Frank Beacham's Journal

A Very Sad Story of Today’s Television Media

As a former television news reporter, I’m always bashing those gutless, blow-dryed wannbees in the modern version of television news who stand for and report nothing. But it’s very rare to see it played out on video in such blatant form. So it's with glee that I present this amazing story.

In this YouTube video, one reporter, who should be celebrated, stands up to not only the University of Tennessee’s athletic PR hack, but to those in his own profession who bow down and roll over to anything the University wants. 

The hero here is Bill Shory, news director at WBIR-TV in Knoxville. It’s at a press conference when Lane Kiffin, the coach of the University’s Volunteers, is about to resign. The school proposes a “pre-presser” that will be done off camera, and then the news photographers can turn their cameras on.

Shory said no. This is a public university in a public building and there are to be no secrets, he declared. One would think his media colleagues would agree with Shory, but they don’t. They support the side of university against their own interests and nearly shout Shory down.

This video is typical of the milquetoast media operating today. Afraid of their own shadow — even fighting with their own to limit what few rights they have.  It’s sad indeed and why few in television news should continue to be believed.

(Thanks to Lost Remote for reporting this story.)

Privacy is Lost in the Age of Social Media

As I have tried to reinvent myself in this age of social media, one change I’ve noticed is especially striking. People, both young and old, are giving away their privacy online more than ever before. Sadly, they don’t seem to know or care about it. 

I’m included—but not willingly. If I google myself, it’s horrifying. I find stuff I wrote years ago that I had long forgotten. It’s also disconcerting to read one of your own articles when searching for new information about a subject. Nothing, and I mean nothing, goes unnoticed on the Internet.

Facebook, growing like a virus on a rampage, is especially scary. One gets “friends” on Facebook—lots of friends. I get people who I’ve never heard of requesting to be my friend. I approve them all because I view Facebook as a marketing tool for a writer such as myself. 

Yet, many users of Facebook don’t see it this way. They blurt out anything on any subject, forgetting that they are broadcasting drivel to everyone on their “friends list.” I don’t know whether it’s loneliness, or just a way to be more social. But many folks don’t realize they are leaving permanent digital track marks on the web.

I’ve had so-called friends ask me personal questions on Facebook. I tell them if they want an answer they must send their private e-mail address. I don’t want to send my personal responses to the masses, nor do I trust Facebook to keep it private. 

 

Owners of these social media web sites have discovered a gold mine. It doesn’t take much imagination to see how they can cash in on the marketing and advertising industries with the personal data they accumulate. Forget their “privacy agreements,” they can do anything they want with that data and they probably will.

This abandonment of online privacy extends to many other areas of our society. One dangerous example is iWatch, the brainchild of Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton, who calls his idea a 21st century version of Neighborhood Watch.

The Major Cities Chiefs Association, headed by Bratton and composed of the chiefs of the 63 largest police departments in the United States and Canada, endorsed iWatch at the group’s conference last month. iWatch asks citizens to report “suspicious behavior” of others to the police, using either the web or a toll-free phone number to make reports.

It is remarkable to me how many people, who obviously know little of contemporary history, think this is a good idea. iWatch feeds into the fear-based culture that has been carefully cultivated by government officials since 9/11. It magnifies the prejudices of people.

The privacy problems with iWatch were cited by American Civil Liberties Union policy counsel Mike German, a former FBI agent who once worked on terrorism cases. iWatch, he noted, wants people to report others who engage in relatively common behavior like wearing odd clothes for a season, who ask about building security or who purchase items that could be used to make bombs. 

Most iWatch reports, therefore, will fall back on the personal bias and stereotype of what a “terrorist” might look like to the individual caller. 

“That just plays into the negative elements of society and doesn’t really help the situation,” German told The Associated Press.

 

Though the creators of iWatch insist they are not asking people to spy on their neighbors, that is, exactly what they are doing. It moves the concept of a nosy neighbor up a notch—Internet-style. 

Perhaps even scarier than iWatch are the activities of a new company called Internet Eyes in the U.K. It wants to stream video camera feeds from businesses—or anyone willing to pay Internet Eyes a fee of $30 a month—to video monitors watched by humans around the clock. 

Internet Eyes is signing up average people—anyone off the street—to watch these camera feeds. The “watchers” compete with one another, getting paid up to $1,600 for reporting the most crimes happening on camera.

These citizen watchers—who will monitor four cameras simultaneously—can report a crime in real time using the subscribing company’s Web page. This will send a video frame to the owner of the camera via SMS. The watcher, however, won’t know the location of the cameras, which will change every 10 minutes.

“This isn’t a game—it’s serious,” said Tony Morgan, the managing director of Internet Eyes. 

On that statement, I agree wholeheartedly.

It has long been known that every time a new technology is introduced, there are unexpected, negative side consequences that come with it. It is clear these negative side effects are now revealing themselves with the Internet. 

Social media seemed innocent enough in the beginning. Unfortunately, a new generation—unschooled in the history of privacy violations by the government—doesn’t understand the implications of where we are headed. And we certainly can’t count on the technology companies to educate them.

The ubiquity of Internet video from every mobile phone on the street has the potential to trap and embarrass many people—even when they are doing the most ordinary human things. We, as a society, have never before faced such an intrusion into our personal privacy. It’s certain to turn messy.

The dark side of the Internet culture is being built today—be afraid, very afraid. Life is changing fast and many are clueless as to what is happening. 

