Images from Nowhere: Visuality and News in 21 st Century Media Michael Griffin Introduction In 1973 Edward Jay Epstein published his book, News from Nowhere, a multi-year field study of the production of American news programming at the major U.S. television networks: NBC, CBS, and ABC. Epstein’s on-site observations, inter- views with network executives, producers, editors, and reporters, and analysis of internal documents shed light on the ways in which TV news programs were con- structed according to organizational imperatives, procedures, and routines, con- cretely debunking the popular notion that news broadcasts simply reflect the events and activities that they cover. In the first chapter of the book, a chapter entitled “Pictures from an Organiza- tion,” Epstein specifically addresses the nature of televised news images, challeng- ing the idea of news reports as spontaneous and artless reflections of unfolding events, and demonstrating the invariably selective and condensed nature of news footage. Months spent observing daily news production practices led him to con- clude: “Through editing and rearranging of the filmed scenes, a small fraction of the exposed film, usually less than 5 percent, is reconstructed into a story which has a predetermined form” (4). Moreover, he observed that this form often has less to do with the informational or mimetic function of news footage than it does with the artifice and conventions of building a fictionalized “story-world” for the news program. 1 On this point, Epstein liberally quotes from staff memoranda by then executive producer of the NBC Nightly News, Reuven Frank: Every news story should, without any sacrifice of probity or responsibility, dis- play the attributes of fiction, of drama. It should have structure and conflict, problem and denouement, rising action and falling action, a beginning, a mid- dle, and an end. These are not only essentials of drama; they are the essentials of narrative. (Frank, quoted by Epstein 4-5) 1 For other observations of the particularly visual aspects of television news see Dahlgren; Grif- fin 1992; and Dahlgren and Griffin.