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Una herramienta de trabajoMuchas veces estás tan metido en un tema que los árboles no te dejan ver el bosque. Necesitas que te ayude una mirada externa. La mayoría de las preguntas que se formulan en el libro surgen de un instrumento que fabriqué para que las reuniones de seguimiento de reportaje del “Línea 900” fueran lo más eficaces posible. El test lo pasábamos tres veces, una al inicio, otra al final y la última antes de entrar en la sala de edición y, lógicamente, centrábamos la atención más en algunas preguntas que en otras según la fase del proceso de trabajo. No tuve que imponerlo, mis compañeros lo asumieron como una ayuda a su labor y venían a la reunión con el tema muy profundizado.
Criterios de selección de temas. De manera básica, se pretende que un reportaje cumpla el mayor número de las siguientes condiciones:
a.- Que aporte cosas nuevas, especialmente noticias. b.- Que explique una historia. c.- Que esta historia sea capaz de provocar el posicionamiento del espectador. d.- Que sea susceptible de estimular la participación de la audiencia. e.- Que tenga imagen, que pasen cosas ante la cámara.
1. - Resuma la idea inicial del tema en una frase y busque el título provisional. (Esto se repetirá al final del test, así que ahora escriba su primera impresión)
Título provisional: .................................................................................... Es un reportaje sobre: ........................................................................................................
(Si la frase y el título no casan, no siga, vuelva a documentarse y centre el tema.)
2. - ¿El tema trata de personas vivas y tangibles? sí no
3.- ¿Cómo representaremos aquellas personas muertas o ausentes?, - con material de archivo - con actores - otros...
4.- ¿Trata acaso de animales, seres vivos o materias relacionadas directamente con las personas?
4.1.- ¿Cómo se materializa esta relación?
5.- ¿Cree que el tema provocará el posicionamiento del espectador? sí no 5.1.- Porque le afecta o se va a sentir directamente implicado como persona, ciudadano o consumidor. 5.2.- No le afecta directamente, pero puede identificarse o compararse con el personaje con alguna de las partes. 5.3.- No le afecta ni se identifica, pero tendrá la sensación de haber descubierto algo que era desconocido para él.
6.- ¿Levantaremos noticia respecto a este tema? sí no
6.1.- ¿Cuál es la noticia? ............................................................................................................................. 7.- ¿Se trata quizás de la descripción de algo ya sabido pero que se verá por primera vez en televisión? sí no
8.- ¿Hay conflicto? ninguno uno los siguientes y entre las siguientes partes: ............................................................................................................................
9.- ¿De entre todos, cuál es el conflicto principal? ............................................................................................................................
10.- ¿Cómo se manifiesta o expresa este conflicto? ............................................................................................................................
11.- Tras haberlo analizado, ¿cual cree usted que debería ser la solución o la orientación de este conflicto?
12.- ¿Sobre la base de qué opiniones autorizadas y emitibles puede sustentar esta tesis?
13.- ¿Cree usted que su tesis concuerda con la línea editorial de la empresa?
14.- Escriba una lista con las ideas importantes que, de acuerdo a la pregunta anterior, podría o debería explicar.
15.- ¿Cuál es la idea principal?
16.- Las demás ideas importantes, ¿refuerzan la idea principal? ¿Hay alguna/s que pueda/n llevarnos hacia otros vericuetos?
17.- Trate de eliminarlas. (No es obligatorio, pero si quita una pata y se aguanta la mesa, la pata sobraba.)
18.- Parece que ya tiene clara la idea que quiere transmitir: vamos a poner todos los elementos narrativos en función de esta idea.
19.- ¿Quién será el protagonista del reportaje?
20.- ¿Y el antagonista?
21.- Este antagonista, ¿es tangible o intangible?
21.1.- Si es intangible ¿cómo lo representaremos?
22.- ¿Cómo se relacionan el protagonista y el antagonista?
23.- ¿Puede resumir los diferentes puntos de vista de las dos partes?
23.1.- Para el protagonista.....
23.2.- Sin embargo, el antagonista.....
24.- ¿Qué fases del proceso retrataremos?
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25.- ¿Qué iremos a buscar al lugar de los hechos?
26.- ¿Que tipo de cosas verá la cámara? - Acciones - Emociones - Entorno 27.- Si la explicación se basa en imágenes de archivo, ¿cuál será nuestra aportación?
28.- ¿Quién o qué será el hilo conductor del reportaje?
29 .- ¿Qué relación habrá entre el hilo conductor y los demás elementos del reportaje?
30.- ¿Qué sector de los espectadores será especialmente receptivo a los contenidos de este reportaje?
31.- Ya tiene definido su objetivo. Indique ahora las sensaciones que quiere causar en el espectador.
32.- ¿Qué tratamiento de imagen y sonido puede ser el más adecuado para conseguir el efecto deseado?
33.- ¿Cree que con las evidencias que va reuniendo en su trabajo de campo el espectador sacará conclusiones por sí mismo? Si es así, trate de eliminar la aparición de expertos no directamente implicados en los hechos.
34.- ¿Cuál es la conclusión que extraerá entonces el espectador?
35.- ¿Coincide con su tesis? Si no es así, revíselo todo.
36.- Hecho esto, ¿para cuántos minutos cree que da el reportaje sin que ceda la atención del espectador?
37.- Vuelva a escribir el resumen del tema y el título provisional, cuidando de especificar los tópicos del ejemplo. “X, persona de tales características y de tal lugar, afronta desde tal momento tal dilema o dificultad provocada por tal persona o circunstancia y tras estos esfuerzos o sufrimientos, la cosa queda de tal manera...”
Sinopsis: ”....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Título: “.........................................................................................”.
Verdades de un día.
La Justicia tiene su propia verdad basada en un procedimiento estricto. Sólo son válidas las pruebas que encajan en este procedimiento. Seguramente el juez condena al acusado a pesar de tener el convencimiento personal de que no es culpable, pero la verdad jurídica es la que es en un momento dado. Los científicos tienen su propia verdad basada en el método científico. Lo que es verdad hoy puede dejar de serlo mañana si nuevas evidencias encajan en el procedimiento adecuado.
El periodismo hace también su aproximación a la verdad. Y por eso tiene una metodología y unos principios deontológicos que deben cumplirse. La nuestra es una verdad de un día. Es poca cosa, pero ya es mucho.
De hecho, la objetividad y la mujer del César tienen mucho en común: es tan importante ser honesto como parecerlo. Las formas son muy importantes. Además de estar bien contrastados, nuestros trabajos tienen que mantener una escrupulosa apariencia de objetividad (han leído bien, apariencia: por más que cumplas el estricto procedimiento de trabajo exigible al periodista, siempre llegas a la conclusión de que la objetividad es inhumana). En esta tesitura, lo más honesto es mostrar las cartas de la subjetividad desde el primer momento y decir: os explicaré cómo veo yo esta situación que he vivido.
Amparándonos en la objetividad, muchas veces los periodistas evitamos decir quién es el malo aunque tengamos plena conciencia de ello. ¿Eso es objetividad o es miedo?
ISBN: 978-84-475-3119-6
Un reportaje escrito es... un género periodístico basado en el testimonio directo de hechos y situaciones que explica con palabras, desde una perspectiva actual, historias vividas por personas y las relaciona con su contexto.
El reportaje de televisión es... un género periodístico basado en el testimonio directo de acciones espontáneas que explica con imágenes, palabras y sonidos, y desde una perspectiva actual, historias vividas por personas relacionándolas con su contexto.
La gran diferencia entre ambas definiciones es que el discurso audiovisual obliga al reportero a estar físicamente y de forma imperativa en el lugar de los hechos y a buscar acciones que comporten imágenes sobre las que articulará su narración.
Extract from chapter one: (starting from second paragraph page 23)
Many people call any piece longer than a news item a report and this can cause confusion. If we could agree on our terminology both citizens (viewers) and professionals would benefit. In any case, the purpose of this book is not to define terminology but to provide some methodology to help us to do our work the best we can while at the same time enjoying still it as much as possible, in the end a reporter lives as many lives as reports he makes.
A written report is: A journalistic genre based on the witness account of events and situations that explain events lived by people in relation to their context from a current perspective.
A television report is: A journalistic genre based on the witness account of spontaneous actions that explains in images, words and sounds events lived by people and in relation to their context from a current perspective.
The big difference between the two definitions is that for the audiovisual text the reporter must be physically on the scene and looking for the actions that will provide the images on which to base his narrative.
Starting from section entitled “Beauty is the purging of superfluities.”
The first step towards finding out the essence is to question and ask yourself questions. Michelangelo, who was showered with praise as a sculptor, always answered in the same way; that he simply removed the unnecessary bits from the block of marble. In the same way that Michelangelo cleaned out the marble with his chisel, the reporter cleans out the truth with his questions. Michelangelo’s chisel removed the unnecessary marble; we should remove the unnecessary information.
We are paid to provide criteria, not just information
Nowadays there is nothing easier than gathering information; what is difficult is separating the grain from the chaff. The best way to confuse journalists isn’t to avoid them but to drown them in information. To follow the trail you have to continually ask yourself questions. The answer to each one will lead us to the relation between the events we are uncovering and the context that gave rise to them. This is the basis of the journalistic methodology for approaching the truth.
If we could talk to Parmenides we would tell him that the essence isn’t so much behind the appearance of things but more in the relation between things. The reporter’s job is to establish the relation between the events that take place in a particular context. In the case of a TV reporter the problem lies in finding the way to show the events and explain the relationship by correctly using audiovisual resources.
