News of violence and news as violence

War photographs move us. It is the responsibility of photo editors to visually communicate war to a distant public, without causing outrage, but also without missing its message; war is violent. With the present journalistic rules and principles in The Netherlands, newspapers have a substantial amount of freedom. Would a code of journalistic guidelines prevent Dutch newspapers from exercising biased reporting? Reporting of war seems to affect public opinion and, thereby, foreign policy. War photography is, in this respect, a complicated area, since most Dutch readers have no direct experience with war. Through a literature study, this thesis aims to unveil the level of interdependency between journalistic regulations and the impact of war photographs. Also, an empirical study is executed to find out how journalistic principles are expressed through the photographic representation of conflicts in Dutch daily newspapers.

Autorentext

Ester Bullens, MsC MA: studied Communication Sciences at theUniversiteit van Amsterdam and Photographic Studies atUniversiteit Leiden. Writer, editor and curator, Amsterdam.