ISSUESCODES AND CONVENTIONS IN FACTUAL PROGRAMMING BY LORIK

ISSUES/CODES AND CONVENTIONS IN FACTUAL PROGRAMMING BY LORIK OSMANI

Accuracy is important for any reputation as a news reporter. You have to make sure the audience have trust in your stories, if you constantly make mistakes and provide wrong information your audience’s patience will eventually be lost and their interest and trust will be gone. Accuracy is important if you want to please and keep an audience, they will prefer to read a story with straight facts rather than information that may or may not be true, for example, if you’re reporting live on a breaking news story and you are interviewing eye witnesses you have to remember that some people may not remember all the events as they took place and will often over exaggerate or even make stuff up to make the story interesting. ACCURACY

Balance is to keep a factual TV programme fair to both sides of the subject it’s viewing, there always two sides to a story and the information told to the viewers should bright, fair and equal. It is important to keep a balance on views and investigate to find information for both sides of the story. Making sure that both sides of an argument are shown in a factual TV programme is important as it prevents a certain opinion being praised to a viewer, making them believe what they’re told without knowing all the facts from both sides. BALANCE/BIAS

Impartiality means to view both sides and opinions equally, to not take sides or make your own personal statement. It doesn’t mean that things will always be fair and it doesn’t prevent reporting fair judgements that have a lot of evidence backing them up. To make an impartial judgement journalists have to find relevant arguments and present them professionally so they don’t appear to be biased. If you aren’t impartial and persistently bring your own opinion and judgement into a topic your viewers will be disappointed will probably think other information you say will be biased, unfair and based around your own personal judgement. IMPARTIALITY

Objectivity means to see the whole truth, using evidence and facts and to be fair about it. This means that the reporter or represented has to show fair views from both sides of an argument so they don’t give a biased look to themselves, this also allows them to have different ideas and find different opinions. To accomplish objectivity you must have to be able to stand your judgement while looking at all of the facts. Some of the facts you may find may not be satisfying or make you feel good, but to achieve objectivity all the facts need to be accepted and explored. OBJECTIVELY

Subjectivity means the term given to your opinion or judgement you make while talking about a certain topic and is pretty much the opposite of objectively. This is usually avoided during factual TV programming as this can prevent the facts being used and may conclude in the programme being biased towards your views, however some representers may use it to help manipulate an audience into seconding their opinion. SUBJECTIVELY

Opinion means when the producer wants to use opinions to help show the viewers what members of the public think it is important they choose a huge variety of people from different paths of life to ensure that the answers and opinions they get will be as open and as different as possible. It is important to keep a balance whilst showing opinions. OPINION

Representation means how something is constantly presented or the stereotype of a certain thing. You have to be careful not to stereotype anything during a factual programme as this can lead to some information being wrong. For example, you can often find the media stereotyping teenagers, claiming that ‘hoodies’ or teenagers that wear hooded tops are a bad influence on society or claiming people who wear hoodies are drug dealers, this is stereotyping teenagers and can be quite offensive and lead to problems for teenagers who wear hooded tops. This should be avoided as it’s a bad aim for your tv programme. REPRESENTATION

Privacy is an issue in factual TV programming because everyone has a right to be in a state of being free from the public attention, although the media have a right to a freedom of expression and often argue that they should be able to produce anything they believe is in the public’s best interest. PRIVACY

TYPES OF DOCUMENTARIES

An expository documentary is the type that expose a person or topic. These documentaries are well known for having a commentator talking over the pictures or videos and explaining the story. For example, “Inside Job” By Charles H Ferguson and Audrey Marrs. The subject of the documentary is about the 2008 financial breakdown, which also revealed a lot of government officials using spending money unnecessarily which also enraged the world. This kind of documentary has a great impact with the audience that watch it because the whole idea of an “expository” documentary is to expose something that most people don’t know about which is why many viewers would find it interesting and factual to watch. EXPOSITORY

An observational documentary is where the cameraman/ producer follows a person/ people to watch what happens to them. There are hardly ever voice overs or interviews in this type of documentary and the equipment is usually informal such as hand held cameras for example. Long takes are used quite often as well so that the producer can capture as much of the subjects life as possible. For example “ 16 and pregnant” because the camera follows them around while they get on with every day life and deal with it. The audience react positively with these type of documentaries because it is interesting just to watch what other people are doing in their private lives. OBSERVATIONAL

Interactive documentary's are documentaries where the film crew interact with the subject they are doing their documentary on. There is usually a lot of use of news articles, footage and web information. There is sometimes use of voice over, usually by the documentary maker. And most importantly the documentary maker is visible in the footage and interacts and intervenes with the documentary. For example “supersize me” because the documentary maker is in almost every shot of the documentary and he is the main participant in it when he eats only fast food for 30 days while the camera films him. These kind of documentaries are great and interesting for the audiences to watch even though they are usually biased sometimes. INTERACTIVE

Reflexive documentary’s bond with techniques from fiction film for a more emotional response. Usually use re enactments in part of the documentary, dramatic music may be included to keep the documentary live. These kind of documentary’s rely on suggestion than fact. For example “Kidulthood” which is based on a bunch of youths in London who get the day off school, so they steal alcohol, beat up the school bully and then at the end one of the main characters die. This is meant to be based on youth life in London. The audience enjoy these kind of documentary’s since they are less fictional than other types of documentary's so usually conclude in being more entertaining. REFLEXIVE

A performative documentary is a when a documentary maker and crew interact with the subject they are filming. The documentary maker would also often comment on the process of the making of their documentary. This type of documentary is often shaped into the narrative of an investigation or search which there may not be a satisfactory conclusion, so there is usually a lot of suspense throughout the documentary. The documentary itself will address the audience in a direct and emotional way. For example, “Aileen life and death of a serial killer”. There is a lot of suspense throughout the documentary as to whether or not we think Aileen is guilty or not therefore the audience will enjoy this due to the suspense it has within. PERFORMATIVE

Realism means interest in actual or real world. Realism documentaries are based people and their lives, and show what their lives or the people themselves are like. Some documentaries go into detail of the said persons experiences using re-enactments of events to show this. For example Magical realism is a topic that many people tend to talk about which relates to real life subjects and a majority of viewers find it interesting as they expect to be surprised with information. REALISM