the Comment is Free section in the Guardian, which lets people write their own stories for the site

Recently a debate formed around adblocking, when John Whittingdale  announced his views at the Oxford Media Convention. Emily Bell then expressed her views on www.theguardian.com/media/2016/mar/06/adblocking-control-publishers-mobile-web-access. My view on adblocking is that it could damage the news industry. However if consumers want to avoid the news, then publishers should offer alternative sites to pay for which are ad free. Some media organisations are already doing this which is good because by doing so, it ensures you still gain revenue.

Joseph Pulitzer

Joseph Pulitzer was one of the most influential journalists and pioneers of all time.

By the age of 25, Pulitzer was running his own newspaper called the St Louis Post Dispatch. A lot of his work involved investigative articles and editorials that examined government corruption. The content in the newspaper became very popular and it appealed to a lot of people.

After St Louis Post Dispatch, Pulitzer then went on to take over the New York World. In this, he:

• filled the news colums with sensationalized features
• made the first extensive use of illustrations
• staged news stunts
• first introduced sports sections
• came up with the idea of supplements
• made flashy headlines, scandals and started using big photos
• started to sell advertising
• started to cover crime
• introduced games and contests to media
• pioneered ‘yellow journalism’ (type of journalism that presents little or no legitimate well researched news and instead uses eye catching headlines to sell more newspapers)

Joseph Pulitzer also founded Columbia Journalism School, where many influential journalists from around the world have studied. This school has pioneered so many great journalists’ careers, and without the school the journalism industry may not be like it is today.

Pulitzer was ultimatly the creator of tabliod news and he made invesitagtive journalism more popular. Due to this, he is very influential and I think it’s great that he came up with so many different ideas that reach out to people.

What I don’t like about Joseph Pulitzer, however, is that he carried out ‘yellow journalism. I don’t think this is the moral way to tell stories to the public and I believe that people should be given the correct facts and proof or stories. Plus, I don’t agree with the fact that he carried out stunts and scandals to fill the newspaper with.

I also don’t think that the coverage of crime in the news is good for society because it makes people live in fear and it even puts some people off from digesting what’s happening in the world. However, if he didn’t pioneer this type of journalism we wouldn’t have constructive journalism today which addresses the issues in society and then demonstrates the positive outcomes from them.

Martin Bell

Martin Bell is a UNICEF ambassador, former broadcast war reporter and former independent MP who is always seen wearing a distinguishable white blazer.

The journalist joined the BBC as a reporter in Norwich in 1962 and has astonishingly covered 11 conflicts and reported from 80 countries.

In his reports from Bosnia and the village of Ahmici and from Vukovar, Bell showed:

• what was happening to refugees and their stories
• how many people were affected by conflict
• children and women crying, old and vulnerable people and people hiding in their homes
• people firing weapons and guns
• soldiers on battlefields and military forces
• destroyed buildings

Throughout a lot of Martin Bell’s work he gets into the action and really close in all of his reports. He’s able to do this because he is an independent journalist and he’s isn’t restricted by being embedded. To work like this, he only needs a camera man and a translator with him. To me, reporting war independently like Bell is better than being an embedded journalist. By doing so, it ensures that as a journalist you are telling people the truth. Particularly, Bell is inspiring because he expresses how conflicts effect innocent people.

In an interview on his career at The Frontline Club, 2011 it was revealed:

• his first story he ever did as a journalist wasn’t serious at all
• news came from Alexandra Palace at the time he got sent to cover Vietnam
• he used to spend a whole day working on a 60 second script for reporting
• he started to cover nothing but wars
• in his first Vietnam assignment he didn’t show any Vietnamese people, he only showed the American military forces and he was very embedded
• he relates his first report on Vietnam to how Afghanistan is reported
• he decided to stop imitating other people
• started to speak to Vietnamese people and went and did work with other people
• lost his contacts
• he got his translator killed by going to speak to so many people, he feels guilty for getting the young man involved in his work

From looking at Martin Bell’s life, it’s clear that he is very hardworking and it’s important to him to tell people the truth. All of the risks he took to show people what was actually happening at war is really inspiring.