In detective films both the uniformed policeman and the detective are on the scene of the crime; they both look but only one sees. The detective makes connections, associates ideas and relates situations to one another. This is exactly what we are talking about; looking beyond appearances, the status quo is of no interest to the detective. The powers that be want pleasant portraits from close up, not interrogations – they want to concentrate on functions and not dysfunctions. This is not the intelligent view we are looking for.
Extract from chapter 2
News is any new alteration in the order of things that could become a point of reference for society. I would have preferred to have said that news is anything that can affect the material, emotional or intellectual lives of people, but I admit that this is too restrictive. It is probably the crazy dream of thinking that the avalanche of “news” might decline thus allowing journalists to spend more time getting deeper into really important things that made me say it. All communities live in a constant state of transformation just because of the natural processes of life. People are born, grow up, reproduce and die leaving some kind of work behind. Each one of these steps touches those that live it, but why isn’t every wedding news? Because not everybody has the same social relevance, not everybody is a reference for others. This is the root of the desire for fame of many people; wanting to be a reference for others, and this is the power of television.
A personal change isn’t news if it isn’t going to become a model or a positive or negative reference for the community. It goes without saying that all news should be verified by the journalist and better still, by third parties. Rumours are not news, neither is gossip or maliciousness.
There are news items which are like volcanoes; suddenly the ground shakes, the sky clouds over and thunder rolls. Any natural social or scientific change that produces an event is publishable; it doesn’t matter whether it is a new product or a petition signed. However, sometimes you have to dig a bit deeper for it to bear fruit; sometimes the story is there but doesn’t quite come out. You have to find something to hang it on, something that introduces the news item and shows its newsworthy side. Put another way, you can’t publish the news without the headline and at least the photo.
Extract from Chapter 2 ISBN: 978-84-475-3119-6.
McClurg (film director) was the first person to assert that the importance of news increased in inverse proportion to the distance between the receptor and the event being reported. This is known as McClurg’s principle but if we bear in mind the world distribution of information we should talk about McClurg’s Paradox and this would read, “the importance of a news item increases in inverse proportion to the distance between the event and the United States of America.” A frog race in Ohio is more interesting than a Guinness record in Rome, to avoid having to say, and this pains me, that a dead rich man is more interesting than a hundred dead poor people. Look at this in relation to the diagram of the pyramid “Who Deserves most Media Attention?” Many people believe that it what happens in their country is “provincial” and what happens in America is “fashionable”. Add to this the availability of images (the big agencies for audiovisual material are based in the Emglish speaking world) and this means that it is cheap and easy to get the frogs on the news and so the public get used to accepting that what happens in the USA is news, the land where dreams come true. The disproportion is obvious, the richer a country is (but not the more cultivated) the less interest events in other countries have for its population. But there are other effects:
Television follows the newspapers. The bigger the headlines the more minutes the bosses want to dedicate to the story. The importance and order of the news items comes to us as determined by the newspapers. The television bosses have little confidence in their own criteria and don’t dare not to broadcast what is in the papers, whether the topic is televisual or not. What is more, when in doubt most bosses will obey what the papers say rather than the journalist criteria. Every country has its undisputed newspaper “bible” but it is more and more frequently obvious that the papers also march to the beat of another drum: that of official sources.
The “Cyclists Pack” Effect Journalists suffer from a particular form of a universal phenomenon that we can call “enter the chorus singing and dancing”, this involves everyone doing the same thing at the same time. At least this means that nobody gets it wrong, or better said, it means we’ll all get it wrong together. This is a product of the virus of mediocrity and a lack of criteria and personality to defend an independent personal viewpoint of journalism. One expression of this is the irresistible power that press conferences hold over section editors. The television doesn’t go because it is an intrinsically televisual subject, but it goes to avoid anyone asking the middle manager, “Why aren’t we covering this?” The result is increasing uniformity, the frameworks of different news programmes are identical, you can channel surf between all the channels without noticing the difference; they are all doing the same thing simultaneously. What is more, the excerpts of interviews are the same. The journalists on the scene agree on the information so that they don’t contradict each other. The plurality of information now consists of transmitting the same message on various channels and not of having diverse points of view.
The “World Day” Effect This adds to the lack of originality, the institutionalization – and thus the neutralization – of anything unpleasant for society. AIDS shocked us in the first instance, it made us reflect on sexual relations, homosexuality and solidarity; now it is sufficient to wear a red ribbon for one day a year. The same thing happens with the “Working Woman” or the “Third World”, one day a year talking about them is enough. There are more world days than days in the year, in fact, each news desk could have and editor exclusively dedicated to the innocuous world days. Curiously though, although the date is known a year in advance, the news item pertaining to today’s world day is improvised and is treated much the same way in all the media.
