Bentley, Gareth (2013) Journalistic Agency and the Subjective Turn in British Foreign Correspondent Discourse
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Bentley, Gareth (2013) Journalistic agency and the subjective turn in British foreign correspondent discourse. PhD Thesis. SOAS, University of London http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/17353 Copyright © and Moral Rights for this thesis are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non‐commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder/s. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. When referring to this thesis, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full thesis title", name of the School or Department, PhD Thesis, pagination. 1 Journalistic agency and the subjective turn in British foreign correspondent discourse Gareth Bentley Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD in Media Studies 2013 Centre for Media and Film Studies School of Oriental and African Studies University of London 2 Declaration for PhD thesis I have read and understood regulation 17.9 of the Regulations for students of the School of Oriental and African Studies concerning plagiarism. I undertake that all the material presented for examination is my own work and has not been written for me, in whole or in part, by any other person. I also undertake that any quotation or paraphrase from the published or unpublished work of another person has been duly acknowledged in the work which I present for examination. Signed: ____________________________ Date: _________________ 3 Abstract Journalistic agency and the subjective turn in British foreign correspondent discourse The central question of this thesis is to find out and contextualize how British foreign correspondents demonstrate that their practices of reporting conflict, crises and trauma have been constituted. The empirical data collected is concerned with the content of how they articulate their work, placing more emphasis on what they say about their work rather than what their practice says about them. Journalistic activity in covering traumatic events comes up against institutional rules of ‘objectivity’, reporting even as their senses and bodies are filled with competing emotional responses. The thesis is concerned with the complex agency of journalists and how they articulate their practice. The research questions looks at how their practices are constituted as institutional ‘rules of the game’, such as objectivity, and as ‘rules’ outside the game, such as trauma, compassion and autobiography. All of these concepts have taxed the minds of media academics for a considerable time and the work is informed by theories of the mediation of suffering, morality, compassion, trauma and witnessing. This research project draws on fourteen interviews with prominent British foreign correspondents and war correspondents from both press and television. The research methodology examines both qualitative semi-structured interviews and autobiographical texts. The thesis broadly finds firstly that BBC TV foreign correspondents advocate the most emotional detachment between self and Other. Secondly, most press journalists advocate a more subjective deployment of emotion attached to truth, in order to witness conflicts in a more participatory fashion. The press journalists tend to reject the objective model on moral and political grounds. Life narratives in autobiographical literature reveal a complex of objective, personal, ethical, compassionate and traumatic concerns. The culmination of all the material makes a strong case for understanding foreign correspondence as complex agency, a space 4 of contradictory demands between institutional constraints, moral loyalties, emotional attachments and autobiographical influences. 5 Contents LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................... 7 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..................................................................................................... 8 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................... 10 1.1: RESEARCH QUESTION ONE ............................................................................................... 11 1.2: RESEARCH QUESTION TWO ............................................................................................... 13 1.3: RESEARCH QUESTION THREE ............................................................................................. 16 1.4: RESEARCH QUESTION FOUR .............................................................................................. 18 1.5: RESEARCH QUESTION FIVE ............................................................................................... 20 1.6: CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................. 21 CHAPTER TWO: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK .................................................................. 24 2.1: PREVIOUS WORK ON JOURNALISM AND JOURNALISTIC AGENCY ................................................ 24 2.2: PRE-HABITUS JOURNALISTIC EXPERIENCE ............................................................................. 30 2.3: JOURNALISTIC PRACTICE AS OBJECTIVITY .............................................................................. 31 2.4: JOURNALISTIC TRAUMA .................................................................................................... 42 2.5: JOURNALISTIC ‘DISTANCE’, WITNESSING AND TIME ................................................................ 48 2.6: JOURNALISTIC COMPASSION .............................................................................................. 65 2.7: JOURNALISTIC AUTOBIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................ 79 2.8: COMPLEX AGENCY ........................................................................................................... 85 CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY .................................................................................. 89 3.1: LOCATION AND NUMBER OF INTERVIEWS ............................................................................. 90 3.2: SNOWBALL TECHNIQUE AND INSTITUTIONAL ISSUES .............................................................. 91 3.3: OUTSIDER ISSUES ............................................................................................................ 92 CHAPTER FOUR: INSTITUTIONAL ‘RULES OF THE GAME’ .................................................. 99 4.1: OBJECTIVITY ................................................................................................................. 100 4.2: HISTORY AND EMOTION ................................................................................................. 120 4.3: UNCONSCIOUS EMOTION ............................................................................................... 127 4.4: FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT AS OUTSIDER ........................................................................... 135 4.5: EMBEDDED JOURNALISM ................................................................................................ 140 4.6: CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................ 142 CHAPTER FIVE: TRAUMA ............................................................................................... 146 5.1: JOURNALISM AND TRAUMA ............................................................................................. 146 5.2: WITNESSING ................................................................................................................ 162 5.3: THE DART CENTRE FOR JOURNALISM AND TRAUMA ............................................................ 172 5.4: TIME .......................................................................................................................... 181 5.5: TRAUMA AND JOURNALISTIC PRACTICE .............................................................................. 187 CHAPTER SIX: EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENTS ................................................................... 194 6.1: PARTIALITY AND PREJUDICE ............................................................................................. 195 6.2: SENSORY JOURNALISM ................................................................................................... 216 6.3: PARACHUTE JOURNALISM ............................................................................................... 236 6.4: EXPERIENCE ................................................................................................................. 240 6.5: CELEBRITY JOURNALISTS ................................................................................................. 252 6.6: CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................ 256 6 CHAPTER SEVEN: LIFE NARRATIVES ............................................................................... 259 7.1: OTHER JOURNALISTIC RATIONALES FOR WRITING AUTOBIOGRAPHIES ...................................... 259 7.2: INTERVIEWEE RATIONALES FOR WRITING AUTOBIOGRAPHIES ................................................. 274 7.3: ANTHONY LOYD 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