by Donna Marie McCabe
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Troy, New York usa

In this paper I will analyze television news reporting, contrasting an openly subjective historical broadcast of Edward R. Murrow during the McCarthyism era and a current media spectacle claiming objectivity, the Oklahoma City bombing of April 1995. By analyzing two newscasts from the dualism of objectivity and subjectivity, I will then attempt to compare and contrast the subjectivity of Murrow's broadcast with clearly subjective interpretations of historically and politically charged events by several video artists and video activists. I intend that by displaying these specific dualities that I can further show the possibility of the dichotomy of public and private, technology and nature, and ultimately that all such apparent opposites are social constructions, defined through language.

The presentation of information to an audience has been in a continual state of experimentation. Technology, in it's early days, was considered to distract from the quality of information presented. In Edward R. Murrow, an American Original, Joseph E. Persico shows with great clarity the transition that America has gone through regarding mainstream media representation.

In the days of newspaper reporting, the printed word was trusted by millions of American's as the only way to gain information about the events occurring in their world. At that time, journalists knew their responsibility in presenting the stories they chose as representative of the actual events. The newspaper was the law; it was as close to being in the action as was possible. Photographic images were chosen carefully; when a single frame was all that was allowed to be shown.

Then came the influx of a new technology, something whose power of immediacy and personality would far outreach the trusted newsprint - radio. But radio was not so easily believed, not so trusted by the American people, for they heard the subjectivity, questioned the authenticity of reports from the front. Reports which they received in almost real-time. Then entered Edward Murrow who was able to win the hearts and minds of a new, technologically advanced American people. Murrow's broadcast won the imaginations of his listeners through an intellectual and compassionate view our world's complex events, and intimate struggles. Murrow's voice became the voice of authority, the voice of authenticity for this new medium of radio. The radio news could offer a new type of reporting that could not be challenged by the press. Journalists were now not only newspaper reporters, journalism had found a niche on the radio. "Nothing before had knit America together as closely as network radio. The railroads, the automobile, and aircraft all shrank distance and time, and thus gave the country a physical unity. But radio gave America unprecedented cultural unity. Radio was the great unifier. With network radio, the era of mass culture, of universal if passive experience, for good or ill, or rather for good and ill, had arrived" (Persico, p. 90). For Murrow, radio had the potential to make life better by making the people better informed. Murrow's were the eyes of the nation.

The respect that Murrow gave radio reporting was called on again as technology increased. Murrow had reported some extremely dramatic events as foreign corespondent during World War II. American's heard the sounds of bombings and witnessed, through Murrow's representation, a compassion that was never before heard. Now CBS wanted Murrow in the emerging television news arena. Murrow was to bring authenticity to television. CBS wanted to be the first to show almost real-time images and sound, with the Murrow voice-over intact from his radio days. And the Murrow voice-over could always be counted on to be passionate, honest, thorough, and subjective. He knew how to be the conscience of the people, a moral authority, and be respected for it. America trusted their Murrow. People began to feel that they knew him.

Murrow himself, though, was never comfortable with television. He spent the entire day preparing his words for broadcast over the radio, and now television was demanding more reports in a shorter time. Murrow would not compromise, and CBS allowed his See It Now to be aired two nights a week, rather than five. When Murrow took on the junior senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, CBS was morally and intellectually challenged like never before. This broadcast perhaps changed the course of broadcasting forever. "Television had crossed a line. Its untested power for moral suasion had been used on an issue in which virtually the entire country had been cowed into submission. Television journalism had achieved influence, like a great newspaper, like The New York Times. We (CBS) found that night that we could make a difference" (Persico, p. 373). Murrow closed perhaps his greatest moral victory broadcast, the one exposing Senator McCarthy's principles, with the following:

No one familiar with the history of this country can deny that Congressional committees are useful...but the line between investigation and persecuting is a very fine one and the junior senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly. His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind as between the internal and the external threat of Communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.... We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were for the moment unpopular...We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. Good night, and good luck. See It Now, March 9, 1954.