My journalism hero

Personally, I don’t actually have a journalism hero – yet.

The thing that inspired me to do journalism was a book called Cupcakes and Kalashnikov’s: 100 Years of the Best Journalism by Women, by Naomi Wolfe and Eleanor Mills. I discovered this book through studying A Level English Language and Literature.

This book really spoke out to me because it is filled with women who have made a difference in this world through their writing.

One of the journalists who I particularly found interesting was Nellie Bly, who was the first investigative journalist who fought for better healthcare. In the book they included an extract of Ten Days in a Madhouse, which was one of her first pieces of work that made her rise to fame. For this, she posed as a mentally insane person to go into an asylum and expose what it was like in the newspaper she worked for.

John Pilger

Jon Pilger is known for being a war correspondent, film maker and author. He once said “official truths are often powerful illusions”, which really sums up the work he has done as a journalist and how he sees the world.

Pilger worked for the Daily Mirror and became chief foreign correspondent and reported from all over the world. He created the well known documentary Welcome to Australia, in 1999. Plus he did a four year investigation on the drug Thalidomide, which damaged children at birth. Overall, Jon Pilger works hard to give society justice and change the world. To me this type of work is inspiring because it presents the idea that journalists can make a difference to the world.

The film by Jon Pilger, The War You Don’t See, is an investigation into the media in war and trace into the history of embedded journalism. This film shows the military trying to control the media through embedded journalism, which creates propaganda and patriotism. In a way Pilger presents himself as the good, inspirational, honest journalist in his video and he shows that many other journalists who work for large media organisations are the total opposite.

Personally, I hate embedded journalism because it makes the media avoid showing victims of conflict and what’s actually happening in the world. Embedded journalism is basically a form of propaganda.

I think Jon Pilger is a great journalist because all he has ever wanted to do is show the truth to people.

Don Mcullin

Don Mcullin is a British photojournalist who is recognised for his war photography.

A lot of the images he took were disturbing; they demonstrated war, third world countries, starvation and death. His images captured issues and moments that we never usually see.

Mcullin once said: “photography for me is not looking, it’s feeling. If you can’t feel what you’re looking at, then you’re never going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures.” To me, this quote explains why he took did the type of photography he did. Also not only does this apply to photography, I think that the manipulation of feelings through journalism in all aspects is important.

From looking at Don Mcullins photographs, I noticed that a lot of the people are looking towards the camera. By doing so, the people draw emotion because a lot of them look like they are begging for mercy and help from Mcullin. They are also black and white, which is what I like because it makes you focus on all of the detail in the images.

After watching the documentary about Don Mcullin, called The Redundant Warrior, I learnt a lot about what type of mindset he had. Within the film he said he has the “blackest conscious” throughout his photography work. This meant that he was detached from what he was taking photo’s of at the time, as if he was a soldier at war. Mcullin also stated that he feels like a criminal because of the photographs he took.Nowadays, it’s clear that Don Mcullin has absorbed everything he’s seen and it’s messed his head up. The photographer now lives in an unknown and hidden area as if he is running away from his life.

Personally I don’t think I would ever be able to deal what Don Mcullin has seen in his life, which is why he is such an inspiration.

 

Photo journalist – Corey Arnold

One of the photo journalist’s work I really like is Corey Arnold’s. This is because he encapsulates the beauty in life.

Corey Arnold is a still life photographer, and he captures moments that people wouldn’t usually pay attention to. A lot of his work shows the detail in simple creatures and nature, such as the strands of grass and how the sea moves (as seen in the below image).

The picture that stood out to me the most due to the detail was his image of a crab (as seen below). In this image I really like all of the orange tones and all of the bumps on the crab. There’s also a contrast in patterns in the image due to the stripy floor boards and the spotty crab.

