professional discourse in winning images

Chinese Journal of Communication, 2013 Vol. 6, No. 4, 456481, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17544750.2013.845109

Professional discourse in winning images: objectivity and professional boundaries in environmental news images in the World Press Photo contest, 1992 2011

Yang Liu*

Department of Communication Arts, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA

This article applies the ecological theory of professions to analyze professional discourse in the World Press Photo (WPP) contest, an international photojournalism contest held in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The article analyzes the content of 148 photojournalism works that received environmental awards in the period 1992 to 2011, the two decades after the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. The article seeks to understand the representation and negotiation of objectivity and the claims of professional boundaries by the media of both developed and developing countries as well as non-governmental organizations (NGOs). It also seeks to interpret the professional discourse of the WPP in relation to ideologies and power dynamics in both journalism and global environmental politics. The results suggested that the media of developed countries dominated the discourse, and the conventional notion of journalistic objectivity remained intact. However, the results also showed that global environmental politics and the situation of journalism created openings for the media of developing countries and NGOs to enlarge jurisdictional claims in the area of natural disaster reporting and to challenge the conventional notion of objectivity. The results also showed that the conventional notion of objectivity did not necessarily hinder explanations of the complexity of environmental issues, which was made possible by choosing unique angles of storytelling, planning multiple shots, and using richly suggestive, naturalistic images.

Keywords: World Press Photo; journalistic objectivity; professional boundaries; environmental photojournalism; ecology of profession

Introduction

The globalization of the media has highlighted the debates on journalistic standards and boundaries among different players in international communication. For example, the following questions have been raised. Is objectivity a universal standard in the emerging global professionalism of journalism (Reese, 2001)? Does media globalization lead to Western domination (Cottle, 2009)? To answer these questions, we need to pay attention to the key nodes of media globalization (Reese, 2010), which are global cities, global media events, and international journalism prizes. Established in 1955, World Press Photo (WPP) is a prestigious international photojournalism contest based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. It draws submissions from over 100 countries, seeking to encourage the highest standards in photojournalism around the world (worldpressphoto.org, 2012). Its winning images constitute the sociological data that reflect the professional discourse of contest participants and judges to

*Email: [email protected]

q 2013 The Centre for Chinese Media and Comparative Communication Research, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

http://worldpressphoto.orghttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17544750.2013.845109mailto:[email protected]

Chinese Journal of Communication 457

maintain and negotiate professional standards and boundaries, and thereby establish the field of journalism on the international level.

The journalistic field is shaped by internal struggles and external forces (Bourdieu, 2005), which are epitomized in environmental journalism. Instead of simply reporting news, many environmental journalists interpret the interlocking aspects of environmental issues in politics; some even practice advocacy journalism, claiming that environmentalism is [their] specialty (Willis & Okunade, 1997, p. 87). These tendencies cause professional struggles among journalists about the standard of objectivity, which make it sensitive to the dynamics of environmental politics. WPP first established special categories for environmental photojournalism (Nature and Nature Stories) in 1982. Environmental photojournalism now wins WPP awards in these and many other categories of news. These award-winning images of environmental news serve as a vantage point to observe the professional discourse in the WPP in relation to the external influences of environmental politics.

This study focuses on images of environmental news that received WPP awards during the period 1992 to 2011.1 This period comprises two decades since the milestone 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, in which global environmental politics featured the rising influence of developing countries and NGOs, and the increased awareness of the complexity of environmental issues (Soroos, 2004). The present study seeks to answer the following questions. To what extent did the different players (media of developed countries, developing countries, and nongovernmental organizations [NGOs]) realize their boundary claims, as shown by their representation in the awards? Against the background of boundary struggles, how was objectivity represented in the awarded works, especially those that explained the system-embedded complexity of environmental issues? Lastly, how was the conventional notion of objectivity negotiated by the different players? The results are interpreted in relation to the features of global environmental politics, based on the belief that the changes within a profession may correspond to the broader social changes experienced and perceived by the professionals (Larson, 1993).

This study draws on the ecological theory of professions (Abbott, 1988, 1990) to discuss WPP as a site of discursive professional struggle and place it in relation to broad social contexts. Methodologically, it analyses the content of images (Barthes, 1977; Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996), supplemented by discourse analysis (van Dijk, 2009).

The ecology of professional journalism

The Chicago School sociologist Robert Park and his teacher Georg Simmel were among the first to use the ecological perspective to analyze social life. Rooted in this tradition, the ecological view of professions was developed by Everett Hughes and his team in the 1950s (Hughes, 1952; Popielarz & Neal, 2007). It was systematically theorized in Abbotts (1988) book The System of Professions and complemented later by Dingwall & King (1995) and Abbott (2005). The ecological theory considers occupations in a constant process of struggling to carve a niche in specific fields of work under the changing conditions of the social environment. It stresses conflicts and contingencies that are endemic to the system of professions, refuting the view of a profession as the aggregation of ideal-typical attributes or as a fixed structure of organizational and individual actions. This perspective makes it particularly suitable

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for understanding journalism, which not only lacks many ideal-typical traits of professions, such as the monopoly of professional knowledge or strong internal organization (Witschge & Nygren, 2009), but also features dependence on the changing external conditions of politics and the market (Schudson, 2005).

From the ecological perspective, journalism can be considered a ground of struggle for professional jurisdiction, where social actors compete for the control of journalistic expertise, resources, and markets to claim their exclusive right to an area of journalistic work (Abbott, 1995a). Its boundaries, both inter- and intra-professional, emerge from the dynamic struggles between journalists and amateurs, media organizations, and media systems. In other words, its boundaries are constituted by the sites of professional struggles, and it is within these ongoing struggles that the field of journalism takes shape (Abbott, 1995b).2 Objectivity serves as an essential strategy of jurisdiction for journalists. The particular method of collecting, processing, and presenting information gives journalism its unique jurisdictional focus (Schudson & Anderson, 2009). Journalists resort to the routines and norms of objectivity to disaffiliate from neighboring professions, such as public relations and amateur reporting (Schudson, 2001, p. 162).

Moreover, professional journalism is not independent of the external social environment. Changes in the environment are absorbed in its professional struggle (Abbott, 1990). Professional journalism arises from the dialectical tension between absorbing such changes and carrying forward previous tendencies (Dingwall & King, 1995). For example, in the 1930s, America saw the rise of interpretive journalism to help readers not only know but also understand the increasingly complex world (Schudson, 2001). However, interpretive journalists were still strictly required to use the scientific method and be as objective as humanly possible (Berry, 2005). In the past two decades, technological advances have enabled the rise of citizen journalism, particularly on the Internet. However, the cooperation of professional journalism with citizen media is limited, although is sometimes realized on the condition that the latter share the values of professional journalism (Lail, 2010). Alternatively, journalists often reject citizen media because of the professional concern about objectivity (Lewis, Kaufhold, & Lasorsa, 2010).

