Abstract
Ever since, for the sake of securing funding, John Grierson made a strong distinction between documentary and newsreel, these two modes, although sharing exactly the same claim on the real, have been positioned as distinct. It is, however, a distinction which turns exactly on the presence of ‘news’ but grounding difference on this basis is difficult. This is because the concept of ‘news’ in play is largely un-interrogated.
The confusion is that the newsreel wants to be ‘news’ (to be different from documentary which, certainly, is not necessarily news although it can be) while equally necessarily acknowledging that it is not ‘news’ in received terms. Periodicity, subject matter and format are used to prove the ‘news’ in newsreel is not as is the news elsewhere. Newsreel studies are therefore, au fond, caught in a dilemma.
This chapter argues that the problem is grounded in an ahistorical, limited and assertive notion of ‘news’. It reveals that any history of the printed news over the last half-millennium shows it involves a democratization of commercial information and a political tool blended with providing a diet of titillation and comment. This agenda is not dependent on the technology of the press as it antedates it and was easily reformulated for new media in the past century. Moreover, it retails ‘truth’ as a species of branding rather than a guarantee of veracity. In this, it is, and always has been, a species of entertainment caparisoned (sometimes) in sobriety.
So the newsreels are, by this measure and easily so, ‘news’. But I will further argue that does not distinguish them from documentary. They both share (as does printed and broadcast news) the same claim on the real and that this is of far more significance than any supposed difference based an ill-understood concept of ‘news’.
Anon (1607) Wofull Newes from Wales, or the lamentable loss of divers Villages and Parishes (by a strange and wonderful Floud) within the Countye of Monmouth in Wales: which happened in January last past, 1607, whereby a great number of his Majesties subjects inhabiting in these parts are utterly undone. (qt. in Jackson, Mason (1885) The Pictorial Press London: Hurst & Blackett, p. 13.)
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Notes
- 1.
Fielding, R. (2006). The American Newsreel, 1911–1967. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, pp. 23–24.
- 2.
Ibid., p. 197.
- 3.
Anon (1485) Dracole Waide. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/Broimp.jpg/440px-Broimp.jpg (accessed 4 May 2015).
- 4.
Laing, D. (1867) An Account of the Battle of Flodden, p. 143. http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-352-1/dissemination/pdf/vol_007/7_141_152.pdf (accessed 4 May 2015).
- 5.
He was outraged that any such affair of state should be so readily made known to the public. The publisher, Alfred Harmsworth, founded the Mirror as a paper for ladies—a mirror through which they could see the world. It flopped but, relaunched as a highly illustrated title, it was a success.
- 6.
Andrew, A. (1859). A History of British Journalism Vol I. London: Richard Bentley, p. 23.
- 7.
Janković, V. (2000). Reading the Skies: A Cultural History of English Weather, 1650–1820. Manchester: Manchester University Press, p. 195.
- 8.
Ibid., p. 263.
- 9.
Sanchez, R. (2015) ‘X-Files opened: US government documents on UFOs available for the first time’ Daily Telegraph 31 January. http://www.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11361300/X-Files-opened-US-government-documents-on-UFOs-available-for-the-first-time.html (accessed 1 May 2017).
- 10.
Winston, B. (2012) A Right to Offend: Free Expression in the Twenty-first Century. London: Bloomsbury, p. 20.
- 11.
Smith, A. (1996) ‘100 Types of Deception’ in Jeavons, Clyde, Jane Mercer and Daniela Kirchner (eds.) The Story of the Century! An International News Conference. London: BUFVC, p. 8
- 12.
Macpherson, Don (1980) (ed. in collaboration with Paul Willemen), Traditions of Independence. London: BFI. p. 133.
- 13.
Jonson, B. The Staple of News (1625) Act 1 Sc 5.
- 14.
Theatrical Licensing Act (10 Geo. II c. 28). Censorship was not to be removed until abolished by the Theatres Act (1968 c. 54).
- 15.
Matuszewski, B. (1898), Une Nouvelle Source de l’histoire: Création d’un dépôt de cinématographic historique, March. Paris: Noizetté et O.
- 16.
Edelman, B. (1979). Ownership of the Image: Elements for a Marxist Theory of Law (trans. E. Kingdom). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
- 17.