With technology today increasing exponentially, no longer are we blessed with the luxury of preparing for newscasts. In this information savvy age, the role of technology has reversed from those 1954 days of Edward R. Murrow. Technology has been blessed with an air of authority never before seen. Gone are the days with severe technical limitations. And with these new powers, the news has become more expensive to broadcast. Sound bites have replaced in-depth analysis, and commercialism has taken over what was corporately sponsored programs. Rather than opening and closing remarks from our sponsor, we are barraged with continual interruption from various corporate sponsors, all vying for time during the news. The news spectacles of 1995 are equally as powerful as the McCarthyism era. Today we are faced with one media event after another, this month's the Oklahoma City bombing of a federal building. Unlike the 1950's when CBS pretty much ruled the information purveying industry, competition today among the top broadcasting agencies demands fast acquisition, quick summaries, and "law and order " reporting. Robin Andersen, in "Visions of Instability" in The Media Reader, discusses crisis coverage and "entertainment violence" and the media's concentration on such images. The images we have recently seen of the Oklahoma City bombing are stereotypical of this "law and order" frame.

The guiding focus of the frame is to represent civil actions and demonstrations as "pure evil," social chaos which pose problems for the continuation of law and social order. Only does the media represent civil actions in such a way. Governmental political actions are never criticized in such a fashion. The media shows a problem whose solution necessitates the strengthening of the agents of law and order to overcome those agencies who come into conflict with it. "The strengthening of the agents of 'law and order' is always presented as defensive, reactive, and necessary" (Andersen, p. 233).

The media strengthens the status quo by their choice of words. In the Oklahoma City bombings, rather than discuss the political actions that were taken when the federal building was bombed, the media immediately focused on finding and punishing the "terrorists;" terrorists who, coincidentally, were immediately considered to be Arab, futher distorting a stereotype. Explanations and motivations for this social action were lost by this form of reporting. Under the guise of authenticity and neutrality, the media created a greater fear of random violence in millions of Americans. Any action the government now takes is justified by their "defensive reaction" to a heinous situation. They "had" to be called in, and they had to "get tough."

The consequence of this type of reporting is to make the killing of criminals, the censoring of right-wing radio shows, even the invasion of innocent people's privacy a palatable event; "a necessary, if lamentable, outcome of maintaining order" (Andersen, p. 234). To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin; those who are willing to give up their rights for a little safety deserve neither rights nor safety. All this purveyed by broadcast journalism placing an emphasis on stability and social order by militantly maintaining the status quo.

Another agency now seriously under attack because of the reporting of this bombing is the Internet. Just as Marshall McLullan's 1960 vision for television was that of a "global village," the Internet has been, until now, non-commercial and has been far more successful at creating a world knit together and informed through the use of this media than television has ever become. Under the global guise of subjectivity for the most part, individual Internet users freely exchange information and opinion from all over the world. The media, and especially Time Warner, wants a piece of the economic pie that the Internet would promise to bring, if only they allowed commerce on its wires. The Oklahoma City bombing media blamed, among other forms of communication, the Internet as a purveyor of harmful information that would be quashed if only it were not run like an anarchy. It was argued that people can learn to build bombs by reading certain newsgroups on the Net. Surely, they believe, making the Internet littered with commercials, making access to the Net expensive, is the way to censor and ultimately purge our "evil" thoughts. Once again the lords of this new global village have their own political agenda Ü hegemony. One other powerful target of mainstream media during the bombing coverage was right-wing talk shows. This was President Clinton's, as well as the Democratic parties, attempt to silence and censor the opposition. Of course the media went right along with this politically charged move, for right-wing talk shows, such as Rush Limbaugh and the G. Gordon Liddy show are mainstream media as subjective and opinionated. Broadcast news can not afford to be exposed as right-wing talk shows big brother.

The Oklahoma City bombing appeared as if from nowhere, a random act of violence by "evil" individuals. We make society as society is made by us. These events clearly stemmed from somewhere. Unlike the days of Murrow, no longer are broadcasts within an historical context. "Television increasingly seeks the most dramatic, the most dynamic stories, as it is felt that analysis, history and context will not hold the audience through to the next commercial break" (Andersen, p. 239). The result is an uninformed audience, and reporters who see their role as entertainers rather than the educator Murrow tried to be. Currently, an uninformed America is desirable, networks believing that history would simply confuse the issues. Or worse yet, give voice to people holding the unpopular opinion of the time. Are we back to McCarthyism, when we walk in fear of holding dissenting opinion?