Guided by the ecological understanding of professional journalism, the following sections further explain the strategy of objectivity in photojournalism, global environmental politics, its possible influences on environmental journalism, and the significance of the WPP contest.

Objectivity in photojournalism

As a strategy of professional jurisdiction, objectivity is especially important in photojournalism. On the one hand, photography is often assumed as inherently objective because seeing is believing. On the other hand, the photographic representation of the visual world is always mediated by photographers who observe, frame, and interpret (Newton, 2001). Because of this tension, photojournalists use the strategy of objectivity to eclipse the mediation process (Schwartz, 1999), which often includes the following three aspects.

Firstly, photojournalists use photography as a mode of identifying people, places, or things, which was widely propagated by editors and reporters until the 1950s and is still promoted by many people (Gleason, 1998). It stresses the denotative aspect


of photojournalism as recording. In many news events, such as disasters and wars, it is a great accomplishment for a photojournalist to be on site as a recorder. This style legitimates objectivity by the denotation of direct visual evidence and the eyewitness role of photojournalists. Secondly, in recent decades, photojournalists have sought to not just record but interpret the visual world; however, they have also stressed the naturalism of images. It is acceptable to use light, lines, colors, or other visual elements to suggest or connote deeper meanings, but these elements must not be manipulated (Schwartz, 1992). As a photographer said, I dont like to use flash; if its dark, the picture should be dark (Newton, 1998, p. 8). This style helps legitimate photojournalists claims of objectivity in their interpretive reporting by using naturalistic images. Thirdly, a work of photojournalism is a unit comprising an image and its caption. The caption is semantically parasitic to the image, providing a connoted second-order meaning; the closer it is to the meaning of the image, the better it is able to share the objectivity of the image (Barthes, 1977). The caption is often a concise description of the five Ws (what, who, when, where, and why) of the pictured event; even when a deep caption is used, it often includes no more than quotations and descriptive details in the picture that might escape the reader (Kobre, 1980). Here, photojournalists attain objectivity by writing captions that are semantically close to the images.

In sum, visual denotation, naturalistic images, and captions that are semantically close to images help legitimate objective photojournalism as a seemingly unmediated process. These aspects of photojournalistic objectivity constitute the relationship of denotation and connotation. Objective photojournalism does not have to be denotative, but the connoted meaning, whether visually suggested or caption loaded, needs to be based on the denotation of the image (Barthes, 1977).

However, these aspects probably represent no more than the conventional notion of photojournalistic objectivity in Western journalism, which is comprised mainly of the media in the democratic countries of North America and Western Europe (Hanitzsch, 2011). On the global level, the status, conception, and practice of objectivity actually vary across media systems. For instance, Chinese socialist news theory attaches great importance to objectivity, but according to Latham (2000), it sees the Western style of letting the facts speak for themselves as objectivity only in an external form and dictates that news should seek the basic nature of society, that is, the macro-reality. This conception of objectivity justifies the use of opinions and moral judgments in news, even by the younger generation of journalists (Zhao, 2000). Egyptian journalists recognize the importance of objectivity, which is nonetheless adhered to the least often compared to other journalistic norms (Ramaprasad & Hamdy, 2006). The status of objectivity is dubious for professional outsiders. Some scholars have considered that NGO-produced journalism may place the organizational agenda above objectivity (Price, Morgan, & Klinkforth, 2009).

These variations on the notion and practice of objectivity are likely to give rise to professional struggles in media globalization. In photojournalism, photographers in non-Western media and non-media organizations may challenge the conventional notion of photojournalistic objectivity to justify and even enlarge their jurisdiction in the area of photojournalistic work. Although there is little research on the photojournalistic objectivity practiced by these players, the above-mentioned variations may help to identify their professional struggle as reflected in specific photojournalism works. As explained below, in the realm of environmental

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photojournalism, the professional struggle may also be influenced by global environmental politics.

Global environmental politics and its possible influences on journalism

Since the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, global environmental politics has entered the Rio era (Soroos, 2004). This era is first characterized by the rising influences of developing countries and NGOs in environmental issues. Developing countries have attained increased status, for the end of the Cold War led to revitalization of the cooperation between developing countries and the dialogue between developing and developed countries (Soroos, 2004). NGOs have also played increasingly noticeable roles. In major global environmental conferences held in the 1990s, NGOs were heavily involved in all stages, from preparation to implementation of action programs (Soroos, 2004). These dynamics may increase the importance of environmental information about the actions of developing countries and NGOs. At the same time, the shrinking of the amount of printed journalism in many developed countries has led to cuts in newsmedia that are expensive to produce, such as using fewer foreign correspondents, which has caused a scarcity of information on developing countries, particularly peripheral regions (Zuckerman, 2010). This factor may further stress the value of information from themedia of developing countries orNGOsactive in these countries. Thus, both the external influence of global environmental politics and the internal conditions of journalism may help open more space for the professional jurisdiction of media in developing countries journalism produced by NGOs.

The Rio era has also seen the adoption of sustainable development as a basic ideology in environmental politics (Soroos, 2004). In the narrow sense, it emphasizes the improvement of human livelihood as a precondition for environmental actions. In the broad sense, it stands for a comprehensive frame of environmental thinking that stresses the complexity of environmental issues, which not only are environmental but also are deeply embedded in the economic, socio-political, and historical aspects of the system of international society (Axelord, VanDeveer, & Vig, 2004; Hasna, 2007; Najam, 2004). This frame of thought may encourage environmental journalists to provide deep explanations. In fact, many environmental journalists have indeed gone beyond reporting issues and have tried to interpret the interlocking aspect of the issues in politics (Willis & Okunade, 1997). Such attempts at explanation challenge the traditional notion of objectivity in which only facts are reported (Ward, 2011), but it is often justified by another important journalistic value, public service (Salgado & Stro mba ck, 2011). As Deuze (2005) noted, journalistic values, such as objectivity and public service, are not always consistent, which shows an inherent lack of coherence in journalisms occupational ideology. In this sense, besides the ideological frame of sustainable development in environmental politics, the internal inconsistency between the journalistic values of public service and objectivity may also allow journalists to justify their attempts at deep explanations of environmental issues.