The film which occasioned the legal debate was the racist Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith | 1915 | USA). Because of its incendiary nature, an heroicizing of the Ku Klux Klan in the nineteenth-century American Civil War, it had been banned by the authorities in Ohio and the Supreme Court held that such censorship did not infringe First Amendment rights. They did so on the curious grounds that movies were not an ‘expression’ but a business—without reference to the film’s racism and as if newspapers were not also ‘businesses’ (Mutual Film Corporation v. Industrial Commission of Ohio, 236 US 230, 1915). Movies were first legally given First Amendment protection 37 years later when Mutual was ‘distinguished’ (that is, overturned) by the Supreme Court (Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson, 343 US 495, 1952). The film then in question was Roberto Rossellini’s section of the anthology film, Amore (1948, Italy: 1950 US release).
- 18.
Anon. (BBFC) (n/d) ‘Case Studies: Battleship Potemkin’. http://www.bbfc.co.uk/case-studies/battleship-potemkin (accessed 23 January 2015).
- 19.
Fielding, R. (2006). The American Newsreel, 1911–1967. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, p. 180.
- 20.
Ibid., p. 180.
- 21.
Richards, J., and Sheridan, D. (eds) (1987), Mass Observation at the Movies. London: RKP, pp. 392, 409.
- 22.
Dickinson, M., & Street, S. (1985), Cinema and the State: The Film Industry and the British Government 1927–1984. London: British Film Institute, p. 8.
- 23.
Levant qtd. in Fielding, R. (2006). The American Newsreel, 1911–1967. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, p. 153.
- 24.
Grierson, J. (1979), Grierson on Documentary (Forsyth Hardy, ed.). London: Faber, pp. 35–36.
- 25.
Ibid., p. 36.
- 26.
Ibid.
- 27.
Aldgate, A., and Richards, J. (1986), Britain Can Take It: The British Cinema in the Second World War. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 5–6.
- 28.
Forman, H. (1982). ‘The Non-Theatrical Distribution of Films by the Ministry of Information’, Propaganda, Politics and Film, 1918–45 (N. Pronay and D.W. Springer, eds). London: Macmillan, pp. 229–231.
- 29.
I am grateful to John MacKay for his contribution on Goskino Kalandar to the initial meeting of The Newsreel Network in the University of Lund, Sweden (21/22 May 2013) and for sharing with me the unpublished paper he gave at the conference.
- 30.
Malitsky, J. (2013) Post-revolution Non-fiction Film: Building the Soviet and Cuban Nations. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, p. 26.
- 31.
Stuart Legg had gone to Canada with Grierson to help found the country’s National Film Board. The film’s Oscar was awarded in 1942. Citizen Kane—for 50 years to be considered ‘the greatest film ever made’ in the Sight & Sound decadal poll—was nominated, but notoriously totally overlooked by the Academy.
- 32.
Scannell, P. & Cardiff, D. (1991). A Social History of British Broadcasting: 1922–39—Serving the Nation (vol. 1). London: John Wiley, p. 123.
- 33.
Winston, B. (2015) ‘The Martian Invasion and the Sociological Imagination’, Stretching the Sociological Imagination: Essays in Honour of John Eldridge (A. Smith, M. Dawson, B. Fowler, D. Miller and D. Rampton, eds.). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
- 34.
Bach, W., et al. (1956) ‘Magnetic 16mm Single-System Sound-on-Film Recording Camera Equipment’, Journal of the SMPTE. November, pp. 603–604.
- 35.
Morrison’s commentary on the Hindenburg is now regularly meshed with the film footage of the disaster to give the impression of synch. It can also be noted that with documentaries the stylistic impact was very different. 16mm synch became the basis of the hand-held direct cinema documentary that was to become the norm. See Winston, Brian (2008). Claiming the Real II. London: BRI/Palgrave-Macmillan, pp. 146–166.
- 36.
Briggs, A. (1995) The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom: Sound and Vision 1945–1955 (vol. iv). Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 540–541.
- 37.
Cf. a century or so earlier The Daily Telegraph and a century before that The Flying Post.
- 38.
Brunovska-Karnick, K. (1988) ‘NBC and the innovation of television news, 1945–1953’, Journalism History 15:1, Spring, p. 27.
- 39.
Ibid.
- 40.
The balance was commercials for Oldsmobile. See Winston, Brian (1993). ‘The CBS Evening News, 7 April 1949’, Getting the Message: News, Truth & Power (John Eldridge, ed.). London: Routledge, pp. 184–209.
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Winston, B. (2018). Wofull Newes from Wales: Details at 11. News, Newsreels, Bulletins and Documentaries. In: Chambers, C., Jönsson, M., Vande Winkel, R. (eds) Researching Newsreels. Global Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91920-1_2
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