Pictures in the Everglades

Standing waist deep in the swamp, under attack by aggressive mosquitoes and keenly aware of the nearby alligators and snakes, I fumbled under a large piece of dark cloth to see the dim upside down image through the back of a wooden view camera.

"You know in the video world we have viewfinder hoods," I shouted from under the thick black cover to Clyde Butcher, sweltering from the oppressive heat.

"Hoods are for wimps," responded Butcher, one of the world's best landscape photographers. "This is Mathew Brady stuff!"

Yes, it is, I quickly realized. Photography as it was done in the 19th century, when the great Mathew Brady and his assistants lugged similar equipment around battlefields to create the most memorable images of the American Civil War.

As a member of the video generation, I found myself in a bit of a technology time warp. A world where a new fangled gadget like a viewfinder hood is looked upon with suspicion. In this branch of image making, old fashioned craft and vision reign supreme over new technology and the latest widgets.

 Frank Beacham and Clyde Butcher in the Everglades. It was the summer of 1996.

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Yet, I found going back to the basics a strangely satisfying experience. Working with 4x5 inch black and white negatives and huge, radiant high definition prints resulted in a creative high I have yet to match with the high tech tools of these digital times.

I had first gotten a glimpse of Clyde Butcher's photography a few years ago when I stumbled into a PBS television special about his task of preserving on film Florida's rapidly disappearing Everglades. I was instantly attracted to his work. After calling his gallery, I found he offers occasional workshops in large format photography at his 13-acre wilderness compound in South Florida's Big Cypress National Preserve.

Butcher, whose talents at photographing nature rank up there with the late Ansel Adams, normally works with 8x10 and 12x20 format Wisner view cameras. His monochrome prints range in size from 11x14 (which he considers barely a wallet photo) to huge wall murals that are stunning in their scope, richness and detail.

Thinking Butcher's Everglades outpost would be a brief, but splendid, break from electronic media, I was surprised to find that a CBS Sunday Morning crew would be completing a video profile of the photographer on the second day of our workshop. Ironically, I would get a side-by-side comparison of the film and video images made in the picturesque swamp and the chance to ponder the methods by which each was created.

The CBS crew set up a video viewing station in Butcher's darkroom where we were crafting the prints from negatives we had taken the day before. Their video -- made efficiently and quickly -- had the crisp, snappy color and technically savvy look of work done by a top professional network crew. 

Yet, clearly missing from the video was the emotional bang that had drawn me to Butcher's photographs in the first place. How was it that Butcher could tell a whole story so well on a single frame of black and white film while the thousands of moving video images only skimmed the emotional surface of the subject? 

Was it simply a matter of resolution? Do we not have "fine art" video because of the limitations of the television medium to resolve detail?  If so, then why -- after well over a decade -- haven't we seen high definition video used as a artistic medium?  If it is not the video medium itself, does the answer lie in how we've been conditioned to use it?  Or does it go much deeper?

After the CBS crew had finished and was on the way to their next assignment, we in the darkroom were still tinkering with our prints, trying to decide where to dodge and burn or how to vary the contrast with filters.

Our still images were obviously produced through a much slower and more deliberate process than the video. They had a handmade quality. There was even a subtle aesthetic with the equipment itself; something I never felt before with electronics.

Take the Wisner camera. It's more like a piece of fine furniture than a technical tool. Made of beautifully finished mahogany wood with adjustable brass fittings, the camera is a timeless design. Not only does it offer a wide range of options to the creative photographer, but one could never imagine it ever becoming obsolete. 

While other types of photography have succumbed to computer-assisted automation, somehow the methods of making large format landscape photographs have remained traditional. Here the human mind never relinquishes control to a computer.

The photographer must think about every step taken. Each adjustment is made by hand. Careful consideration must be made to planes of focus, depth of field and the perspective of the subject. Even then, the image on the camera's viewing surface is upside down and very dim.  

From the very first day, the large format photographer assumes the role of artisan. For us video "wimps" -- used to the "point and shoot" conveniences of modern cameras -- it's at first hard to be confident about decisions of composition and image sharpness under that dark cloth. 

Yet for an old pro like Butcher -- with more than 30 years experience under his belt -- these seemingly large obstacles have been turned to pluses. He uses his eyes, not the viewfinder, to frame the image. He can do this because he instinctively knows what each lens will see and how it will see it.

The slow and tedious nature of large format photography, says Butcher, forces the creator of the image to take time to think about the picture being made. Sometimes it takes Butcher hours to make a single photograph. This contemplative method, he is quick to point out, is far more important than technique in helping convey a powerful emotional experience on a sheet of film.

One workshop participant asked Butcher what makes a visual artist. He estimated that it first takes about 20 years of learning the nuts and bolts -- the techniques of image making -- followed by another period when that technique is suppressed, becoming second nature.

For most of us, only then does real artistic vision begin to kick in. And even then, nothing is guaranteed. It all depends on the fragile talent and circumstances of the individual at a given moment as to whether new artistic boundaries will be broken.

In Butcher's life, the transition from successful commercial photographer to artist came in a tragic way. He says he found his creative voice in the grief that followed his son's death in an auto accident. The shock of that death led him to re-evaluate his approach to his work and resulted in his commitment to fine art nature photography.

It's a long way from a Florida swamp to the floors of today's bustling video studio. But in Clyde Butcher's wilderness preserve, there are valuable lessons for those who would attempt to use video as an artistic medium. 

Butcher's work reminds us that the art of the picture is not found in technology or technique. It's in the mind of the maker. The only artistic limitations we face in any medium are within ourselves.

Clyde Butcher's Fisheating Creek Memorial Tree