Tag: Viewpoint

Exercise—Elliott Erwitt

Erwitt’s dog picture has been cropped in such a way that the viewer is placed at eye-level with a chihuahua. If this image is not a crop, then the photographer must have placed his camera on or near the ground. The startling thing about the photograph is the gradual realisation that the leftmost pair of legs belong not to a human, but to another dog. This now means that the head of the larger dog is actually above the photographer’s line of sight, not at all the regular point of view.

I don’t know that the image is necessarily ‘saying’ anything, beyond being a visual joke, but it might suggest something important about relative position or status: you may be bigger than some, but you might still be someone else’s ‘small dog’ in life.

Viewpoint is everything.

Eyewitnesses?

Although a few years old now, one of the best examples of citizen journalism exposing abuse of power in Canada was during the 2010 G-20 Summit in Toronto. During the Summit, the Toronto Police Services corralled more than 1,000 demonstrators, journalists, spectators and passers-by and detained them in Canada’s largest-ever mass arrest. The Police were widely criticized for the action and the subsequent treatment of detainees, with some labelling the holding centre “Torontonamo Bay” (Kassam, 2016).

Although professional journalists were among those detained, many others claimed amateur journalist status and were responsible for some of the most immediate pictures of what was happening from inside the cordon. The distinction between professional and amateur journalists is an important one:

  • professionals generally have some kind of training, a professional code and file stories via an accredited media outlet;
  • amateur / citizen journalists may or may not have had training, have no code and may “publish” their reports via unaccredited media.

In short, whether we agree with them or not, professional journalists generally aspire to some sort of objectivity in reporting and work for a media outlet whose views are known (Basen, 2010). Amateur / citizen journalists, on the other hand, may have no such standards and may be acting on behalf of a known organization, an unknown actor or simply for themselves.

Now that everyone is equipped with a portable recording and transmitting device, the promise of citizen journalism is that it offers an immediate and unvarnished reflection of the reality of what is taking place around them—the lack of professionalism of the citizen journalist becomes a virtue and viewers gain access to unmediated truth.

With the current 24-hour news cycle, it is impossible for professionals to be on the scene of every happening and amateurs are often there first to provide a window on immediate experience. This sounds tempting, but it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Everyone, even a citizen journalist, has a viewpoint—these viewpoints are limited at best, and skewed at worst. A prime example is Nuseir Yassin’s daily blog on Palestine (Rezk, s.d.). Yassin offers brief news and views in English on a situation that many Westerners find puzzling and does so in a way that is irenic and appealing. His ‘moderate’ views on the Israeli-Palestinian situation (both sides are at fault and their problems could be solved by greater understanding) are comforting and appealing to many, but may arise from a position of privilege that chooses to establish a moral equivalence that does not do justice to the history of the conflict. This view of the world is easily grasped, but it glosses over a lot of inconvenient details.

The fact that everyone has a viewpoint should not be a reason to ignore citizen journalism, however, for there are places where state or corporate control of the media means that the only alternative to the approved narrative will have to come from citizens (see Zhang, 2018). Perhaps the better way is to acknowledge the existence of viewpoints, including our own, and to subject all of them to scrutiny.

References

Basen, I. (2010) The new journalism and the G20 | CBC News. At: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/the-new-journalism-and-the-g20-1.938517 (Accessed on 2 June 2019)

Zhang, P. (2018) Can citizen journalism work in China? Villagers give their verdict At: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2170419/can-citizen-journalism-work-china-villagers-give-their-verdict (Accessed on 2 June 2019)

Kassam, A. (2016) ‘More than 1,000 people detained during G20 summit in Toronto can sue police’ In: The Guardian 7 April 2016 [online] At: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/06/toronto-g20-summit-police-lawsuit-civil-rights-abuses (Accessed on 2 June 2019)

Rezk, D. (s.d.) Nas Daily: Palestinian blogger delivers upbeat message to millions – but he can afford to. At: http://theconversation.com/nas-daily-palestinian-blogger-delivers-upbeat-message-to-millions-but-he-can-afford-to-106828 (Accessed on 2 June 2019)

Toronto’s tarnished image – G20: Street Level (s.d.) At: https://www.cbc.ca/canada/g20streetlevel/2010/06/torontos-tarnished-image.html (Accessed on 2 June 2019)