One of my most favourite photographs taken by Corey Arnold is the below image. This is due to the connotations attached to the imagery. The white clouds give connotations of dreams and the sun light shining down gives connotations of God. Together, the signs give connotations of heaven.

Photo journalist -Lynsey Addario

One photo journalist who’s work stood out to me was Lynsey Addario. This is because of the stories she covered. As a journalist she captures world issues to show people across the world what is happening. Lynsey Addario’s photographs look like they are suitable to be in the news due to the stories they show, which are mainly of war.

The photographs that stood out to me the most were her photo’s of Syrian refugees. As seen in the images below, she captured images that portrayed the large number of people affected. To do so, she took images of crowds of people getting food and supplies who are all squashed together. In the two photographs, the refugees all look deperate for help when you look at their non-verbal communication. Their body language shows them all reaching out for the supplies as if they’re desperate to grab something for their family. Some of their eyes are also focusing on the food that is over them, as if it’s their saviour. This type of photograph is likely to be used with a news story that supports the refugee crisis.

Another image of the refugees Lynsey Addario took contrasts with the images above. This is because she also demonstrated the isolation people had to face from their families. The below image captures this issue perfectly.

Semiotic Analysis

When I was searching for a journalistic photograph I came across the award-winning photo journalist called Brent Stirton, who is a photographer for Getty Images based in New York. I found a lot of his photographs captivating and they demonstrate issues that the world is facing. This particular image stood out to me because of the depth and the colours.

At first glance, the denotations from this image is that there is a person sat down on a lot of wood and rope, and there are palm trees behind her. From the persons feminine dress and fairly long hair that’s tried back you can tell it’s a woman, due to her conformity to the stereotype created by heterosexual ideologies. All of the wood and ropes that are piled up in a mess, are also shown in the iconic way that represents destruction. This destruction connotes natural disaster and from the sea in the photograph, it give connotations of tsunami’s. You can also tell the person is in a hot country due to the palm trees, the woman’s shiny skin that makes her look like she’s sweating and the sun that’s shining brightly. All of these signs have connotations of beaches and islands in ‘paradise’. In a way, this destruction in the photograph challenges dominant ideologies of hot countries because it juxtaposes with the imagery of a paradise beach.

Although the image is very colourful and bright they actually set a negative mood due to their connotations, when you think about them in depth. This is because there is a lot of blue and yellow in the photograph, which can often make most people think of happiness and relaxation. However blue also has connotations of isolation and sadness, which supports the preferred meaning for the image of the woman. Yellow also has connotations of sickness and hope which hugely sums up the context of the image, because she is a victim of a tsunami. The light from the sun also reflects in the image which causes there to be a red light on the woman’s head, which creates connotations of the women been in danger. This red also makes the audience focus on the woman, because naturally we are drawn to red colours in imagery which could mean that she is the clearly most important sign in the photograph.

There is also a contrast in the photograph because on the left side there is bright light and on the right side it’s quite dark. To me this connotes good and bad, through the idea that everything was fine at the start and now the woman is going through a dark time in her life. The positioning of the sun shining down on the woman may also suggest that there is hope and there are people out there who will look after her and help. The sun also has religious connotations of heaven, and the fact that the sun is shining on her it may suggest that God is looking after her.

You can also tell that the woman in the image isn’t very happy due to her facial expression (non verbal communication code), which is a signifier. The signified concept that is referred to this facial expression is misery and despair. The portrayal of how the woman is feeling is likely to be the dominant reading from the image, as it makes people sympathise for the victim. However, it’s also likely people will have negotiated and oppositional readings of the photograph.

Overall, I believe this photograph reinforces the dominant ideology of other countries needing our (first world countries) help due to the disasters they have to frequently face. This photograph could typically be used not only for a news story but also for an advertisement to raise money for a charity helping victims of the tsunami.

This photograph by Brent Stirton is actually of a victim of a tsunami. The information given about the photograph on his website says: