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For the past five decades, media texts, broadcast over television air waves, have created a shared identity among viewing audiences. John B. Thompson notes that if culture is understood as “the ways in which meaningful expressions of various kinds are produced, constructed and received by individuals”, then mass media can be understood as central to the creation and maintenance of culture (pp. 122-23). The words and images that construct a media culture are the very building blocks of collective identity. As Michael Schudson observes, “news is part of the background through which and with which people think” (p. 16).
The Vanderbilt University Television News Archive provides an invaluable service to any scholar interested in studying the ways in which television news programming helps to shape American culture as well as global relations. In addition, the archive contains a rich treasure of resources for scholars of Middle Eastern Studies interested in contemporary history and media studies. In this short article, I will explore the utility of the
archive’s resources in light of my study of American news media and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, a case which is representative of the many possible uses of the archive.
As Gadi Wolfsfeld has written, “the news media have become a central arena for political conflicts” (p. 2). In the autumn of 1993 I began a study of the ways in which American television news had framed the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from 1969 to 1992. My goal was to see if there were observable changes in representations of antagonists, if the US media were biased in favor of Israel, if Palestinians had an authentic voice or were represented merely as terrorists. I was interested in determining whether or not the news media contributed to the conflict in any remarkable way, and to determine if the media cultures surrounding the conflict could be credited with shifting the ways in which people in the US and Israel/Palestine thought and acted towards one another. I called my analysis an exploration of “the diplomacy of popular culture” in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Were it not for the extensive holdings of the Vanderbilt Television News Archive, this study would not have been possible. The VTNA was established on August 5, 1968 through the initiative of Paul C. Simpson, an insurance executive, and a graduate of Vanderbilt University. According to John Lynch, the director of the Archive for over thirty years, Mr. Simpson established the archive for partisan reasons. He wanted to create documentation with which future scholars could study the ways in which the press smeared the reputation of former President Richard Nixon. Although Mr. Simpson contributed large sums of money to establish the archive, the VTNA has never received an endowment, and must rely upon the generosity of donors, as well as support from Vanderbilt University. In lean years, Vanderbilt University must contribute the bulk of the
archive’s operating budget. The archive is also supported by the fees that it charges for use, although director Lynch notes that for academic users, who constitute the bulk of the clientele, fees for services are levied at the cost of service, described in more detail below.
The holdings of the archive include every American television news broadcast from CBS, NBC and ABC Nightly News, including commercials. The commercials and news segments speak volumes about the history and social changes experienced by American society and international affairs. Also present in the collection are hundreds of hours of special news programming, including a full range of in-depth news coverage of Middle Eastern affairs, such as the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Energy Crisis, the Iranian hostage crisis, the Intifada, the Gulf War, and more. In January of 1989, the Archive began taping CNN primetime news, and began abstracting CNN news broadcasts in October, 1995. I spent two years in the archive studying the wealth of materials dealing with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. I watched every news segment that was three minutes or longer, addressed some aspect of Palestinian-Israeli relations, and fell between my target dates, 1969 and 1992. In the end I was able to make a video recording for future use, of the thirty or so news segments (of the hundreds I watched) which best represented the meanings and implications of US participation in the media relations of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. I have used this tape, still on loan from the news archive, in my classes, in my publications, and in lectures I have given around the country. Audiences agree that moving pictures bring history to life in a meaningful way. I find that I learn new things about Palestinian-Israeli relations each time I watch the compilation. The tape itself constitutes a piece of history, as it reflects history in the making.
There are several ways to use the resources at the VTNA. If one is not able to travel to the archive, located in Nashville, Tennessee on the Vanderbilt University Campus, then the archive maintains a web site, where all the holdings are abstracted. Abstracts are available for key word searches, or can be searched by date and/or network. Director Lynch said that the site has received over 750,000 hits from computers around the world since the web site's inception in 1995. The bulk of users are US nationals. The address is http://tvnews.-vanderbilt.edu. Available on-line are directories to over thirty-thousand individual network evening news broadcasts and over nine-thousand hours of special news-related programming. From the abstracts, one can learn valuable information, including: the date on which key media events occurred, the amount of time dedicated to a particular issue by each network, the order of news coverage (which indicates something about importance), as well as comparative views of how each network treated a particular news story. For each day's news broadcast, a second by second run-down of coverage is present, as well as a brief description of what was reported. For example, on December 7, 1998, ABC News ran a story on the Intifada. It lasted for four minutes, ten seconds, and occurred in the first ten minutes of the evening news broadcast. The summary provided in the abstracts appears as follows:
ABC Evening News for Dec. 7, 1989
4min. 10sec. Israel/Palestinian Intifada
5:42:30-4:46:40
(S. Peter Jennings) Re-establishment of curfew in Israeli-Occupied territory of Gaza on second anniversary of Intifada noted. Rept. introduced.
(Gaza Strip: Dean Reynolds) Rept. from refugee camp in which Intifada began featured; scenes shown from streets and alleys of camp (Palestinian-says Intifada became part of our lives) (Artist Fahti Ghapin-describes his art) Killing of so-called collaborators by fellow Palestinians mentioned. (Palestinian comments) Palestinians' statements about their cause given.
With these detailed story-level descriptions, scholars can determine which segments they might want to tape, and then request compilations through the mail. When making requests for compilations, scholars make lists of the date, time, and title of the segments. A sample form for a compilation request is available
on-line at http://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/sampord.html.
One hour of compilation taping costs $180. Billing is done in twenty minute increments, and starts at $60, for the minimum of twenty minutes of compilation. The cost reflects not the price of the cassette, which is minimal, but rather the highly labor intensive process of retrieving the 3/4 inch tapes on which broadcasts are stored, locating the segment from among the hundreds stored on the tape, and making the copy, which involves a change in standards from 3/4 inch to VHS. If one is fortunate enough to have direct access to the archive, as I did for two years, then one can pay $10 an hour to view segments in person, which is also labor intensive. The price for one hour of duplication is only $60, a third of the price for compilation, which is most appropriate for copying news specials. Since the Archive is prohibited by law from ‘selling’ copyrighted material, the Archive ‘loans’ tapes of broadcasts, whether duplication or compilation. Loans can be renewed indefinitely.
Contacting the archive is quite simple. One can do so by email at: tvnews@tvnews.-vanderbilt.edu, by phone at (615) 322-2927, or by fax at (615) 343-8250. The address of the archive, should you be in the Nashville area, is:
Vanderbilt Television News Archive
Vanderbilt University
110 21st Ave. South, Suite 704
Nashville, TN 37203.
Bibliography
Schudson, Michael. (1995). The Power of News. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Thompson, John B. (1990). Ideology and Modern Culture: Critical Social Theory in the Era of Mass
Communications. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Wolfsfeld, Gadi. (1997). Media and Political Conflict: News From the Middle
East. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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