The feelings aroused by television images have an effect on our world. Under the guise of "real," "truthful," and "unbiased" reporting, the media simply omits facts and interpretations which seriously question the legitimacy of the status quo from their discourse. "The framing of news under the constraints of hegemonic ideology is a much neater way of constructing the preferred interpretations of events than censorship" (Andersen, p. 241). After they begin omitting certain information, media must continually uphold their censorship by creating further lies, which increase dramatically over time. If they don't talk about a certain thing today, then they certainly can't use it as evidence tomorrow when the story unfolds further. The public has no idea the extent that this snow-ball effect has. We only know what we know, and we know what we know mostly because of the media. Even in light of the Oklahoma City events, America is still our land of the free, home of the brave.

Some experimental video artists have attempted to use video in a socially transformative manner, acting as moral agents and intellengicia as Edward Murrow had done in the Fifties. When artists' subjectivity is clearly present, their cameras become more than the neutral observers that current mass media attempts to portray. It is this honesty in allowing the truth of constructed images that I would like to discuss by several examples in the field of video art.

My examples will be from Mona Hatoum, Adrian Piper, Diamanda Galas, Martha Rosler, Annette Barbier, Linda Montano, and Marlon Riggs. After a brief discussion of some of these works, I would like to use the Lyn Blumenthal series What Does She Want? episode Women With a Past to lead me into the critical writings of several artists and thinkers ideas about personal responsibility and the moral obligations of artists.

Hatoum's Measures of Distance is a public display of her and her mother's personal stories about war. Hatoum takes the private and public dualism and breaks through the boundary. Hatoum speaks the private voice of her mother's letters to her in a public voice-over. She exposes the personal, subjectifying her camera lens in support of her development of identity. Measures of Distance is a layering of language; we hear personal words spoken in two languages simultaneously, as well as viewing the written words on the screen. The superimposition of language formally establishes the inadequacies of language; subject itself to translation and an additional layer of interpretation. Hatoum makes the subjectivity of language as clear as she does with her subjectively constructed images of her naked mother. Hatoum recognizes language as the only communication we have. For Hatoum, language is a means of interaction, a means of making connections between our fragmented selves. Hatoum's personal narration clearly shows individual's impact on a collective society.

Adrian Piper's work is also concerned with raising personal consciousness through her own identity in her art works. Piper is engaged with the formal process of her work at the meta level; the level of philosophy. She chooses to show her bias clearly, where the subject is object. She attempts to subvert the objective authoritative voice and to challenge the construction of truths proposed by mass media and some video art pieces. Piper's content is concrete and confrontational; concerned with immediacy of issues by expressing current politically charged concerns. Piper attempts to reach that which fuels stereotypes and challenges her viewers into altered conscience. Since the issues Piper deals with are so confrontational, she must carefully decide her role as moral agent. Often this choice is one between either that of being polite, or being an instigator. (Incidentally, this is the same quagmire that I often face in my own work.) Piper chooses the former, believing it is self-defeating to scream in people's faces simply to make the subject seem more upsetting. She is not out to convince people that they are wrong, but rather to lead her audience to the meta level, that level that requires abstract thinking.

Diamanda Galas takes the opposite approach. In my 1994 review in The Computer Music Journal I discuss Galas' passionate screams, invoking action into the AIDS crisis. In 1984 Galas began work on Masque of the Red Death, a work she has committed herself to write for the rest of her life, or until there is a cure for AIDS. Galas has been internationally known for her provocative works and her less than polite musical performances. In a RESearch Publication, Angry Women, Galas talks frankly about her beliefs and artistic strategies. "If you want to hear polite music by a women, go see Madonna." Through her coloratura, Galas reeks her commitment to actions rather than words. Her subjectivity is clear in her humanizing of the political. Without attempting to quest for the truth, we are able to share and experience her voice on the AIDS issue powerfully and compassionately. Galas continues in the madwoman tradition, using her persuasive powers to alter our collective conscience. "If silence equals death, Galas is very much alive. Her passionate screams should be heard long and far" (McCabe, p. 68).

