The Power of the News

Three articles constitute this thematic session, each highlighting different aspects of the news industry. In the first paper, Zoltán Gayer presents a sophisticated interpretation of the visual representations in Híradó, the evening news program of the Hungarian Television. In his contribution, entitled “Some Characteristics of the Visual Rhetoric of Híradó”, the author deconstructs the manipulative visual techniques of news production, and suggests that an important function of deploying these techniques is the self-legitimation of the mass media. The second essay is written by Jean-Marie Charon, a French media-expert. In his “The Question of Gaze: CNN, the International Televison Network”, he shows how CNN constructs contemporary history by distinguishing between what the editors think are “significant” and “insignificant” events. According to Charon, whether an event becomes CNN-news or not, depends predominantly on the organizational (infra)structure of this international television network. In his famous article, “Trouble in the Global Village”, the Swedish anthropologist, Ulf Hannerz compares the professional activity of the foreign correspondent to that of the anthropologist. He analyzes how foreign correspondents construct the image of the troublesome “Other” and the adventureous, heroic “Self”, and contrasts their journalistic representations to anthropological ones.

Released: Replika 26, 67–101.
Replika block: