by Kevin Walker
University of California, Berkeley
1991
Walter Cronkite's 1953-57 program You Are There used staged reenactments of historical events. Today, reenactments are still used on TV, to mixed reviews. But increasingly, they are not necessary, for the video camcorder is becoming ubiquitous. Recently, an amateur videographer filmed a shocking example of police brutality, and provoked a firestorm that may lead to the resignation of Los Angeles' police chief.
First it is necessary to define amateur video. For this paper, it is NOT footage shot by professional news photographers or by businesses for public relations purposes. It IS film that is shot by a non-professional videographer, using a camcorder bought for some purpose other than journalism, and usually, who just happened to be at the right place at the right time. But the line between professionals and nonprofessionals is fluid, and becoming more so. It is becoming more difficult to discern what is "real," what is staged, what has been altered and what has not.
The use of amateur film footage on television news is nothing new. Perhaps the most famous example is Abraham Zapruder's exclusive film of President Kennedy's assassination, (which was bought by Time, Inc. for $150,000). Super-8 and other home-movie cameras have been around for a long time. But the invention of the videotape (by Ampex in Redwood City, who sold the rights to Sony), and its progressive shrinking in size, has all but eclipsed all other formats. Even Hollywood studios (notable Sony's Universal) are turning to video for moviemaking. There are some 7.5 million camcorders now in use, and are in almost 10% of US homes. This is up 25% from last year.5 The increasing use of amateur footage by news organizations is due to technology, economic factors, and the further "tabloidization" or sensationalizing of TV news, with more emphasis on moral disorder and a leaning toward the subjective.
A factor in the rise of amateur video in general has been ABC's America's Funniest Home Videos, which is riding, and is fueled by, the camcorder revolution. One of the only hit shows of its premiere season, the show was hurt by bad publicity stemming from journalists' attacks on the violent nature of some of the home videos shown. The program now includes several disclaimers per show warning not to "try this at home," and discourages videos that depict violence to children. Nevertheless, it has been a big hit. Fox tried to capitalize on ABC's success with Totally Hidden Video.
Amateur videos also provide fodder for the myriad "realist" shows and pseudo-news shows, among them Hard Copy, Rescue 911 (which also uses the audio from actual 911 calls), Unsolved Mysteries, Top Cops, America's Most Wanted, and Cops, and On Trial (which uses footage of actual criminal-court proceedings).
In part due to the success of America's Funniest, home videos have found an eager market in TV news organizations. Cable News Network, the "video wire service" that has made the news, not the anchors, the star, has actively sought home-video footage of spot news in its Newshound program. Contributors receive $150, plus CNN t-shirts and mugs. Response has been overwhelming, with anywhere from 10 to hundreds of calls coming in every day. An amateur piece is used once a week on average.4 The other networks also buy home footage, but mainly only during notable events for which there is no other video. There are restrictions: NBC, for instance, refuses anything that hasn't been seen by one of its producers, and won't take video shot by hidden camera.
Many local stations also buy amateur video, mostly of weather or sports news. KNBC in Los Angeles, following the sucess of America's Funniest, ran a contest for weather shots; prizes were a t-shirt and an on-air thank you. And Southern California ABC affiliates have run their own contests for funny home videos, with winners sent to America's Funniest. In the San Francisco Bay Area, there is a profusion of home video on the news: On a recent evening, there was another police brutality video, a video of part of the Embarcadero Freeway collapsing, a reshowing of a biologist's secret tape of a dolphin slaughter (which prompted last year's tuna boycott), and footage of an off-road police chase that was probably from a police helicopter.
During the 1989 earthquake in the Bay Area, picture-hungry stations actively solicited amateur footage. One tape in particular, of a car plunging off the top deck of the Bay Bridge, was seen on almost every station in the country by noon the day after the quake. The Oklahoma couple who filmed the harrowing scene sold it to all three local network affiliates, fetching over $1,000. ABC's PrimeTime Live asked for amateur video from the quake, and received a scene from a shaky child's party in which the camera dropped to the ground. Other quake footage seen on the tube was shot by stationary security cameras at businesses.