The “Solomon” Effect This consists of sharing the time strictly between political parties and institutions while never forgetting the maxim “he who pays the piper calls the tune”. The split made will never take into account the effect of the event in question on the members of society but rather on the screen quota owed to each party on public -funded television. The worst thing you could do is not to broadcast the declarations of a politician interviewed. It doesn’t matter if he didn’t say anything of any interest or that he said it badly. It must be shown or he’ll accuse you of boycott and call the management.
The “Saturation” Effect All of a sudden a burning question disappears from the news (just look at the cases of Ruanda or Somalia for example). Somebody has decided that it is not longer important because the public have got tired of it and you hear no more of it. It is worn out, old-hat and nobody talks about it, as if people could be last season’s fashion. Eventually, much like the River Guadiana, (a desert river) which appears and disappears, the topic can pop up intermittently but it is more likely that it will end up lost in memory and especially so if it is about the third world.
The “Skating” Effect This consists of gliding over the top of things without ever going deeper. Research is not only expensive but it can bring up uncomfortable truths. Topics are chosen so nobody can accuse us of hushing them up but without us having to dig into them.
There are some especially problematic topics which are easy to cover up but if they do need some coverage then things will go badly. One of the characteristics of journalism is that three phases of the process are never explained: posing the question, crux of the problem and the outcome. Following a topic through time and watching how things evolve or comparing what somebody says now with what they said before is no longer in fashion. Providing a historical memory is seen as stirring up old disputes, why should we delve into the past?
The “Lectern” Effect Press conferences where you can’t ask questions are getting more and more common. The journalists’ only mission there is to point the microphone. In a conflict situation the press have no rights to be on the front line “for your own safety” (in fact not even on the front at all). You are to work solely on the images and declarations (but not interviews) handed out.
Antidotes to these effects
For McClurg; local pride, because local can also be global. For “Hamelin” a maxim; what is good for the newspaper is not necessarily good for the television. For the “Cyclists’ pack”; look for your own distinctive information. For the “World Day”, remember that every day is good for talking about things that affect us. For “Saturation” think about whether what we convert into news will affect the lives of people. For “Skating”; research, consistency and historical memory and for the “Lectern”, just use journalism.
Extract 3 from Chapter 3 (Once upon a time .../ , page 63)
It is relatively easy to identify the protagonist as there is always somebody who catches our attention. The difficulty lies in deciding who the antagonist is; obviously this is only possible if we have correctly identified the underlying latent conflict.
Let us take the case of somebody who wants to stop smoking. Who is the protagonist? Why, he himself. And who is the antagonist? Some of us will say, “Tobacco”, while others will say, “the tobacco companies”. If his objective is to stop smoking the protagonist and antagonist are the same person, he and his guilt-desire cycle. A cigarette can’t be the opponent for the simple reason that it doesn’t speak or do anything, it is an inanimate object. It is the object onto which the protagonist projects his desire. The packet of tobacco could be the thread running through a story called “The Last Pack” because, as it gets emptier it gives us a very graphic picture of the process.
Imagine the dilemma of the woman who wants to get pregnant but has serious problems giving up smoking even though she knows that tobacco is bad for the future child. If she wants to accuse the tobacco companies of her addiction then we must find an antagonist in the tobacco company. The opponent is not the brand (like the cigarette the brand can’t talk except through advertisements). We have to find somebody who represents it. We need the antagonist to speak and take human form. If we can’t get access to a representative of the company we have to take an indirect route; advertisements, documents, letters or interviews in the media – in fact anything, but we will lose vividness.
But obviously, we can present two conflicts at once, internal and external. The previously mentioned future mother suffers an internal and personal anxiety and presents a social conflict. Our job is to adequately identify the contradictions and find a way that lets us combine both conflicts or highlight one of them. A conflict needs two sides, but one of them has to be a person
If we do a report on abuse of animals, the dog must be the co-protagonist given the need for somebody to speak for him and interpret how he feels. His owner can rationalize, the dog can’t. If we decided to give the dog a voice and speak for him we would be entering into fiction, a resource that helps us to imagine how the animal feels. But “imagine” is not a function of a journalist, who, anyway always has the door of “creative documentary” open to him.
Extract from chapter 4 (page 71)
From my point of view there are two main types of stories in the field of reports and documentaries: The conflict The find or discovery
The Conflict Conflict, that is to say disagreement between two sides or the fight of a protagonist with himself creates the plot on which to base the narration. It responds to three basic questions; Who? Against whom? and “Why?”.But the other “W”s,or key questions of journalism: When? How? and Where? also have a part to play.