The significance of international journalism prizes

In the journalistic field, social actors engage in day-to-day activities to negotiate journalistic expertise and claim jurisdiction in their work, often in relation to the dynamics in the external social environment (Schudson, 2005; Schudson & Anderson,


2009). For example, because of the rise of social movements, alternative media justify their journalistic status by using non-standard methods of production that challenge the practices of mainstream journalism (Atton, 2002). The professional struggle is also conducted in informal communication and collective interpretation. Journalists often resort to these discursive means to strengthen the profession of journalism as an authoritative interpretive community (Zelizer, 1993).

An international journalism prize provides a regular discursive occasion for participants and judges from around the world to step away temporarily from news routines, reflecting on and competing in journalistic expertise as concretized in submissions to the contest. By recognizing selected works, reportage styles, participants, and organizations, they update their shared understanding of journalistic expertise, lay a collective claim to intra- and inter-professional boundaries, and adjust journalism according to the changing global order. An international journalism prize, therefore, is an important site of professional discourse in media globalization, in which participants and judges maintain and negotiate professional expertise and boundaries in response to external social environments, thus helping to accomplish the field of journalism on a global level.

Previous studies on photojournalism prizes such as the Pictures of the Year International competition and the Pulitzer Prize for photography showed a primary concern for journalistic expertise. They found that, on the one hand, conventional thematic frames (e.g., war and conflict in international news or pain and determination in sports feature photos) were constantly awarded prizes (Greenwood & Smith, 2007, 2009; Hagaman, 1993; Kim & Smith, 2005). On the other hand, these prizes also helped update journalistic expertise by encouraging innovative ways to show old subjects (Mendelson, 1999). Building on these previous studies, this article examines the continuity and change of journalistic expertise in the WPP contest, but it seeks to offer a more dynamic understanding of it by focusing on the struggle regarding expertise among different players in relation to external influences.

Established in 1955, the WPP contest now draws tens of thousands of photos from more than 100 countries each year. It claims to encourage the highest standards in photojournalism (worldpressphoto.org, 2012). In 2012, it revoked the prize given to Stepan Rudik because he had removed the tip of a shoe from the background, thus violating the tenet of objectivity (Laurent, 2010). Moreover, the results of the WPP often lead to discussions about professional expertise and boundaries. In 2004, it eliminated the amateur photos of the torture at Abu Ghraib because the contest was for what is being produced by professionals and their method of working, and amateur scoops were an exception (Heingartner, 2005). Scholars see this decision as an act of maintaining boundaries (Livingstone, 2007). The contest seeks to become the mirror of a process of development in photojournalism (worldpressphoto.org, 2012). Its categories for environmental photojournalism were first set in 1982, when the awarded images were all of beautiful birds. Today environmental images win awards in special categories as well as in categories for general news, and the winning images cover a range of issues and topics. These facts highlight the WPP contest as an important and interesting site of professional discourse in photojournalism.

It is difficult to collect data on the jury and the participants talks on all the awarded works. Therefore, this article uses van Dijks (2009) approach of news as discourse to study the professional discourse of the WPP as reflected by the works to which it has awarded prizes. Each work encapsulates a specific way of visual reporting

http://worldpressphoto.orghttp://worldpressphoto.org

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and a claim of jurisdiction in a certain area of news coverage by the photographer and the organization for which he or she works. The WPP prize stands for the collective justification of the claim by the judges, other participants, and ultimately the international community of photojournalists. This article analyzes all the environmental photojournalism works honored by the WPP from 1992 to 2011, focusing on the struggle over objectivity and professional boundaries as reflected by these works. Because of the lack of research on alternative notions and practices of objective photojournalism that possibly exist outside mainstreamWestern media, the article uses the conventional notion of photojournalistic objectivity as the starting point to compare the works. In this sense, this article can also be seen as an attempt to explore these alternative notions and practices.

To consider the WPP professional discourse and its potential relationship to the external condition of global environmental politics during the period, this article seeks to answer the following research questions. First, to what extent did the different players (media of developed countries, media of developing countries, and NGOs) realize their boundary claims, as shown in their representation in the awards?3

Second, how was objectivity represented in the awarded works? In particular, how was it represented in works that explained the system-embedded complexity of environmental issues? Lastly, how was objectivity negotiated by the different players (media of developed countries, media of developing countries, and NGOs)?

Method

To study the WPP discourse as reflected in the works to which it awarded prizes, this article conducts a content analysis that is focused on patterns of objectivity and professional boundaries. It performs discourse analysis to supplement the content patterns with a discussion of their relationships to ideologies and power dynamics in journalism and environmental politics. The analysis is primarily based on Faircloughs (1989) view, which prioritizes two aspects of power in discourse: access to the discourse and the capacity to control or change key discursive practices. Thus, it looks at the players representations in the prizes and their competition of representation to reveal the ground of struggles that form intra- and inter-professional boundaries (Abbott, 1995b). Furthermore, it examines the meaning, signification, and visual representation of the works in order to grasp the representation and negotiation of the conventional notion of objectivity, which privileges visual denotation or connotation based on visual denotation (Barthes, 1977). The supplementary discourse analysis draws on Kress and van Leeuwens (2001) multimodal discourse analysis that sees images as socially produced and historically informed, and Halls (1973) study of news images as the index of social contexts. It therefore considers the professional discourse of the WPP that is reflected in the awarded works as situated in and potentially related to the situation of professional journalism and the context of global environmental politics. The analytical framework is presented in Figure 1.

From 1992 to 2011, 148 environmental photojournalism works were honored by the WPP. Environmental photojournalism is defined as the visual reporting of news about relationships between the environment and people (Cartwright, 2007; Forbes, 2002). The visual documentation of nature and works focusing on people are excluded.4 The works included are the visual reportage of current environmental events at the time of photography and use images and/or captions to describe nature


Figure 1. Frame of analysis.

human relationships. They include 76 single photos and 72 photo stories (8, 10, or 12 images in each photo story), a total of 904 images.5 Each work is a unit of analysis. Since the analysis of objectivity rests on understanding the denotation or connotation by a work as a complete image-caption unit, a photo story is treated as a single unit, the objectivity of which is decided by how its meaning is made by all its images and captions.

The coding categories are based on previous research and were adapted in the coding process to describe the data clearly. Each work is coded for meaning, way of signification, form of visual representation, and publishing organization. First, the meaning category is coded as depicting only the environmental story or depicting the environmental story and explaining its socio-political, economic, or historical aspects. The purpose is to highlight works that explain the system-embeddedness of environmental issues, as implied in the ideological frame of sustainable development (Axelord et al., 2004; Hasna, 2007).

Second, the signification category differentiates works of visual denotation (Gleason, 1998) from those of caption-loaded connotation (Barthes, 1977). A work is coded as visual denotation when the environmental story and its socio-political, economic, or historical aspects are indicated by relevant visual evidence. It is coded as connotation when some meanings are caption-loaded without the support of visual evidence.