Very much in the tradition of Galas is Linda Montano's Mitchell's Death. Here we again witness one woman's extreme pain about a personal situation, publicly displayed in performance and video. Subjectivity and passion are expressed in its rawest form, the excess of human emotion. In this single shot video we are presented a woman in mourning. In the tradition of storytelling, which most of my exemplary choices of video art works rely on, Montano effectively communicates Mitchell's death, and its impact upon her. In a larger sense, we see how as individuals we are all part of each other, our lives interconnecting in multiple and complex ways. The vocal processing demands constant attention to the words Montano is saying. Her voice is beautifully rhythmic, her tone compassionate, and the camera truly acts as an observer, documenting her performance. But is the frame neutral or objective? How is the image constructed, even in this single shot work? The framing of Montano's face, the use of high contrast black and white, the slow zoom that occurs over the course of the work, all these lead us towards empathy. All work in ways to further construct the story.

Mitchell's Death uses basic video editing, with technology, at least in the visual domain, far in the background. Her highly processed voice perhaps distracts from her words. It should not be taken, though, from these previous examples, that women in the video arts are not technologically savvy. Annette Barbier's 1992 The Kitchen Goddess is both experimental narrative and image processing. Barbier creates a wonderful essay on women's experience, on growing up as a girl, on working and on motherhood. She does it all with a keen attention to sonic details. Barbier's choice to leave the kitchen sounds in the background of the child's piano playing further creates her magically fluid and subjective narrative. When we hear the tea pot whistle our attention is drawn back to the kitchen proper. Her attention to personal narratives creates a sensitive look into a life. The dancer herself creates an interesting narrative, floating in and out of backdrops that are distinctly homey. This breaks away at the duality of technology on one side, nature on the other. Barbier does this both in form and content in this piece. The "collective living room" that Edward R. Murrow spoke about becomes distinctly clear, where the public literally is housed inside the private sphere in the form of a television. As we start crossing the boundaries between these dualities, we can see how their definitions are socially constructed, and then perpetrated by the status quo; the media. It would be interesting to use Donna Harraway, a feminist theorist who breaks down the barriers between technology and nature, to further analyze this piece.

Barbier's kitchen goddess image breaks free of her real being after leaving the kitchen, and becomes a shadow, dancing through space. A cut-out, if you will, from society. Toward the end of the piece the image become more unrealistic, clearly computer generated. We see the dancing shadow figure turn to a mirrored dancer, back again in a kitchen, this time, a digital kitchen. The goddess acts as mirror of the world around her. Time has passed, yet she still remains in her kitchen. At this point the dancer turns to a ball gently pushing on the insides of a box, in which it is apparently trapped. Pushing harder, the ball breaks free. The grammar and metaphors of Barbier's strong visual language, along with her skillful use of technology, humanize the objective, neutral, scientific technology required to construct the work which, in the end, is subjectively narrative. She brings a strong and sensitive feminist perspective of women's place in society, either in private or in public.

Also using a politically charged and socially aware subject is Marlon Riggs, whose 1989 Tongues Untied is an important, and compassionate look into black male homosexuality. Tongues Untied has become fodder for conservative calls for artistic censorship. Pat Buchanan used Tongues Untied in his anti-Bush, anti-NEA advertisements. Riggs explores the homophobia and racism that confronts black gays. Using personal testimony, poetry, rap and dance, Riggs engages the audience and fosters empathy and awareness. His use of identity politics is extremely successful, as he engages without alienating, without objectifying, always remaining subject. Work of this kind is often a case of preaching to the preacher. Riggs is able to draw us into awareness and compassion, even as outsiders.

Buchanan's ruthless exploitation of race and sexuality to win public office is a disgrace, another case of mass media strengthening the status quo, weakening the opposition. Riggs writes in The New York Times, March 6, 1992 , "But my satisfaction is cut short by the realization that my work and life, and more important, the multiple communities of which I am a part, are being grossly maligned in the process." Riggs recognizes his own personal fragmentation, his participation across the boundaries of many identity categories, and this is perhaps what allows him to universalize his particulars. "The persecution of racial and sexual difference is fast becoming the litmus test of true Republican leadership" (Riggs, 1992).

Tongues Untied is masterfully edited. The composing of images and sound is consistently high throughout the 55 minute work. The flow of personal narrative, the powerful poetry of black and gay Essex Hemphill, the snap-Diva's, all combine to show multiple sides of black gay life. Or perhaps, black gay alienation and silence. Riggs' soundtrack is impressive. Spoken word 'Brother to brother' and 'Now we think before we fuck' were powerful, and remain so, infecting the audience with a new understanding, and perhaps, newly discovered compassion. Riggs was able to integrate individuals into a larger society.

Riggs' clearly subjective and biased documentary did not attempt to live under the guise of neutrality and objectivity. Tongues Untied is a work by someone on the inside, someone involved in his subject matter. Riggs creates his own personal narrative through other's voices. His work is done with a compassionate ear and eye, and it shows.

Finally, in Martha Rosler interview for Lyn Blumenthal's What Does She Want series, we listen to a woman working at the meta level, that level of raising personal consciousness, the very same collective conscience that Edward R. Murrow changed through broadcast journalism. Rosler, however, is not explaining situations, rather demonstrating them and making her viewer think for themselves. She uses her own subjectivity and concrete experiences in a autobiographical way to ultimately generate a discussion among viewers. Rosler casts her experience on the screen of history, placing herself firmly within an ideological position. She continually puts herself on the line with her idealism, not as a call to action, but to express an ethical stance outside of herself. Her works call to people to see others, outside their own marginalized identities, within the inclusive category of human beings.

In an attempt to be gender fair, I would like to make mention of a few other works by men where personality and bias clearly help them present their ideas. Peter Hammos' The Real Power of TV subjectively presents a public issue, the issue of war and how the media presents stories to people with loaded images, dictating what they should like, or what they should hate. I would like to also make mention of David Schulmin's 1984 Race Against Prime Time; a critical investigation into the media's portrayal of crisis and violence in black neighborhoods. Schulmin accurately points out that the media is looking for short term impact rather than considering the long term effects of such "law and order" coverage.

Video pioneer Philip Morton's philosophy regarding media images is powerfully seductive. "Your knowledge of the world is conventional knowledge. A selection of particular things to which you attend, to which you have been brainwashed to notice, and the rest is discarded. The world is like a Rorshock [sic] Blot and there is an 'official' interpretation of the blot which we call culture. And everybody agrees; of course, that's the way it is; until some great artist, some great genius begins showing us that you can look at the world in an entirely different way" (Tamblyn, p. 306). What makes it appear as our choice to accept this 'official' interpretation of culture? Foucault recognized that we are all in our own sort of prisons, that self-censorship trapped our culture into a status quo that would apparently never change. The censorship that we do every day represses our ideas enough that the government needs not impose any additional censorship upon us. For, as soon as the censorship becomes open and fully apparent, the people protest.

In the preceding Philip Morton quote, mass media could easily be defined as the 'official' and dominate brainwashing tool from which we define our knowledge. Our culture, then, is based on capitalism and corporate greed, and from here our interpretations of situations begin. Neither television nor corporations have the culture's best interest in mind. The economic dominant controls freedom of information, and self-censorship defines our prisons. Mainstream media television time is investment capital, where the audience is the product. Network competition for profits dictates what information we hear in the news. Slanderous, hasty and un-historical fact finding translate into economic power which, in a capitalist society, translates into omnipotence. And, given the fact that the networks are the economic and political policy makers, video art has neither funding nor an arena.

As a society we justify our actions based on our knowledge of the world. When our knowledge of the world is so coerced, so fabricated to present the current political agenda and status quo, we must worry, and we must act. We must break out of our individual prisons of repression. It is our responsibility, our moral obligation to do so. Morton recognized our power: "until some great artist, some great genius begins showing us that you can look at the world in an entirely different way."

In addition to us as makers, we must assume responsibility for educating media literate viewers. It is our greatest task. We may begin our education with dispelling some of the myths of objectivity and claims on truth that mass media news casting has propagated unto its sheep-like viewers. Edward R. Murrow began this long journey in the earliest days of television. Today, video activists have taken up the vigilance. This is the price of liberty. This is the price of freedom of information. This is our responsibility Ü to break the barriers between stereotypical dualisms defined by vested interests. The barriers emphasize and charge our differences, rather than connecting us, one to another, in a complexly intricate web.

Text References

Alvarado, M. & Thompson, J.O., eds. The Media Reader, BFI Publishing, London 1990.

Hall, D. & Fifer S.J., eds. Illuminating Video, An Essential Guide to Video Art, Aperture Foundation, San Francisco, CA 1990.

Holtzman, Steven R. Digital Mantras, The Language of Abstract and Virtual Worlds. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 1994.

Miller, Branda, compilation. Electronic Arts Theory: Video, 1995.

Persico, Joseph E. Edward R. Murrow, An American Original. Dell Publishing. New York, NY 1988.