The discovery starts from the premise that what we are showing is new for the spectator, either because it has never been seen or is rare, or because it is being seen from a new point of view. It answers two basic questions; “What has been discovered?” and “Who discovered it?”. Logically we also have to resolve the why, when and where. The find and the conflict are not mutually exclusive, far from it, they can occur simultaneously in many reports. The portrait has to uncover and show up the essential features of a subject or collective’s personality traits. It is particularly characterised by encouraging subjectivity, whether it is that of the subject or the narrator. The basic question is “What is the person being portrayed like?
Conflict, find and portrait can be combined in some special cases but it is most likely that if an idea doesn’t have a minimum of one of these elements “it is not a suitable topic”.
There are two types of conflict Extract , Chapter 4 (Types of stories page 74) Like a snooker player, the director of a documentary has to anticipate the consequences of the force he applies to his focus. The shot doesn’t only hit the ball he is aiming at but also others, in this way the reporter works with two types of conflict:
internal, between the protagonist and antagonist in the report or which is the result of intimate contradictions on the part of the protagonists, or external, which occur when there is a contrast between the content of the report and the opinions of the viewer because of religious, political, ethical, cultural or any other values important to him.
It is important to remember that any conflict between the values exposed in the report and those of the viewer are a resource that call attention and provoke a moral stand but they do not advance the storyline. In the section on “Selection Criteria for Topics” will look more closely at the relation between conflict and the report.
Vertical and Horizontal Topics Extract from Chapter 4 Types of stories, page 77 My father, a fitter by trade, always said that to do a precision job well you had to work with both hands on the vertical of the matter. There are topics which automatically fit into the “vertical of the matter”. They are the topics that have the way in and the outcome of the process clearly defined.
A vertical topic is a unique event, not repeatable and generally a news item that takes place on a particular day or short period of time and which sweeps the protagonists towards a conclusion. As it means something special to them, the protagonists are always going to be more concerned with the events than with the camera. It is absolutely not an ordinary day but very much a special day. Vertical topics include: championships, events, most rituals, all types of catastrophes, elections, competitions, exams, and of course parties and such like, performances, strikes and demonstrations and so on.
Horizontal topics, if we define them by contrasting them with the vertical ones, have no leit-motiv or process that fixes them in time and shapes the action. They can be scattered across time or themes so the journalist has to be very clear about what he wants because one of the key phases (posing the question, crux of the problem and outcome) might be missing. Just because a topic is firmly stuck in a particular period of time doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t horizontal. The timing must drive the resolution one way or another or open up a sensation of suspense. If you take a normal, even if it is a representative, day in the life of a particular community, for example the deaf, the time element doesn’t add anything to the storyline, it is just a formality (why one day and not a weekend?). The following are horizontal topics: reports, tourist routes, most portraits of people and most topics of documentaries and so on. So to the x axis of conflict/no conflict we must add the y axis of vertical/horizontal topic. (When we place a topic on the graph of a news story we need to consider the x axis of conflict/no conflict and the y axis of verticality/horizontality.)
(from Chapter 6) (page 103)
TV’s strong points Catching the attention of the audience is the fundamental principle behind all acts of communication; it is the start of the process. We have to do everything possible for those watching us to maintain the audience’s interest so that they end up satisfied because they have understood it all. To do this it is vital to have the following principle very clear:
The domain of television is the definite and that which can be shown in images; its weak point is abstract concepts and intangible phenomena.
Television can’t transmit the smell of things, a person can say, “That smells nice,” or “That smells nasty”, or “What a smell!”, but if a person says “It smells,” we are dependent on their body language. If their expression is good the smell will be good, if they look disgusted it will be unpleasant. Smell is intangible for TV. There are many other concepts impossible to portray. The more abstract an idea, the more we need people and the subjectivity of their impressions. You have to bear this in mind, not only when choosing the topic, but also in the way you ask questions or appear in front of the camera in a report in the first person.
(See graph below) Action and Emotion, Screen Magnets On the following scale the capacity for attraction of the TV message is shown graphically, leaving aside any reinforcement we can add to each shot to make it more attractive such as music.
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Scale of interest of TV messages
There is no need to say that moving shots (where things happen) attract the attention of the viewer more easily than still shots, so any content will be more communicative if something is happening on the screen. When people are doing the actions the interest increases. The dullest of lists can be a bit more palatable if the person listing has expressive body language.
When it comes to animals, the more humanized they are, the more likeable they appear in our imagination: a dolphin, or a monkey awaken more interest than a praying mantis. The capacity of television to attract reaches its peak thanks to movement. You only have to watch a football match; most of the moves are similar and with a bit of luck there is a goal every 45 minutes but they attract more audiences than the radio. No fan that has a TV at hand will stop watching it, even if he is listening on the radio. The action is captivating.