Third, the coding of the visual representation category draws on the social semiotic study of images (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996). It involves detailed, case-bycase understanding of the visual realization of signification by photographic elements, such as foreground, background, color, lines, and light. It is coded by how the denoted meaning is stressed via the arrangement of visual elements and how the caption-loaded connoted meaning is visually suggested in the absence of direct visual evidence (Schwartz, 1992).

Lastly, publishing organizations are coded as media of developed countries, media of developing countries, and NGOs, by using the list of countries in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Economic Outlook Report on the year of photography. The National Geographic, the journal of the non-profit National Geographic Society, is coded as a media outlet because of its status in environmental

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journalism. Five works without organizational information are coded as uncategorized.6

Because of the lack of research resources during summer vacation, the coding is conducted by the researcher. Three rounds of coding are done at the start, middle, and end of one month to improve the stability of a single coder over time (Krippendorff, 1980). Although stability is a weak form of reliability, the researcher later takes extra steps to assure the quality of the coding. The coding for the categories of meaning and signification is repeated by a journalism doctoral student; the inter-coder reliability test yields the Scotts pi of .85 for meaning and .70 for signification, both of which are adequate according to Neuendorf (2002). To code the category of visual representation, which requires subjective visual interpretation, the researcher presents detailed photo descriptions in the results, allowing readers to understand and judge the basis of interpretation (Patton, 2002). The coding of publishing organizations involves no subjective judgment, so no extra steps are taken to check the possible bias introduced by a single coder.

The data analysis takes both quantitative and qualitative forms. Counting and calculation of percentages are used to show patterns of professional boundary and representation of objectivity. A one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) is performed to compare the patterns found from 1992 to 1997, 1998 to 2004, and 2005 to 2011 to show their changes over time.7 In-depth description and interpretation are applied to explain specifically how the conventional notion of objectivity was represented and challenged in the awarded works. The content patterns are the basis of the discourse analysis of the potential relationships between the WPP discourse and the conditions of journalism and environmental politics. The discourse analysis primarily relies on theoretical inference as informed by the ecological theory of professions, and is mainly presented in the conclusion. Personal impressions can easily enter into theoretical inferences as well as the interpretive parts of content analysis, especially when it comes to explaining sophisticated or controversial entries. To improve validity, the analysis is checked against the opinions of judges, photographers, and WPP officials, which were collected from photojournalism trade journals, online transcripts of media interviews, and email interviews conducted by the researcher.

Results

Domination and openness in the WPP professional discourse

The analysis of numbers and percentages of awarded works from different organizations showed that the media of developed countries dominated the WPP discourse. However, it also showed that the WPP was increasingly open to media of developing countries and the journalism projects of NGOs. Some particular areas of news were found to be the ground of competition that constituted the professional boundaries between the dominant and marginal players (Abbott, 1995b).

Figure 2.1 shows the numbers of works awarded each year to the media of developed countries, developing countries, and NGOs. The dominant status of the media of developed countries was illustrated by the following pattern. Among the 148 works awarded, 120 (82.1%) were from the media of developed countries, most of which (104 works) were from North America and Europe. Moreover, a unidirectional gaze on developing countries characterized the domination by the media of developed


Figure 2.1. Number of works awarded per year (1992 2011) from media of developed

countries, developing countries, and NGOs.

countries. Among the 98 prize-winning works about developing countries, only 13

were from the media of these countries, whereas 75 (76.5%) were from the media of

developed countries. Media of developing countries and NGOs were also qualified to partake in the

discourse, but their representationwasmarginal.Among the148awardedworks,only13

(8.8%) were from the media of developing countries; only 12 (8.1%) were from various

NGOs, mostly international environmental organizations, such as Greenpeace, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, and the World Wildlife Fund.

Despite the marginal status of the media of developing countries and NGOs, the

results of the one-way ANOVA (Figure 2.2) showed that the percentage of their

works among all awarded works increased statistically significantly from 2005 to

2011, compared to 1992 to 1997 and 1998 to 2004 (F(2,17) 5.78, p .012). However, the increased representation seemed to be most obvious in 2005 and 2008,

the years of major natural disasters, such as drought in the Amazon and massive

earthquakes at the India Pakistan border and in Sichuan, China. Figure 3 shows the numbers of awarded works in each year when works on

natural disasters were excluded. Here only six works were from the media of

developing countries and 10 works were from NGOs. When reportage of natural

disasters was excluded, the results of the one-way ANOVA showed no increase in the

percentage of works from the media of developing countries and NGOs over time (F (2.17) 2.87, p .084). This suggests that their increased representation in all awarded works from 2005 to 2011 was largely because of the major natural disasters

that occurred in this period. Such events provided visually dramatic materials, and

organizations with staff near the disaster locations had the advantage of the scoop, which helped bring prize-winning opportunities to both local media and international

NGOs. However, it should be noted that major natural disasters were not unique to

the period 2005 to 2011. The 1992 drought in southern Africa, the 1998 Hurricane

Mitch in South America, and the 2004 tsunami in south Asia were all massive disasters with comparable effects. Therefore, the analysis showed that it was mainly in

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Figure 2.2. One-way ANOVA showing the percentage of works from media of developing countries and NGOs 1992 1997, 1998 2004, and 2005 2011.

the small area of the photojournalism of natural disasters that the marginal players enlarged their boundary claims in the WPP discourse.

These results offer a brief picture of the ground of competition that constituted professional boundaries among the different players. First, the media of developed countries not only enjoyed domination of the WPP discourse, but also won most of the awards for the coverage of news about developing countries, thereby claiming their dominant status even in the most legitimate area of work for the media of developing countries. Second, despite the domination by the media of developed countries, the marginal playersmedia of developing countries and NGOswere increasingly recognized, thus expanding their professional jurisdiction in the small area of natural disaster reporting.

Figure 3. Number of works awarded per year (1992 2011) from media of developed countries, developing countries, and NGOs excluding photos of natural disasters.


Objectivity as the doctrine of the WPP professional discourse

The analysis of meaning, way of signification, and visual representation showed that

the conventional notion of photojournalistic objectivity attained by visual denotation

or naturalistic images remained the doctrine of WPP discourse (Foucault, 1981).

Visual denotation was the most important strategy of objectivity used in the awarded

works. Works of caption-loaded connotation justified objective reporting by

naturalistic but richly suggestive images. As Table 1 shows, 112 works (75.7%), including 50 single photos and 62 photo

stories, presented direct visual evidence to denote their intended meaning. Figure 4

shows the numbers of prize-winning denotative works and connotative works each

year. Although there seemed to be more connotative works in recent years, as shown

in Figure 4, the results of the one-way ANOVA showed that the percentage

of connotative works among all winning works did not increase significantly over

time (F(2.17) 1.166, p .335). All results stressed that by offering visual evidence, denotation remained the most important strategy of objectivity in WPP discourse.

Specifically, the awarded works can be categorized into three different groups in

terms of the meaning conveyed by the mode of signification, as shown in Table 1.

First, 33 single photos and 23 photo stories offered direct depictions of the

Table 1. Meaning and signification of awarded works.

Only denoting environmental

stories

Denoting

system-embeddedness

Connoting

system-embeddedness

Number of single photos Number of photo stories

33 23

17 39

26 10

Figure 4. Number of all awarded works, denotative works, and connotative works per year (19922011).

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environmental events without explaining how the events were related to their economic, socio-political, or historical context. Compared to the single photos, the photo stories presented more details on environmental events, but did not offer a deep explanation of them.

Second, 17 single photos and 39 photo stories explained the system-embeddedness of environmental events by denotation through unique angles of storytelling (for single photos), or by planning multiple shots to show economic, socio-political, or historical dimensions (for photo stories). Jacqueline Mia Fosters single photo on industrial pollution in Russia depicted two local workers drinking and sunbathing on a beach made of the slag from smelting metals against a background of identical buildings in an industrial town (archive.worldpressphoto.org, 2001). The unique angle of storytelling enabled the image to denote how industrial pollution became embedded in the local economy and social life over decades. Another example is Peter Essicks photo story on nuclear waste storage in America (archive.worldpressphoto. org, 2003). In addition to recording the process of nuclear waste storage, he took photos of commercial nuclear power plants to show the economic significance of the issue. To explain the historical context and the socio-political aspect of the issue, he used a shot of the Three Mile Island plant, and then added another shot of local opposition to the construction of a nuclear repository in Nevada.

Third, 36 awarded works offered deep explanations by connotation, which was particularly interesting for the analysis of photojournalistic objectivity. These works used highly elaborate, interpretive captions to provide deep explanations of the economic, socio-political, or historical dimensions of environmental issues, which were not directly supported by visual evidence. Such practices appeared unconventional, even compared to the deep caption, which allows quotations and descriptive details of the picture (Kobre, 1980). However, they do not necessarily deviate from objectivity. In most of the works, the photographers managed to connect the denoted meaning of visual elements and the connoted meaning provided by captions through different means of visual representation, such as composition, staging, or referencing (Bowers, 2008), which allowed the images to be not only naturalistic but also richly suggestive. Thus, the explanation loaded by the provision of elaborate captions, even though it was considered connotative (Barthes, 1977), was still suggested by naturalistic images, thereby legitimizing the claim of objectivity (Schwartz, 1992). This is illustrated in the next two examples.

The face in the shadow of history

In 2011, Ed Kashis photo on the health risks of the defoliating chemical Agent Orange in Vietnam won the second prize in the category of contemporary affairs (www.worldpressphoto.org, 2011). It showed a nine-year-old girl with facial deformity caused by the chemical, standing in her room and looking toward the window. The deformed face occupied the visual center at the top-left intersection of the rule-of-the-thirds lines, thus clearly denoting the issue.

The elaborate interpretive caption attributed the tragedy to its historical roots. Only a part of the caption is quoted here:

. . . During the Vietnam War, US forces sprayed Agent Orange over forests and farmland in an attempt to deprive Viet Cong guerrillas of cover and food. The dioxin compound used in the defoliant is a long-acting toxin that can be passed down genetically

archive.worldpressphoto.orgarchive.worldpressphoto.orgarchive.worldpressphoto.orghttp://www.worldpressphoto.org


. . . [S]ome 150,000 Vietnamese children are disabled owing to their parents exposure to the dioxin . . . (www.worldpressphoto.org, 2011)

Nonetheless, the image shows no visual elements indicating the parents, the traces of chemical warfare, or any symbol relating to the US.

However, the compositional elements of light and lines were invoked to create a transformative effect on the image. The photographer captured a moment when the slanted sunshine cast a shadow cutting across the girls deformed, expressionless face and shrouding the whole room in a cold greenish color. This composition gave the picture an appearance that was both naturalistic and transformative. It depicted a moment in real life, but this moment lacked the variety of emotions, colors, and actions that characterize a normal visual world. It was an image of presence in which the sense of presence receded. A mood of brooding was thus created, linking the image to the caption-loaded connotation of the shadow of the past war.

The somber death of a gorilla

In 2008, Brent Stirtons photo of endangered mountain gorillas in the Democratic Republic of Congo won the first prize in the category of contemporary affairs (archive.worldpressphoto.org, 2008). It depicted local conservation workers evacuating the bodies of four gorillas found shot in the forest. The foregrounded image showed the huge body of a gorilla being carried by more than ten people on a makeshift wooden frame. The photographer used a 160-word caption to contextualize the gorillas fate in relation to the interwoven socio-political, historical, and economic context. Part of the caption is quoted here:

The highly endangered gorillas live in an area beset with conflict. Rebel leaders in the region maintain that the Congolese government is collaborating with the Hutu-led FDLR (Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda), which was accused of involvement in the 1994 genocide against Tutsis in Rwanda . . . It is not always clear who is attacking the gorillas, but a number have been killed in ways that parallel human executions during the Rwandan genocide. Some are eaten as bush-meat. The gorillas habitat is also being destroyed as both militia and illegal charcoal-makers are cutting down trees . . . (archive. worldpressphoto.org, 2008)

No visual elements relating to the above-mentioned socio-political, historical, and economic factors were shown in the photo. If photojournalistic objectivity means only denotation by visual evidence, this might be better considered a very deep explanation accompanied by an image, instead of truth-seeking photojournalism.

The image carried symbolic power hidden in and going beyond the naturalistic scene. In the image, the gorillas arms were strapped and the motionless body was placed on a cross-shaped wooden frame and surrounded by people. The implicit reference to Christ on the Cross transforms the naturalistic scene into an abstract symbol, conveying a deeply ritualistic meaning. The ritual was staged against the background of the dense forest of central Africa, which suggests no specific location, thereby connoting the general concern about the issue in the region. The referencing and staging of this image endowed it with the semantic space of connotation, so that the highly complicated explanation loaded by the caption was appropriate. In an interview, Brent Stirton reflected on what he hoped to express by this image: Ive never seen that degree of stoicism or sobriety or somberness . . . It was a very sober

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affair, a microcosm of the war-torn Congo and Rwanda (National Public Radio, 2008).

