Zelizer, Barbie

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 38
  • Publication
    Definitions of Journalism
    (2005-01-01) Zelizer, Barbie
  • Publication
    Afterthoughts: So Where Are We to Turn in the Study of Journalism
    (2000-04-01) Zelizer, Barbie
    The contributors to this symposium on the identity, mission, and direction of journalism studies have raised more questions than answers. Each contributor faced responding to: what is required to ensure that journalism’s scholarship remains connected with its practice and criticism? How are we to study journalism in a way that will keep it vital, relevant, and yet connected to impulses that go beyond the world of newsmaking? How are we to create a future for the study of journalism? While answering questions with questions is a rhetorical strategy with sometimes positive implications, here it appears to fasten ambivalence and uncertainty as the default assumptions underlying the study of journalism.
  • Publication
    Covering Atrocity in Image
    (1998) Zelizer, Barbie
    Using images to bear witness to atrocity required a different type of representation than did words. Images helped record the horror in memory after its concrete signs had disappeared, aud they did so in a way that told a larger story of Nazi atrocity. As the U.S. trade journal Editor and Publisher proclaimed, "the peoples of Europe, long subjected to floods of propaganda, no longer believe the written word. Only factual photographs will be accepted." While words produced a concrete and grounded chronicle of the camps' liberation, photographs were so instrumental to the broader aim of enlightening the world about Nazi actions that when Eisenhower proclaimed "let the world see," he implicitly called upon photography's aura of realism to help accomplish that aim. Through its dual function as carrier of truth-value and symbol, photography thus helped the world bear witness by providing a context for events at the same time as it displayed them.
  • Publication
    A Scholarly Look at Reporting the War
    (2004-01-01) Zelizer, Barbie
  • Publication
    The Voice of the Visual in Memory
    (2004-01-01) Zelizer, Barbie
    For as long as collective memory has been an area of scholarly concern, the precise role of images as its vehicle has been asserted rather than explicated. This essay addresses the role of images in collective memory. Motivated by circumstances in which images, rather than words, emerge as the preferred way to establish and maintain shared knowledge from earlier times, it offers the heuristic of "voice" to help explain how images work across represented events from different times and places. The essay uses "voice" to elucidate how the visual becomes an effective mode of relay about the past and a key vehicle of memory.
  • Publication
    How Bias Shapes the News: Challenging the New York Times' Status as a Newspaper of Record on the Middle East
    (2002-12-01) Zelizer, Barbie
    This article addresses bias in the American press and shows how the inevitability of reporting from a point of view challenges the possibility of a newspaper of record on the Middle East. Examining 30 days of coverage of the Intifada, it both shows that coverage of events varied across three mainstream US newspapers - The New York Times, The Washington Post and Chicago Tribune - and demonstrates that in the case of the newspaper most often called a newspaper of record - The New York Times -coverage varied in distinct ways from other mainstream newspapers. The article thus considers how the Times reputation and influence converge with its record in creating a broader impression about the perspective of the US press on the Middle East.
  • Publication
    Defending the American Dream: Coverage of the Jonathan Pollard Spy Case
    (2001-06-01) Zelizer, Barbie
    This article contemplates the journalistic coverage of American espionage as an attempt to maintain consonance with broader cultural discourses about what it means to be an American. Tracking the American press coverage of the Jonathan Pollard spy case, the article demonstrates that the press turns espionage into a phenomenon upholding fundamental American beliefs in openness, sincerity, and straightforwardness. It shows that, rather than represent espionage as a phenomenon embodying deceit, secrecy, and immoral action, the press turns espionage into a phenomenon that communicates that one is what one says one is and that one's self presentation reflects one's insides. Ultimately, however, this representation of espionage undermines a full understanding of how - and why - spying works in culture.