Here we accept that abstract concepts are impossible to portray mentally with an image (the cryptic language of law or science, the names of people we don’t know etc.). The other scale on the graph is subjectivity. The more interpretive or personal a declaration is, the more value it adds. Subjectivity provokes the viewer to agree or disagree and this heightens his attention.
Lists Of all the possible declarations, the least televisual is the listing of abstract concepts; for example “As first stated by Rodriguez and Smith in ‘The Month of May’ and corroborated in ‘Summer in the Monegros’” is deathly dull.
Objective listing is that relating to objects or things you can represent mentally. This factory produces 45,989 three-inch screws and 4,689 two-inch screws every day. This is unbearable but perhaps a little less so because we can imagine the shape of a screw and we understand that they make more large screws than small ones (all the same its thrilling, isn’t it?). Subjective listing is not very common because to introduce an evaluation the speaker tends to justify it with an explanation.
Chapter 7 ("El espíritu del reportaje", page 111 ) ISBN: 978-84-475-3119-6.
Introductory note on the flow diagram
The questions I always ask myself before giving the green light to a topic are those in the flow diagram below. As language is consecutive we are obliged to put them in order but any one of them could be the first question.
The first thing we have to think about as journalists is creating news, because if a report creates news it is doubly interesting; it will have repercussions in other programmes and other areas of the media. Not all news can be converted into a report of reasonable length but news is the essential raw material for news services.
Afterwards we will see what comes out, if it is a short news item or a report or debate, but this is already of merit because it is not easy to detect new news items so we already have something of value. I agree that every news item should be new per se but all of us know that a good part of the news consists of variations of a few old and redundant bits of information. If, in the course of our research, we have sniffed out a news item the best advice is to reorient the report to give the news the visibility it deserves.
Often, although we haven’t created news we know that it will become news at some point. Daily news programmes look for excuses or hangers to justify showing a report (because there is a congress, a world day etc) but in spaces reserved for reports this has little importance; it is a topic because the programme says so.
So if we start with a known news item.../
Do we include a new point of view? Can we amplify or enrich the information?
As a reporter gains a taste for audiovisual narrative he runs the risk of giving less importance to journalism because he believes that the main contribution lies in the treatment. Big mistake. For sure there is something new compared with what we thought we knew a few hours earlier. Nothing is changeless, new information or new witnesses can always appear. If he doesn’t look for them nobody in his team will do it for him. The answer to at least one of the two initial questions always has to be yes.
Things are not really important news until they are on the telly.
If you get the first film footage of something covered in other branches of the media – then go ahead. The contribution of images is an important element. A photo in the paper is not the same as a sequence. We must not forget that TV is the most important social reference known, in other words, please go on.
A clause that guarantees a safe bet for a report is a positive answer to this question:
Does it contain Conflict?
If the topic contains conflict then we are doing well, as we have seen, life revolves around continual resolution of conflicts which generate more contradictions. If we know how to detect them and isolate them then we will see beyond initial appearances.
The same way that Diogenes looked for the man with the lamp, you should look for conflict. It is the quickest way to build a story because once we have understood the conflict and identified the parties everything falls into place automatically. Things come out by themselves; you just have to follow the process. A conflict must have a protagonist with a particular desire or objective and to reach it he will come up against some definite circumstances, some difficulties; usually caused by other living beings - the antagonists. Sometimes the difficulties are the result of forces of nature and the protagonist experiences the conflict within himself but he finally triumphs or gives in to the unutterable.
All conflicts evolve in a usually long process and resolve one way or another, or at least they leave the situation open. A changing situation is a sure source of sequences. If the chosen topic generates images and actions, then so much the better; we will have a machine that runs itself. Another advantage of conflict is that if you know how to put salt in the wound then people will speak up clearly; they will want to be heard and they will want us to understand their reasons. Even the most obtuse of us speak clearly when something hurts. Debate arises between the two parts, if we do our job well the viewer also gets involved in the debate.
If we are not generating news and neither do we see conflict we have to ask ourselves:
Are we doing something new?
Sometimes routine clouds our view and we don’t have our contribution clear. You don’t have to look far, it is sufficient to structure and properly document some information that is being badly explained. If the value is fundamentally educational or it is spreading the word, we are closer to a documentary than a report. My experience makes me distrust anyone who says they don’t need to bring anything new to a topic because the impact will lie in the treatment they give it. I’ll only accept this from professionals with a solid track record . The writer’s kitchen is not possible without good raw materials and wide experience. When choosing topics don’t put the emphasis on the treatment; concentrate on getting the prime fillets and you can worry later about the condiments. If is obvious that if the topic is not news, doesn’t have conflict or an original aesthetic or publicity value something is missing. It is well worth reconsidering everything and, if you can’t find convincing answers, don’t hesitate to discard the topic. Don’t take a single step without a clear topic there is no type of urgency that can justify it.
