Contenu du sommaire : De la Gazette à C.N.N., les gestes d'informer

The author analyses the production of news as a show of pictures. If producing a piece of news is making it visible, then it becomes necessary to examine the part played by what is left in the shadow.Darkness is at both ends of the news report. Any picture is surrounded by a frame, all that is out of frame is unvisible. As the inquiry goes forward to make the event clearer, the piece of news itself finally gets lost into partial or connected explanations and thus the facts which were originally considered as news get darker and darker. Once published the news dissolves little by little into the obsolescence of the well known.It is when it pretends to mimesis that the news has to do with shadows. Actually the attempt to make something visible needs a condensation which allows the reader to grasp sights. In this way the unknown is devalued to bring forward something well-known. Or else if an event has attracted attention, isn't it because it provides a screen, a shadowy obstacle, on which the stream of our questions gets projected, where our preconceived notions have printed the appearence of the news ?

The author makes a research about the origines of journalistic inquiries. It first appeares in conditions similar to those of the Old Continent : it had to go through an alteration in the formal proceedings of juridical cases ans in the stories which followed (1820-1840). Criminals are no longer seen as exceptional or monstrous characters, but with development of statistics, doctors as well as policemen and journalists try to delineate the factors of those who might possibly become criminals whether from their birth or from their surroundings. Scientist, police force and journalistic inquiries had altered their field of observation.But muck-rakers only appeared in the U.S. (1890-1920). The author sets forth his specific aspects by making clear his aims, how he conducts his inquiries and the way he writes.

The authors want to demonstrate the visual sequences cannot be reduced to the meaning of speech. Reports in pictures, pictures from archives, analytical or synthetic pictures are supposed to be the best way to cover the real. However they are continuaIly missing it and the informative speech provides the links and continuity. It seUles the picture a place of their own and produces a commentary.According to the authors the visible cannot be submitted to speech. they analyse several kinds of pictures appearing more frequently in other type of programmes which establish a relation of the watcher to what he is shown through the impact of their repeated patterns.The first type of those weeckly or daily programmes La Roue de la Fortune offers an example by introducing ordinary people whose way of life is quite similars to the watchers'one, which produces an emotional effect. The second type, the Bingo, shows as risky and unpredictable aIl that escares a scheduled series. As for the third type, the commercial, it gives the idea of a uni verse deprived of any resistance as long as you can use the most convenient product. Then, at last, the screen picture addresses the TV watcher straight through the feeling of compassion expressed by the announcer's face, which aIlows an immediate passage from intensely dramatic facts to the equaly intense emotions of everyday life.These visual patterns which are recurrent in TV programmes keep their impact in the watchers' mind while the announcer is developping his speech about the news.

The author analyses the coverage of the Gulf conflict as a new paradigm which can be considered as the first experiment of a new relation between medias and the army.During this war the American executive power needed the medias to legitimate its intervention and the creation of a new international order. On the other hand the present technologies of information made it difficult to enforce a public censure, so the relations between the American army and C.N.N. took the form of a contract. The Army made use of their relation agenda and of their own moving pictures to help the C.N.N. channel to broadcast in continuit y even though the actual news were sometimes missing. The author also analyses how the variety of pictures could gives the war an unreal aspect.From its own viewpoint the channel tried to escape the heavy control of official news. The location of a team broadcasting live from Bagdad only made worse the ambiguity which tends to bring confusion between information and propaganda in wartime. Then, by reajusting intermediary enunciation and by producing prerecorded broadcast with the help of experts, the channel tried to recover its place as a media on a public scale.As a conclusion the author insists on the fact that live programs proper to the conti nuit y of a thematic channel broadcasting for a chosen audience should be analysed in different manner from the live production on current channels: a live transmission does not get its value from emotional contents; it only expresses a utilitarian and strategic conception of information.

The author raises questions about the specific use of time on radio news by pointing out three aspects: the alternation between the programmer's and the listener's time, the reports, the live interviews.The radio news try to take into account the listener's time. Two devices are currently used: the former one is dominated by listener's time, by means of scheduled transmissions; the latter one is dominated by fictionnal time and the succession of programmes rarely interrupted by announcer's transmissions which re-insert the listener's time. In such a device, the radio news is specific: it is a voice which brings back a temporality from outside the studio: a sudden comeback from the real world, news flashes from successive voices.To give shape to an event the radio favours the report but in a rudimental way, by dealing with preconceived schemes of actions. It's a minimal account which aims at a practical understanding of an event and in which the variety of voices offers compensation to poorness. Instead of building an ideological conception, of the world with an organized news report, they fix actors and actions into the preconceived schemes of the event.The live report on radio is radically different from the TV treatment where the «real thing» may fall upon the screen. For a listener the passionnate reaction to a live event cornes through a filter : the passionnate reaction of the announcer himself. When the announcer holds his breath, the listener can perceive that the time suggested by the report appears in announcer's voice itself.

The author analyses on a long period of history the work of enunciation proper to periodicals. He distinguishes three periods corresponding to three modes of information: news bulletins, information, communication.The news bulletin is characterized by focus on the real time of the bulletin writer. This form is inherited from correspondence writings. The editor is chiefly a reader of other papers; the news being scarse present themselves as a favourite reading for the other newspapers. Little by little the newspeaper develops a larger space, the editing works determines « a peri-text» with various headings and a series of titles and subtitles.The transition to an era of information takes place in a time of industrialization; it is the passage from the right of speech to the right of knowing and inquiring. The piece of news is reduced to a fact and towards 1880 settles a new system of visibility in which various kinds of titles supersede the way lettres are superscribed. The enunciation is focussed on the reader's time.This need of attracting the reader's interest is still more obvious with the influence of communication. Then, a journalist advising readers about daily life borrows his rhetoric from publicity. At the same time the medias tend to speak more and more of themselves. This new situation bring sorne confusion in the profession as their work gets in constant move: they must invent new strategies, new practices.

The author analyses two press corpuses, news bulletin on France 3 and a survey in Le Monde both in the year 1993. She brings into light two methods used in mediatic speeches about crisis and unemployment. The first one assumes that speeches from political men and experts are true and sticks to them. The second one gets the unemployed to reports about their situation but considers their statements as providing examples to the analyses given by the experts who are either complaining about fatality or suggesting a moral effort. If we consider the place and importance given to the different speeches it appears that whatever statements they make about this social problem, the result is the same. The process of generalization and the play of enunciation lead to a cover-up of social problems and the affects they might bring about. These analyses are part of a more general query about the role played by con temporary medias in the structure of speeches.

The author focuses on the issue of professional identity of journalists. According to various analysts this identity would be endangered by the opening of a wider communicational sphere and by the early developments in medias.The threat would be actual that T. V. and new technologies of communication put an end to it, and destroy thus the foundations of the information system. Journalist would be involved into a corporate communication whose goal is to create the illusion of a direct relation between viewers and the process of History. That illusion would be a danger for democratic societies and would lead to the loss of the meaning of images.According to the author, the actual revolution, if there is one, is that of the professional status of journalists. They have tried to play the role of the warrantors of legitimate information. The nowadays large quantity of informational resources available leads the audience to an estimation of their value, not referred to the accuracy of facts but ta the relevance of issues they focus on.Consequently journalists must take into account the personal bias of their addresses; they must also be aware of the quality of enunciation the audience is expecting from the media carrying the news. If we admit that the N.T. 1. tend to use a large number of numerical data giving access to texts, sounds and pictures at a great speed, the journalist should make use of these technologies to create the image of specific worlds. From that point of view the information industry would chiefly be an industry of esthetic products.