When China cracked down on the student democratic movement in 1989 and banished all foreign journalists, some young Chinese, weaned on American TV, set out with camcorders in hand to deliver to the world pictures of the crackdown. Private citizens became "video commandos," and took the world to where access was otherwise restricted. Their main outlet to the outside was CNN, who in turn had given them the media consciousness it has spread all over the world. The CNN China footage, and the dissemination of camcorders, played a big part in the eastern European revolution later that year. (Much of CNN's international coverage comes from camcorder-toting reporters, both professional and amateur. In both China and the recent Gulf war, networks armed themselves with camcorders.)
The recent Rodney King tape, (which has been called "America's unfunniest home video"), is only the most recent, and most shocking, example of police brutality caught on home video. Since at least 1988, some eight to ten such tapes have been used as both evidence in brutality cases and as evening news footage, from Virginia Beach to San Francisco. Locally, the most visible case has been that of Dolores Huerta, and involves not one but two tapes of alleged brutality during a protest outside a hotel where President Bush was speaking. One tape caused the resignation of the charged officer, showing him thrusting a nightstick into a crowd, but the other tape, shot by a police photographer, misses the moment Huerta was struck. Police departments, even before the King debacle, began filming demonstrations, drunk drivers and drug raids years ago, "for evidence and training purposes," according to a San Francisco Police sergeant. The SFPD records some 200 demonstrations a year; two officers were even criticized for posing as a TV camera crew three years ago.1
Another incident shows the profound effects that amateur tapes can have when aired. For instance, footage of a man apparently being pushed head-first into a plate glass window by a Long Beach officer, shown by a Los Angeles NBC affiliate in January 1989, caused off-duty police to march on NBC studios demanding that the entire tape be shown. The victim, Don Jackson, was a black police sergeant on leave, and he was driving around the Los Angeles area with a hidden camera in his car trying to solicit and film incidences of police brutality and racism. He suceeded. The protesting officers demanded that Jackson interfered with the questioning, (he was stopped for weaving in traffic), and ran into the window himself. The affiliate, KNBC, later showed the entire tape, though it's not clear even from the footage, who was at fault. But, as with the Rodney King video, the tape prompted investigations by the police department, the district attourney and the FBI.
Other videos used as legal evidence have made news. For instance, the infamous Rob Lowe video, also in 1989. In addition to being seen on TV, it was circulated among bars and parties, and was the basis for a sex-with-a-minor civil suit as well as an extortion countersuit. Another bizarre case involved a "suicide video" made by a couple who was found shot dead soon after their son received the tape. It was declared a murder-suicide based on the woman's seeming apprehension on the tape. It wasn't seen on television, but the video did make the newspapers, a strange side-effect of the camcorder revolution.
Video makes for compelling evidence in "sting" operations, such as those aimed at the Los Angeles county sheriff's department, the Arizona state legislature, and Washington Mayor Marion Barry. These were perhaps not necessarily "amateur" videos, but certainly were of amateur quality, being from FBI hidden cameras. All made the evening news, and despite anchors' qualifiers, all convinced the public of guilt, and furthered popular cynicism toward public officials. The verdict in the 1983 case People v. Plasencia, reads, "Since our society has not yet reached the point where all human conduct is videotaped for later replay, resolution of disputes in our court system depends almost entirely on the testimony of witnesses..."8 But with the proliferation of camcorders in the past eight years or so, our legal system may indeed need to adapt to accomodate video testimony. With repeated viewing, a detailed eyewitness account is possible, even with the King video, where the quality is relatively poor.
Other notable amateur video footage has included that of Matthias Rust, an East German pilot who landed in Red Square in 1987, and that of the 1988 explosion on the battleship Iowa. A video shot from the Catalina Island ferry turned out to be the only footage of a rare whale.
The "democratization of surveillance," (as a video trade group calls it) has made amateur tapes not only good news footage, but often damning evidence in court cases of all kinds, but this is beyond the scope of this paper. It is important to note, however, that "dueling videotape" cases show that camcorders are not necessarily objective observers or "anonymous informers", but a mere extension and preservation of an individual's point of view.
In addition, amateur video is fast approaching theater-quality, and professional editing can already be done at home for less than $10,000. As with photographs, videotapes can lie too. Footage can also be staged, or not be what it's purported to be. Such was the case when ABC and NBC accepted what they thought was a tape of the Chernobyl blast in 1986. It turned out to be of an Italian cement factory fire. (To their credit, it is just as difficult to evaluate professional video.) A related, somewhat bizarre side effect of the Rodney King and similar incidents is that they provide more plots for TV movies and "realistic" shows; it becomes a macabre cycle of play and replay, a further blurring of fact and fiction.