Now comes a question that might seem blindingly obvious but nevertheless is very important.
We said at the beginning of this book that the report shows in images the essence of a story lived by people and relates them to their context from a current perspective. The two following questions will explain why these points are in italics.
Without people it is very difficult to explain stories (we have seen this when we discussed abstract concepts). Even some animal documentaries humanize the beasts and ascribe them certain reasoning skills or cultural awareness that are more typical of humans. This has nothing to do with journalistic method.
A reporter is interested in the relation between people, their community and the environment, of which the flora and fauna also form a part. For this reason the protagonists have to be people or living beings with a relation to humans. In the programmes I have directed I have never considered the possibility of a project about reproduction of herbivores. On the other hand, the expedition of scientists who went to Vietnam to certify the discovery of a new species of ruminant mammal, similar to a goat, seemed an excellent topic. The focus of the report was the scientists and the peasants. Even if they didn’t find a single specimen, there would be a report, and if they did there would be news as well, especially if it was the first time we had seen it on TV. In contrast a documentary account would centre on the goat and the camera would definitely actively avoid the humans. A report would find out about the socio-environmental conditions that had allowed the species to survive, it would identify the risk if a black market started offering money for the horns or trophies of the animal. As it is almost impossible to fix clear boundaries to decide what fits and what does not in the space of a report, my criteria has always been to see if the topic provokes people to take sides, as we will see. The central idea here is that we are interested in the human landscape.
(Inset) We were doing a report on the process of the disintegration of Yugoslavia when at four o’clock in the afternoon we received the news we were to be expelled from the conflict area of Kosovo. We had to leave first thing in the morning. We had about three hours of light and we were about half an hour from Pristina the capital. The report was half done. Things had got a bit complicated two afternoons before when we went to a meeting in a Serbian neighbourhood in Pristina. We had filmed for a bit but suddenly everyone got very edgy. We did not know why but they refused to continue with us there and insisted that we leave the meeting. We left but we had no idea what was wrong. Once at the hotel our interpreter listened attentively to what we had recorded.
“I’m the problem, because I’m Albanian,” he explained. In the meeting they said something very compromising for the Serbians and they were scared that an Albanian accompanied by TV crew was witness to it. This also explained the translators own particular interest in the proceedings. Going through the tape we found out that we hadn’t recorded the critical moments, possibly because we did not understand Serbo-croat or perhaps because by the time we had set up the camera the most crucial part was already over, but obviously the Serbians didn’t know this. The translator was Veton Surroi, an Albanian journalist who had lived in Spain, where his father had been an ambassador for Tito. He spoke Spanish perfectly, English, Serbian and Albanian so for us he was ideal. But he was not just anybody and although we knew that, we could not have imagined that he could have caused such a reaction from the Serbians. We must not forget that this was at the time that there was neither a war on, nor had one drop of blood been spilt, although there was considerable tension. Shortly afterwards Veton Surroi founded Koha Ditore, an Albanian language paper and in the midst of the Balkan war he would form part of the Kosovo-Albanian delegation who negotiated the Rambouillet peace agreement. In conclusion, working with him was a provocation for the Serbians, who thought we were spies.
Although the next day we hired a naive tourist guide as a translator, things had already started to get more difficult when we went to film at a mine, which was one of the hard-core centres for the Serbian nationalists. We couldn’t understand what they were saying there, but it certainly was not entirely innocent as we were given a very hostile reception. The same day the Serbian press proclaimed that the TV3 crew were personae non grata and would be expelled immediately but we did not know this at the time. So, to round off, “What can you do when you only have a few hours to finish a report?” This caused some friction between the members of the team. As I mentioned, we were some way from Pristina when we knew we were to be expelled. On the way to the city the producer and my other colleague, who was also an ENG* like me, wanted to film some shots of the Kosovo countryside before it got dark. I flatly refused. I said we were more interested in the human landscape, which was what was cracking up, not the countryside. They insisted that we could use this type of shots to say what we wanted and in any case it was not necessary, because we almost had enough and it was getting dark. There was no time to argue and tempers flared. I took all responsibility for answering to the director and said that if we needed countryside footage we would buy it from archives. Bringing the hierarchy into it is not always the best way and if I offended my colleagues I repeat my apologies from here, but I still believe that my reasoning was basically correct. At the end of the day you can understand the Balkan problem without seeing a single shot of Kosovo but by concentrating just on the people; the place where they live is merely an accident of circumstances.
Finally we went to a farm where two orthodox Serbian families lived and where some of their relatives were gathering. In what remained of the afternoon we were able to find out about the Serbian point of view; they were scared of being oppressed or even exterminated, if the Kosovo Muslims gained independence. The sequences we filmed were powerful and restored the working atmosphere amongst us. We learnt that the human landscape is definitely more important than the geography.
And an additional word of advice: even though you don’t understand a word of what they are saying, record it.
*ENG: (electronic news gathering) in this case a professional figure who unifies the functions of journalist, operator and editor of news items and reports, a video-journalist.
Extract 9 from page 133, ISBN: 978-84-475-3119-6.
Who is the narrator?
We now have a clear topic for a report and an idea of how to focus it. “Now what do we do?”
We have to choose the most appropriate type of narration to explain this particular story. Now we will take a look at the four great reporting styles that I think can be established according to the relative position of the journalist as an intermediary between reality and the viewer.
Discreet Intermediary (The Spanish programmes: 30 Minuts, Línea 900, Informe Semanal (Weekly Report) etc)). Third person narration and the journalist does not appear on the screen. As this is the classic reporting style, much of this book refers to this type.
Declared Intermediary:First person narration, open to subjectivity and modification. The reporter does not hide his participation; he becomes a co-star of the news. (The programmes Beyond 2000, España Directo, 48 Hours, Caiga quien Caiga ... -despite big differences- ). The journalist looks directly at the camera.
Neutral Intermediary: Makes it seem as though there is no intervention from the journalist or that it has been reduced to the minimum. There are two sub-groups:
“Shoulder to Shoulder”. This is a story told as much as possible by the protagonist who is selected previously by the journalist who supervises the whole project (for this reason it is not possible to say that there is no intermediary). There are also two versions of this, which we will deal with later.
Discreet Intermediary
A narrator, who tries to be noticed as little as possible, explains the story of a subject in the third person. Here attention is focused on the protagonist, that is to say the subject of the information, and not on the journalist, who never looks into the viewers’ eyes or appears on the screen, not even to ask the questions (there are a few exceptions but then the journalist only speaks to the interviewee).
Within this school there are two tendencies:
Some believe that it is more honest if the interviewee never looks into the camera but at someone who we know is there but who we never see; the journalist who in the end is responsible for making the report. It is a way of suggesting that the message is being manipulated.
Others believe it is better if the interviewee looks at the camera as directly as possible as this is the way to establish the best communication between the sender and the receiver of the message. If the journalist is only a communicative catalyst “Why do we need to know he is there?” Can’t we leave the viewers alone with the subjects?
In some countries like Spain the only people who speak into the camera are the king, the president of the country and other authorities, obviously apart from the TV presenters and actors in ads. It is assumed that looking directly into the viewers’ eyes will exercise a hypnotic quality and so it is only reserved for people established in power.
To appearances, the discreet intermediary in either of these two forms, is the most objective formula for making a report because the journalist does not gain protagonism. But notice one detail, the voice of the interviewer is nearly always cut during editing. We have to admit that in not including the questions we leave a large possibility for manipulation as the answers are out of context and nobody knows the tone or sense in which the question was asked. So, you have to be extremely respectful of the interviewee if the questions are not shown.
The declared Intermediary
The reporter is seen from the beginning. He appears on screen speaking to the protagonists or directly into the camera. He speaks in first person singular, which is very direct, or plural, which is less direct. He should not worry about subjectivity or expressing his opinion or his feelings about a situation or a person.
The storyline can follow the same lines as the investigation process. This way the viewer directly lives the experience of the journalist and shares his doubts and difficulties.
Personally, I think of the three types of report described here, this is the most powerful because it allows you to transmit a lot of information not visible to the camera: heat, odours, humidity, underlying tensions and so on. Above all, it allows you to be sincere with the viewers.
People relate to each other primarily in words so this type of report is “normal”, in that the interviews maintain the dialogue between the guide and the protagonists. There are programmes that abuse the interview method to a point of using the images simply to fill in between dialogues. We have all seen situations in which the relation between the participants seems forced, “Sir, come here please!” so they also appear false.
The key is knowing how to keep a balance. There is nothing wrong with the journalist being the protagonist if it is justified. In this case there is no need to be shy. It is not as if the journalist can take the viewer by the hand and take him round the museum, for example.
ISBN: 978-84-475-3119-6.
Prologue Introduction
Part One: The Journalistic Approach to Reality What is a Television Report? The News, the Polestar of Journalism
Part Two: Telling Stories Once Upon a Time ... Types of Stories
Part Three: The Topic is Everything Criteria for Selecting Topics The Scale of Interest of TV Messages The Fundamental Questions
Part Four: The Topic will Tell You How it Wants to be Treated The Genres of Television Reporting Classifying Reports in Function of Types of Intermediary
Part Five: Take Aim Focus Research The Intermediaries Between Journalists and Reality
Part Six: The Art of Asking The Questionnaire What to ask? The Interview and the Character Portrait A Handy Working Tool
Periodista. Director de Quèquicom.
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Matèria: Ciències de la informació 
