Archive video footage in news: creating a likeness and index of the phenomenal world

Abstract

This article examines the use of archive footage in television news bulletins. Due to economic pressures and technological changes in the newsroom, there has been a general increase in the use of such secondary sources in news: press releases, public relations material, photographs from image banks and archive news footage. Looking at the contents of one film archive and several news items that use such material, we consider the implications of such footage for the nature of news as bearing witness. We also ask how viewers may interpret this footage. Do they see it as actuality or as indicative? Existing models of visual communication suggest two possibilities: that viewers will understand the footage in terms of the way it is anchored by language (Barthes) or that visual communication, like language, is made up of signs that form a grammar (Kress and Van Leeuwen), allowing viewers to `read' the nature of what is communicated, such as whether it claims to be a true representation. We reject both views. Images can communicate without language, but there are important differences between images which form simple signs systems, and language which forms complex sign systems. Signs in simple semiotic systems are closer to the phenomenal world (Halliday, 1985) and closer therefore to the real world of our experiences. They powerfully index discourses within which the linguistic accompaniment can be contained. Thus, viewers are able to see archive footage as a sufficient likeness of the world through its ability to index the phenomenal world, and through the compelling nature of established news frames.

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