The analysis of the three groups showed that most of the awarded works conformed to the conventional notion of photojournalistic objectivity, which did not necessarily hinder deep explanations of environmental issues. A photojournalist could be both recorder and interpreter by choosing unique angles of storytelling or planning multiple shots. Although some photographers went beyond visual denotation and writing captions semantically close to their images, their practices of exploiting the suggestive power of naturalistic images to objectify caption-loaded connotation were still within the conventional range of objective photojournalism.

The negotiation of objectivity in the professional discourse of the WPP

While the above results showed what constituted good works and legitimate innovation in objective photojournalism in the WPP discourse, they were only part of the picture. Like other professional prizes, the WPP needs to maintain relevancy for participants with various stances on professional standards (Heinich, 2009). This could allow for the negotiation of objectivity.

On the one hand, a large majority of the awarded works under analysis were from the media of developed countries. Most WPP judges have been photographers in leading Western media (archive.worldpressphoto.org, 2012). Given both factors, the doctrinal status of the conventional notion of photojournalistic objectivity in the WPP discourse might not be a surprise. On the other hand, the marginal players from the media of developing countries and NGOs might challenge the doctrinal notion of objectivity based on their professional ideology and organizational interest. To understand the negotiation between the dominant and marginal players, we need to pay close attention to the cases of acceptable challenges (Larson, 1993, p. 183). The dynamics of negotiation could be revealed as much in the amount of acceptable challenges as in what those challenges were. The results showed only some exceptional cases of such challenges by the media of developing countries and NGOs.

Environmental disasters as studio art

In 2008, Chinese photographer Fang Qianhuas photo of the environmental damage caused by the Three Gorges Dam won the first prize in the Nature category (archive. worldpressphoto.org, 2008). It was a black and white studio portrait of a nanmu tree leaf. A single leaf occupied most of the space in the photo, with its edges, veins, spots, and even tiny wormholes all highlighted by artificial studio light against a black background. Part of the caption is quoted here:

The leaf of a rare variety of nanmu tree, just one of the plants considered endangered by rising waters caused by the Three Gorges Dam project. The worlds largest dam . . . has had an enormous environmental impact, leading to the displacement of over 1.13 million people, the flooding of archaeological sites and problems with algae and water pollution. Plant life is also threatened . . . (archive.worldpressphoto.org, 2008)

Here the photographers use of an elaborate caption as deep explanation resembled some previous examples. However, it is different from those examples, which objectified caption-loaded connotation by naturalistic images. This work featured a unique form of visual representation, the studio portrait, which led to the separation

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between the denoted meaning and the connoted meaning. The use of artificial studio light was a departure from naturalism. Moreover, the studio portrait denoted the great beauty of the leaf instead of the environmental damage that the caption mentioned. Thus, the caption-loaded connotation lacked the support of both direct visual evidence and naturalistic images, failing to legitimize objectivity in its conventional sense. However, this work was awarded the top prize, and it was not because of the idiosyncrasy of some judges in a particular year: in 2010, the same photographers photo story on the industrial pollution of oranges, a set of similar studio portraits, again won a WPP prize.

Fangs eight-image photo story won the third prize in the Nature Stories category of the 2010 contest (archive.worldpressphoto.org, 2010). It was made of eight close-up shots, each depicting the pattern and color of a different polluted orange. For example, in the seventh photo, the green, brown, and white parts on the surface of an orange were highlighted by artificial studio light and enveloped by a black background, which made the image resemble the Earth as seen from space. The caption explained: Oranges affected by cadmium contamination near the Xianghe Chemical factory . . . The chemical plant was closed down in 2009, but environmental experts found crops and soil up to 1.5 km away to be severely contaminated (archive. worldpressphoto.org, 2010). Here, although the image of a polluted orange was a denotation of environmental damage, the beauty of the polluted fruit evoked by the artificial studio light was very different from naturalistic.

However, this style of depicting an environmental crisis as studio art could be well justified in the Chinese media system. Chinese socialist news theory conceives of objectivity as revealing the basic nature of society, or the macro-reality, instead of just reporting facts and dissecting abstractions (Latham, 2000). Socialist news theory can still serve to justify the abstract style of photojournalism that aims to reveal the macro-reality, given the bifurcated media system in China where Communist government mouthpieces co-exist with the market-oriented media, and many market-oriented media are partly run by the government. The Chinese International Press Photo Contest, which stresses photojournalism with Chinese characteristics, even proclaimed that an important standard of photojournalism is whether it can uncover the essence of things (Li, 2008). This unique notion of objectivity seemed to underlie Fangs style. Take the photo of the nanmu tree leaf, for example. It offered neither the visual evidence of environmental damage nor any naturalistic image that helped objectify the caption-loaded connotation. However, by using studio light to capture the beauty and fragility of a single leaf, the photographer transmuted the image into a piece of art, a metaphorical summary of the fate of Mother Nature. Speaking of Fangs style of depicting environmental issues as studio art, the WPP judge Harry Borden acknowledged that the jury indeed needed to be prepared to push the boundaries to recognize it (Smyth, 2010).

Fitting agenda for objectivity

Some awarded works by NGOs call our attention to the shaded area between professional journalism and NGOs. In NGO-produced journalistic work, these organizations try to fit the expression of their agenda to the standard of objectivity, but its success may be inherently partial. A good example was Daniel Beltras awarded work on the 2005 drought in the Amazon region, a 12-image photo story

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commissioned by Greenpeace. It won the third prize in the Nature Stories category in the 2006 contest (archive.worldpressphoto.org, 2006). Its signature shot, the eighth photo in the photo story and its caption, best demonstrates the tension between journalistic objectivity and organizational agendas.

The photo was an aerial shot of a narrow island in the Amazon River surrounded by vast exposed sandbanks. It appeared to attain objectivity by combining an interpretive caption and a richly suggestive naturalistic image. In the foreground, a small strip of green on the island and a vast stretch of the yellow sandbanks created a sharp contrast, which symbolically suggested the attribution of drought to deforestation, as the caption explained: Greenpeace blamed the drought on . . . deforestation, claiming that forest burning had . . . prevented cloud formation. Brazilian government meteorologists said the dry weather had been caused by unusually high temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean (archive.worldpressphoto.org, 2006). However, a closer examination of the caption shows that it actually offered an explanation advocated by Greenpeace by citing the NGO itself, although in the interest of balance, it also offered the opposite opinion of the Brazilian government. Journalistic objectivity often requires media to hold back their opinions and provide the interpretation by presenting facts or citing sources (Tuchman, 1972). Therefore, despite its attempt at the unbiased presentation of two conflicting opinions, this work may not be considered objective because it directly cited the NGO itself.

