Page 349 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

| Parachute Journal sm: Internat onal News Report ng

ConCLusion
Compelling visual imagery enriches the lives of the public in many ways.
Significant issues are enhanced through photojournalism when they convey in-
formation and knowledge, and edify the public. They bring global communities
together when disasters strikes and they can help mobilize international relief
efforts. The best visual documentation is contextualized within a news frame
that depicts and enhances working solutions and civic engagement.

see also Advertising and Persuasion; Alternative Media in the United States;
Bias and Objectivity; Celebrity Worship and Fandom; Disabilities and the Media;
Hypercommercialism; Journalists in Peril; Media and Electoral Campaigns;
Media Literacy; Parachute Journalism; Presidential Stagecraft and Militainment;
Propaganda Model; Sensationalism, Fear Mongering, and Tabloid Media; Tour-
ism and the Selling of Cultures; World Cinema.

Further reading: Berger, John. About Looking. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980; Berger,
John, and John Mohr. Another Way of Telling. New York: Pantheon Books, 1982; Butler,
Judith. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. New York: Verso, 2004;
Evans, Harold. Eyewitness: 25 Years through World Press Photos. New York: William
Morrow, 1980; Marshall, David P. Celebrity Culture Reader. New York: Routledge, 2006;
Messaris, Paul. Visual Persuasion: The Role of Images in Advertising. Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage Publications, 1997; Moeller, Susan. Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell
Disease Famine War and Death. New York: Routledge, 1999; Newhall, Beaumont. The
History of Photography. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1982; Sontag, Susan. On
Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977; Sontag, Susan. Regarding the
Pain of Others. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003.
Robin Andersen

ParaChute JournalisM: international
news rePorting
As a term, “parachute journalism” invokes both the exciting image of the
scribe coming to the rescue from the sky and the pejorative notion of the un-
prepared neophyte landing over his head in a big story abroad, but in fact it in-
volves a broad assortment of practices that share the characteristic of a reporter
covering news in a place other than the ones in which he or she has experience.
That defines much of journalism, from high-profile coverage of major wars and
events of global significance, to local reporters who drive from their usual beat
to encounter regional events where little reportage normally occurs. To the ex-
tent that an increase in parachute journalism reflects a decreased commitment
by even prestigious news operations to maintaining staff in foreign bureaus,
the phenomenon deserves some of the opprobrium commonly directed its way.
But compared with foregoing coverage altogether, or leaving it to wire services
alone, there is something to recommend the practice, especially where it is done
with care and forethought, and where it is properly supported with local
resources.