A return to 'Mr. Gates': Photography and objectivity

Newspaper Research Journal, Summer 2000 by Bissell, Kimberly L

The real-time analysis of photographic content included a day in the life of a photographic news item. Observations with decision-makers were conducted from an idea's conception to the editorial meeting where decisions about photos were made. At this newspaper, several news personnel were responsible for creating photographic news: the news editor (who frequently gave assignments), the photographers, and the photo editors; all were observed and interviewed.31

Results

In the sample of 30 representative days, wire photographs were used more frequently than local photographs - 224 wire photos and 208 local photos. As expected, wire photographs often served the purpose of accompanying state, national or international news stories. General news was a common category for wire and local photographs. Wire photographs were also frequently used in sports, and local photographs were frequently features or sports photographs. (see Table 1) Local photographs were also placed more frequently on the front page or on a section front than wire photographs. However, the front page of the sports section ran more wire than local photographs.

1996 Census Data" estimates indicate the county had 53 percent females and 47 percent males. While the county had slightly more females than males, the percentage of local and wire photographs of women was significantly lower. Of the 208 local photographs published in the 30-day sample, 129 of the photos featured males only (62 percent). (see Table 2) Of the 224 wire photographs published in the 30-day sample, 186 were of males only (83 percent). Local photographs featured more female subjects (30 percent) than wire photographs (12 percent), but the percentage of females in the published photographs dramatically lagged behind the percentage of females in the population. In the representation of race, local photographs of whites, African Americans, and other minorities paralleled census data of the county, and wire photographs were even more diverse. Twenty-two percent of all published wire photos were of nonwhites compared to 6 percent of local photographs.

Differences in the representation of age were also found when local and wire photographs were compared to census data. Analysis of the approximate age of subjects in local and wire photographs indicated that the percentage of photographs of children and the elderly were the most skewed when compared to census data. Children under 18 were overrepresented in local photographs (36 percent) when compared to census data (24 percent), but children under 18 were underrepresented in wire photographs (6 percent). Approximately 17 percent of the county was classified as 65 or older, yet only 1 percent of local photographs had subjects in this age bracket. While this demographic representation can not be used to generalize the newspaper's content on a monthly or yearly basis, the data from the observations and interviews yielded clues on how these patterns appeared.

In addition to examining this newspaper's photographic content over the course of four and one-half months, a real-time analysis was done of local and wire photographs received and used in a 14-day period.