The media
The lying image
Paul Johnson
The visual image, as has often been pointed out in this column, can be made to lie as effectively as words — more SO, in fact. TV is potentially a much more dishonest medium than the press, and is Often so in practice, particularly in current affairs documentary, Photos can be made to lie, too, by deliberate falsification in retouching, painting out and cutting; or, more subtly, by selection. The first to use these techniques on a large scale was the regime in Soviet Russia, and their methods Were subsequently copied by the Nazis. Stalin had Trotsky painted out of a famous Photo of Lenin orating; and the false Picture is, I believe, still in use in Russia today.
In an article in last week's New States- "Ian, entitled 'The Abuse of Picture Pow- er', Caroline Rees seems to suggest that the tendentious use of photographs to distort reality is confined to mass- Circulation newspapers and is used exclu- sively against the Labour Party, strikers, and similar objects of right-wing malice. She instances the photo of Arthur Scargill appearing to give the Nazi salute. This of Course was an absolutely honest photo- graph, in that it was not cropped, re- touched or otherwise heightened to make a Political point. The decision taken by some Papers to use it might be called a political °Ile; but then the decision not to use it (as taken by the Daily Mirror, whose political editor is quoted as saying 'at a time of industrial unrest . . . we certainly thought !hat was not an opportune moment to do 't • .') was also a political decision. It could be argued that Scargill habitually uses mass support to obtain his ends by fnrce, as he did at Saltley in 1972 with great success, and as he is attempting to do in the present coal strike; that his relationship, as leader, with his following of violent young cmen, is highly emotional, and that there- lore the 'salute' photo did not really give a
misleading impression at all.
In any case, the idea that only right-wing papers misuse photos is absurd. Any pub- lication which employs words for tenden- tious purposes is likely to use photos in exactly the same way. If you want blatant examples from the Left, you can find them any day in the sectarian papers displayed in Charing Cross Road. The New Statesman is not above this sort of thing itself: in its issue of 21 September, for instance, it printed a photo evidently intended to suggest that mounted police habitually attack defenceless, half-naked people.
There is also the type of photo which misleads not with any distinct political purpose in mind but to make a social point which is altogether too neat. An example occurred last week on the front page of the Guardian, after the anarchist 'Stop the City' demo: a City gent, with bowler, rolled umbrella and briefcase appeared to be lecturing a group of punks. The Guar- dian caption began: 'This confrontation between a City gentleman and a group of punks symbolised the clash of cultures yesterday'. Did it? I was in the City last week, and I didn't see a single gent wearing a bowler hat; they are an endangered species. If you actually look at the people who work in the City, you find they are dressed in exactly the same way as people who work in any other part of London, or any other big town. The stereotyped 'City gent' is now as rare as punks, and no more representative of the middle class than the punks are of British youth. So there was no clash of cultures at all. Looking closely at the 'City gentleman' I noticed that he was carrying a little black book, and another photo of him in the Times confirmed my suspicions that the book is 'God's book' and that the City gent is a revivalist preacher, often to be seen in those parts, haranguing embarrassed City workers at lunchtime. It is my belief that the deliberately tendentious use of photos has no effect except to reinforce the prejudices of the converted, which is why the device is so often employed by sectarian rags. Popular newspapers are unlikely to get away with it, at any rate on important issues, because the readers can check their impression from what they see on the TV news bulletins. Of course TV news distorts too, on occasions, but over a time it tends to give a true impression of recurrent phe- nomena: how Scargill behaves at miners' rallies, for instance, or how mounted police are used, and what happens when a mass picket collides with police. Readers of the popular papers which printed the Scargill 'salute' photo actually saw him giving it on the TV bulletins the evening before; so they could make up their own minds. The same corrective applied to another instance cited by Caroline Rees: photos of Michael Foot which made him look like an eccentric old gentleman. But that was how the TV cameras showed him too, because that is what he is. The electorate rejected him not because he was old or eccentric but because they didn't like his policies. After all, the people took to their hearts another eccentric old gentle- man in 1940 because in this instance his policies were what they wanted.
TV usually conveys the truth about major public personalities over a period of prolonged exposure. It eventually told the truth, both good and bad, about Harold Macmillan and Harold Wilson; it told the truth about Michael Foot; it is beginning to tell the truth about Margaret Thatcher, again both good and bad. It certainly tells the truth, what there is of it, about Scargill. What I'm not so sure about is whether it gives an accurate impression of the charac- ters of individuals who, for a brief period, flit into the public gaze and then disappear again into obscurity. I am thinking of a programme shown last Thursday evening on ITV. This was a 'TV Eye' investigation into the suspension, by a left-wing Labour council, of the Chief Constable of Der- byshire, for an alleged misuse of public funds — on the face of it a trumped-up charge because they didn't like police handling of the miners' strike. The three chief protagonists came over strongly. The Chief Constable struck me as a difficult, possibly irascible man, but honest, consci- entious and professional. The Labour lead- er, David Bookbinder, appeared clever, evasive and not to be trusted. Harry Lowe, chairman of the police committee, and himself a striking miner, struck me as unpleasant. These impressions may be misleading, partly because people under the pressure of a TV inquiry do 'not necessarily behave normally, and partly because one may be misled into the wrong snap judgments by one's own prejudices.
The programme gave me a great deal of food for thought; I found its implications disturbing for a number of reasons, and I intend to return to the subject.
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