This reflects a crucial feature of NGO-produced journalism. It tries to incorporate the standard of objectivity in the expression of agendas, but the two aspects can conflict with each other. This feature was also found in some other awarded works by NGOs. For example, Michel Gunthers photo for the World Wildlife Fund, which won the third prize in the Nature category of the 1993 contest, offered direct visual evidence of the practice of dehorning rhinos for anti-poaching purposes. The caption briefly mentioned that it was the organizations project in Zimbabwe (archive. worldpressphoto.org, 1993). In general, news reporting that advances organizational agendas is not rare in NGO-produced journalism (Zuckerman, 2010). Some photojournalists employed by environmental NGOs are themselves environmental advocates, and winning journalism prizes such as the WPP award helps raise the profiles of both the NGO and the journalist, which is key to campaigning as much as non-violent direct action . . . and political lobbying (Novis, 2012). This further stresses that their challenges to the conventional notion of objectivity in the WPP discourse were not accidental, but rooted in organizational interest.

In sum, the foregoing examples show the challenges by marginal players to the conventional notion of objectivity and their underlying professional ideology or organizational interests. In the WPP discourse, such acceptable challenges were exceptions. Most of the works from the media of developing countries and NGOs were required to adhere to the conventional notion of objectivity in order to be recognized.

Conclusion and discussion

This article focuses on the professional discourse of the WPP as it is reflected in 148 prize-winning environmental photojournalism works from 1992 to 2011. It analyzes the struggle in the media of developed countries, developing countries, and NGOs as reflected in the WPP discourse, focusing on how objectivity was represented and

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negotiated by the players. The analysis yielded the following three main results. First, the media of developed countries dominated the discourse, and their professional domination extended well into the most legitimate area of work for the media of developing countriesnews about developing countries. Although the media of developing countries and NGOs were marginal players, they enlarged their jurisdictional claims in the small area of natural disaster coverage. Second, the conventional notion of photojournalistic objectivity remained as the standard doctrine of the discourse. Most works attained objectivity by visual denotation or naturalistic images. This did not, however, hinder the deep explanation of environmental issues, which was achieved by choosing unique angles of visual storytelling, planning multiple shots, or legitimizing caption-loaded connotation by naturalistic yet richly suggestive images. Third, although most marginal players followed the conventional notion of objectivity in order to compete, the discourse still enabled the negotiation of objectivity to a limited degree between these players and the media of developed countries, allowing exceptional cases of acceptable challenges to the doctrinal standard.

It is true that some patterns were only moderate. The increased presence of marginal players was limited, and their challenges to the doctrinal standard were infrequent. However, the moderate patterns deserve no less attention, because they did not seem to be caused by local factors, such as the composition of juries or submissions to the contest. They were more likely to reflect overall ecological changes in the field of journalism and global environmental politics. Most WPP judges are photographers in leading Western media (archive.worldpressphoto.org, 2012), which has been especially apparent in the specialized juries of nature photography in recent years (www.worldpressphoto.org, 2012). Moreover, according to email interviews with WPP media coordinator Barbara Bufkens in 2012, in the past two decades the number of submissions from developed countries has actually increased, and the majority are still from developed countries. Given these factors, it is not surprising that the media of developed countries have dominated the WPP discourse and that the conventional notion of objectivity has remained its doctrine. The same factors also highlight the jurisdictional expansion of marginal players and their challenges as uncommon, which was potentially related to the overall ecological changes within and outside the field of journalism.

Let us consider the patterns in relation to the features of global environmental politics during the period of study (1992 2011). The rising influence of developing countries and NGOs in environmental politics was apparent in these patterns. A possible explanation, based on the ecological theory of professions (Abbott, 1990), is that external changes in environmental politics stress the importance of environmental information from the media of developing countries and NGOs, which was reflected in the WPP discourse. The importance of the information that the marginal players provided gave them an advantage to articulate their jurisdictional claim, unique professional value, and organizational interest in the WPP discourse. It also made their articulation acceptable to judges and other participants. The external influence of environmental politics, moreover, needed to be combined with internal factors of journalism to cause these changes. First, the downsizing of overseas news production and the consequent scarcity of information about developing countries in Western media further emphasized the importance of news from not only media in developing countries, but also NGOs active in those countries

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(Zuckerman, 2010). This explanation is supported by a quick survey of the countries in which the prize-winning NGOs operated: China, Brazil, Indonesia, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Senegal, and Nigeria. Second, the journalistic value of public service and its inconsistency with objectivity could serve to justify the acceptability of challenges to the conventional notion of objectivity insofar as the public acquires information that matters to them (Deuze, 2005; Salgado & Stro mba ck, 2011). In line with this explanation, WPP director Michiel Munneke explained the decision to recognize Fangs style of depicting environmental crises as studio art: If there was a picture that really summed up the environment and what were doing to our planet, I can imagine that could win (Smyth, 2010). In sum, these patterns, moderate as they were, reflect the converging influence of global environmental politics and the situation of professional journalism in the past two decades. Without this convergence, it would have been less likely that the marginal players would have increasingly taken part in the WPP discourse or would have had exceptional opportunities to redefine objectivity.

The significance of the professional negotiation of marginal players in WPP discourse extends beyond the contest. The notions conveyed by their exceptional challenges offer meaningful, alternative perspectives on the conventional standard of objectivity. This standard, which stresses the neutral and balanced presentation of straight facts and defends media from criticism and lawsuits (Tuchman, 1972), is often accused of favoring media interest above depth of explanation, especially regarding issues of public interest (Meyer, 1995). In contrast is the style of Chinese photographer Fang Qianhua, which depicts environmental issues as studio art. Its underlying notion of objectivity reflects the macro-reality, which may suggest a possible kind of interpretive reporting that is unbounded by the insistence on particular factual details and naturalistic images. Furthermore, the explicitly stated organizational positions in NGO-produced journalism may inspire news reporting that features the transparency of media positions, instead of covering them with the cloak of balance and neutrality. Because media must and should take positions during moments of great public concern, transparency may stand for a more subtle notion of objectivity that goes beyond a defensive strategy to feature answerability to a given reality (Putnam, 1999). To consider the significance of the marginal players professional negotiation in this way is not to say that their practices were without flaws. Instead, their alternative stances on objectivity may serve as the potential basis of a discussion that enables us to imagine a more reflexive and aggressive version of journalism (Zelizer, 2010).