For those who learn about the world mostly from television, news doesn't exist that is not covered by TV, and many stories are not covered because they are not accesible to the camera. TV reporters rely upon eyewitnesses or experts for events that can't be videotaped. But TV viewers are confused as to just what is news. In a 1989 Times-Mirror survey, half of the respondents classified America's Most Wanted, A Current Affair and similar shows as news programs. They were also divided on PrimeTime Live and such shows. But one thing was clear: the most closely followed stories at the time -- of an Iowa air crash and the apparent murder of an American hostage -- involved vivid, graphic, amateur-shot videotape.3
The hostage tape shows an important effect of the camcorder revolution: the use of tapes to manipulate opinion. The grainy footage of Lt. Col. William Higgins swaying from a gallows, complete with a close-up of his face, set off a firey protest. ABC showed only still photos from the tape, but CBS, NBC, CNN and MacNeil/Lehrer all showed portions. Howard Rosenberg said of the coverage, "It was grotesque. It was obscene. It was unnecessary.... By whipping up public opinion, such coverage can perilously accelerate the decision-making process" by President Bush" [as the King video did]. He speculated that TV's ability to repeat such events could shape or change perceptions, or conversely, could desensitize viewers to execution.2 According to the Times-Mirror poll, viewers were split evenly as to whether the tape should have been aired.
Such video terrorism has become more common: witness Iraq's amateur-quality tapes of American hostages in the Gulf war; the US simply used managed network footage to achieve the same effect. This is part of a larger trend of using video to move viewers and shape opinion. It's hardly a new phenomenon, but a very effective tactic, and one that is becoming available to more people as camcorders spread.
The most profound effect of the camcorder revolution, though, is the spread itself. Both the price and size of camcorders continue to diminish. The L.A. Times' Howard Rosenberg says that privacy will decline in inverse proportion to the rise of the number of camcorders. "It's a bad time to be a recluse," he says, and warns us to prepare for our most private embarassments and humiliations to go public. "Smile, you're on candid camcorder!" Soon, he says, we may see America's Funniest Home Murders and Funniest Videos of America's Most Wanted ("Same old show except you aprehend the criminal -- and tape the capture").7
As another TV analyst said, "You get enough video camcorders out there in enough people's hands, and eventually some hilarious and frightening things are going to happen in front of the camera. The serious things you see on the news, and the funny things you see on America's Funniest Home Videos."6
Yet there are, of course, positive effects. Amateurs become unofficial stringers for news orgganizations, providing footage they might not otherwise get or where access is restricted. And the videos impart meaning to issues; they turn them from the abstract to the real by placing actual people in actual scenes. And, in so doing, they produce a discourse which paves the way for change.
Most notably, they alter the traditional power structure: the democratization of such technology provides a further check on those in power. The videos are, in effect, more "real" when the actual sounds are left in, as opposed to other news reports with anchors' or reporters' voiceovers. And, if checked carefully for authenticity, the pictures cannot lie,and are subject only to the videographer's vantage point and editing by the TV station. Also, studies have shown10 that seeing the news contributes to recall; as regards vivid amateur video, with all its rawness and immediacy, this effect is heightened.
Compensation for home video footage could prove to be a problem. Some amateur videographers are beginning to demand steeper and steeper fees, as with the couple who shot the Bay Bridge scene after the quake. Bidding could ensue, not only between local stations but national, and potentially international, networks, depending on the exclusivity and quality of the footage. Most TV news organizations do not currently have a set fee structure in place regarding amateur film, and they may be forced to formulate some system if the trend continues.
Doris Graber did a study of television news using "gestalt theory" to analyze how viewers perceive content. She found that, not surprisingly, visual themes were more memorable than verbal ones. Also, most visuals used were "stereotypical": familiar or stylized pictures framed stories. 32% of visuals didn't contribute to the actual story, but the presence of reporters lent authenticity to the scene.9 In this light, we can see that when amateur film is used, it is usually startling or visually interesting; the visual is the story. Hence it's used by news departments both as a "grabber" in promos and as a variation from the familiar or stylized. With such startling imagery, viewers can see with their own eyes the action being reported, and make their own interpretations. Herein lies the real value of amateur video, both in legal proceedings and in news.
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2. Ed Turner, CNN's chief of news gathering, gave the figures in Bernstein, above.
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