Prime Time 8. Coursebook plus Semester Self-checks, Schulbuch

8 Surveillance and the media: Identity and privacy Before you read a) Think of the term “privacy” and what it means to you. b) Together with a partner write down a definition of “privacy” that could be published in an encyclopaedia for teenagers. c) Discuss your definitions in class. Reading: The new voyeur Read the following text, divide it into four parts and write one or two sentences about each section. 1 2 Abraham Zapruder was standing in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, on 22 November 1963, when President John F. Kennedy’s limousine passed by. Zapruder was holding a Bell & Howell Zoomatic film camera, and the 26.6 seconds he filmed immediately became history. Frame 313 of Zapruder’s film shows the impact of Lee Harvey Oswald’s deadly gunshot. In his novel, Libra , Don DeLillo describes it as the moment when the president’s handsome head is suddenly replaced by a “pink nimbus of blood and bone and brains”. Zapruder sold the film to Life magazine under agreement that frame 313 would not be used or shown. It later was, but the world had to wait until 1975 for the entire Zapruder film to have its television premiere. Fast-forward to 30 December 2006, to Camp Justice, an Iraqi army base just outside Baghdad. It is shortly before dawn, and Saddam Hussein is being hanged for crimes against humanity. Iraqi state TV shows the former Iraqi leader on the gallows, but not the moment of his execution. As news organisations around the world debate whether to use the official images, explicit footage of the entire event, recorded with a mobile phone camera, appears on the internet. First it’s on Anwarweb.net, and then it’s on YouTube, the popular video sharing website, where it has now been seen millions of times – along with lots of versions of Zapruder’s film. To watch or not to watch: that is the question. Simon Jenkins, a columnist with Britain’s liberal newspaper The Guardian , says “no, thanks”. “I have a problem with pictures of hanged, broken-necked men looking at me across the freshly squeezed orange juice,” he wrote after the execution, and added, “If I do not want to see such images, I need not log in to it.” Jeff Jarvis, however, who teaches at the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism and blogs at BuzzMachine.com, warns that this is just the beginning. “Witnesses to any event can now capture and share what they see, not just with acquaintances but with the world, and without the filter and delay of news media,” he told Spotlight . “We also have access to the guts of news – original documents, full transcripts, unedited video. So anything anyone sees can be recorded and disseminated.” What this means, says Jarvis, is this: “Life is on the record now.” But should it be? Not everyone wants to have his or her most intimate moments watched by the global village. […] The World Wide Web is still the Wild, Wild West – an uncontrolled force in a digital world with no universally recognised sheriff. But is regulation of such websites even possible? Although YouTube is based in the United States, its users are international, and its content is available globally. Whose laws should it obey, even if it could obey them? […] Last July, a European magazine – the Italian Chi – became the first in the world to allow its readers to see a photo of the dying Diana, Princess of Wales, taken on 31 August 1997 in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris. Umberto Brindani, the editor of Chi , described the picture as “touching” and “tender”. Europe’s biggest-selling daily paper, Bild , then published the same photo. However, it did so as part of a report about the revulsion felt in England at the actions of the Italian magazine. Some believed that 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 92 Science and technology Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eige tum des Verlags öbv