The Not So Good Old Days
2007; University of Texas Press; Volume: 60; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/vlt.2007.0013
ISSN1542-4251
Autores Tópico(s)Radio, Podcasts, and Digital Media
ResumoThe Role of Documentary in the Contemporary American Political Scene David Resha, Mark Minett, Charlie Michael (bio), and Colin Burnett Scholars and critics often disparage contemporary media institutions by arguing that corporate conglomeration degrades media content by driving out diversity and sanitizing critical perspectives. They contend that things are getting worse by the day, in turn suggesting that we are getting farther and farther away from the good old days when media practitioners in the United States engendered lively debate on a range of important public concerns. Such criticisms sometimes make nostalgic reference to cinema verité and network documentaries of the sixties as emblematic of what is being lost in the current corporate environment. Forgotten, however, is the fact that independent film documentaries during that era were screened in marginal venues that were inaccessible to most viewers. Television documentaries enjoyed the largest audiences at the time, and the networks did some fine work, but much of it was relegated to marginal time slots or scheduled up against more popular entertainment fare. Still, audiences of eight to ten million were common for the network flagship documentaries of the sixties, which compares favorably to top-rated television programs today. Perhaps this contributes to the nostalgia for yesteryear; however, the figures are in fact misleading, since these substantial ratings were a by-product of a government-sanctioned oligopoly. In exchange for their privileged market status, the three networks promised to expose their audiences to public service programming about significant political issues. Although this promise initially seemed a fair and manageable bargain, it proved over the long run to present a number of thorny dilemmas. Central among them were, which issues should be explored and according to what ethical standards of inquiry? Network news personnel relished the opportunity to assert their journalist professionalism and successfully angled to ban independent film documentary from the primetime airwaves. Yet they would come to rue this victory as their exclusive franchise became the object of intense scrutiny from a broad array of political and economic interests that carefully calculated and challenged the ideological implication of every word and image. The resulting firestorm of controversy and investigations led eventually to the stealthy abandonment of network documentary well before Reagan-era deregulation. [End Page 79] This bit of history can help to enrich current debates over media conglomeration and the political documentary because it invites us to complicate the presumption that things would be better if the media giants were simply busted up and public service mandates were restored. Things weren't necessarily better in the good old days in which networks, as guardians of the public interest, asserted their prerogative to define the issues, delimit the range of perspectives, and control the representational strategies of documentary. In fact, the situation today is better than ever before. Fundamental to this shift is the simple fact that contemporary media companies, gigantic as they may be, are subject to far greater uncertainty than ever before. Viewers shift swiftly among entertainment and information channels. Technology changes relentlessly, driven by market competition and audience demand. New creative talent emerges rapidly from the margins and recedes just as quickly, shouldered aside by even newer voices. Certainly, one can complain that large corporations, as the most powerful distributors of media content, exercise a commanding influence over the conventions of documentary representation and the promotion of particular voices, yet they exercise this influence fully cognizant of the fact that the documentaries on which they take a pass may return to haunt them via competing media delivery systems. In addition to festival and multiplex venues, audiences can turn to HBO, Sundance, and Discovery; Netflix, YouTube, and Rocketboom; Amazon, Apple, and Indieflix. With a greater diversity of financing, format, and distribution opportunities, documentary producers today have a broader range of expressive options than ever before. If network television was the prevailing distribution mode of political documentary in the sixties, then Netflix is today's mainstream counterpart where one finds hundreds of films and videos categorized under subgenres as diverse as biographical, historical, and political; scientific, cultural, and spiritual; HBO, POV, and independent. Netflix aims to connect users not with what they believe is in the public interest but rather...
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