Who's Minding the Gate?

Abstract

Camera pools and video feed systems allow news institutions to receive video imagery with greater efficiency and lower costs. Such arrangements are frequently managed and negotiated through politically engaged institutions. The resulting video is transmitted and traded with the underlying assumption that images are discrete, objective representations of real events, an assumption that is called into question when the practice is carefully examined. Unlike facts or ideas, which are intangible and constructed entirely in language, video images are constructed both discursively and materially. Consequently the power to grant physical access to events for photographic coverage grants political actors an advantage as they negotiate their image, literally and metaphorically. This qualitative study describes several such feeds and politically regulated video subsidies, their use by news organizations, and the means by which political agents influence their own image through such feeds. Data in the form of extended interviews and field observations were collected between 2005 and 2007 in the United States and Britain. Site visits include Congress, a U.S. statehouse, a state cable operation, and British Parliament. The findings indicate that journalism's relay of video images as objective, factual material, rather than constructions negotiated with political actors, fosters an illusion of transparency.