Another aspect of the WPP discourse showed alignment with the features of global environmental politics during the period of the study. Many awarded works offered deep explanations of the historical, economic, and social-political contexts of environmental issues, which reflected the increased awareness of the complexity of environmental issues as implied by the ideological frame of sustainable development. With regard to journalists who took a strong environmentalist stance (Willis & Okunade, 1997), the ideological trend in environmental politics could have a relatively clear influence on their reporting. For other photojournalists, the key factor enabling their interpretive approach was probably the traditional journalistic value of public service. Ed Kashi, a photographer honored by the WPP, often stressed that his work aims to capture the complexity of truth and contribute to the public discourse (Estrin, 2011; Edkashi.com, 2013).

Edkashi.com


We also need take note that the photojournalists often made extra effort and expressed great visual creativity to objectify their deep explanations of these interpretive works. They chose unique angles of storytelling, used multiple shots, or justified the caption-loaded meaning by naturalistic yet richly suggestive images. This, on the one hand, underscored the doctrinal status of the conventional notion of objectivity that journalists must work within its parameters to legitimate their creative work. On the other hand, it shows that photojournalistic objectivity is not a rigid standard, but a flexible strategy that could be used to represent the increasingly complex world, even though the flexibility was largely bounded by the conventional notion. It may be fair to say that the bounded flexibility of the standard helped maintain its doctrinal status in the profession of journalism as well as during the 20 years of WPP discourse.

Does the fit of WPP discourse with the context of global environmental politics suggest that journalism is a social practice that adapts to global influences (Reese, 2010, p. 348)? This study, because of the limited data available, cannot answer this question, which requires a detailed analysis of how journalists and media organizations specifically think and act to show the process of agentic adaptation. Moreover, although the idea of adaptation is often used to explain the system environment relationship, some scholars are cautious because systems also face the pressure of inertia (Hannan & Freeman, 1989). This study also shows the pressure of inertia. For instance, many photographers adhered to the traditional idea of photojournalism as recording. The increasing participation of marginal players was mainly realized in the small area of natural disaster reporting. Although the marginal players challenged the conventional notion of objectivity in some exceptional cases, most of their works still needed to conform to the conventional standard to win a prize, which suggests that despite the opportunities for acceptable challenges, these players were more often co-opted into the conventional mainstream method of visual reporting. These factors show that adaptation is perhaps insufficient to understand the WPP discourse in relation to external conditions. Instead, the WPP discourse and even the professional project of journalism in general, as suggested by Dingwall and Kings (1995) theory, should be accomplished in the tension between inertia and change, and between co-optation and competition.

Objectivity is a topic of practical and normative weight for both journalists and journalism researchers. It is the intention of this article to show the potential of using the ecological theory of professions to approach this topic. Objectivity in journalism is usually the target of heated debate. For its proponents, objectivity is the benchmark of the truthful information that is indispensable in a free society, whereas for its critics it is a villain blamed for a range of problems from shallow reporting to the manipulation of news by sources. However, as Deuze (2005, p. 448) pointed out, the embrace, rejection and critical reappraisal of objectivity all help to keep it alive as an ideological cornerstone of journalism. This article aligns with Lichtenbergs (1991) position that it is necessary to distinguish the ideal of objectivity from the method of objectivity. We need to believe in the ideal of objectivity because this normative belief makes possible a common standpoint for communication and deliberation. However, we also need to monitor closely the method of objectivity by observing not only how it leads to the success or failure of good journalism but also how it comes to take its form. Ecological theory can greatly help in our observations of the latter, allowing us to analyze objectivity as negotiated by various players in

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different areas of journalistic work and under the influence of internal or external sources. As the results of the analysis showed, it allows us to place the discussion of objective reporting in a broad spatial-temporal framework. It is also likely to reveal alternative perspectives in our reflection on mainstream reporting practices, which have been and remain inadequate vis-a -vis the normative ideal of objectivity.

To compare methods of objectivity negotiated by different players, this article uses the conventional notion of photojournalistic objectivity in Western journalism as the starting point. This however is a forced choice because of the lack of research on photojournalistic objectivity in media outside North America and Western Europe, as well as in non-media organizations such as NGOs. The choice reflects Western domination (Cottle, 2009), not only in the field of journalism but also in journalism research. By demonstrating the unconventional strategies of objectivity used by the media in developing countries and NGOs, this article hopes to add to the knowledge of the photojournalistic objectivity used by these marginal players and call attention to this under-researched area.

This article offers an outline of the professional struggle by the media of developed countries, developing countries, and NGOs as reflected in their works of environmental photojournalism. Because of the limited data available, the interpretation of the potential relationship between the WPP discourse and global environmental politics was a theoretical inference suggested by the ecological understanding of professions. In future research, in-depth interviews of WPP judges and contest organizers might serve as a more solid basis for determining this relationship. Moreover, some questions have yet to be answered. Did the marginal players have opportunities to challenge the conventional notion of objectivity in other areas of award-winning journalism? Are similar patterns evident in their news routines? Does NGO-produced journalism collaborate with the media of developing countries, or does it facilitate the domination of the media of developed countries? Regarding both mainstream and marginal players, to what extent do their media types, sizes, and ownership affect their professional struggle? Lastly, as the dotted lines in Figure 1 show, this article did not examine how the WPP discourse contributes to the field of journalism and environmental politics, but it is possible to observe such influences. Besides the annual contest, WPP also organizes workshops, publishes yearbooks, and holds exhibitions around the world, which may further influence journalists ideas of professional expertise, boundaries, and public awareness of specific issues. Future analyses of these activities will lead to a better understanding of the significance of this international award for photojournalism.

Notes

1. The year stands for the year of photography, and 2011 is the most recent year of the contest included in the study. The World Press Photos main page and its online archive mark the

years of photos in two different ways. Whereas archive.worldpressphoto.org uses the year of the photograph, www.worldpressphoto.org uses the year of the announcement of the prize. This study uses the year of the photograph, so the 2012 photos on the main page are

actually the 2011 photos used in this study. 2. The ecological theory of professions takes a unique approach to understanding

professional boundaries. Boundaries do not readily exist between professions; instead, they are made up of the sites of professional competition. A profession is a set of turf battles


yoked into a single defensible position in the system of professions (Abbott, 1995b,

p. 860). In other words, we do not look for boundaries of things, but things of boundaries (p. 857). This approach was inspired by symbolic interactionism.

3. The uses of the terms west, east, and rest have subtle differences in different disciplines. In journalism studies, Western journalism refers to countries with mature

democratic systems, such as in North America and Western Europe (Hanitzsch, 2011). Economists use west to refer to advanced economies that include Australia, New Zealand, and Japan and rest to refer to low-income countries (Maddison, 2002). In

international relations, the distinction between west and east is a cultural-ideological divide, and it is more often used to refer to the divide between the Eastern Communist Bloc and the Western Capitalist Bloc in Cold War politics. After the Cold War, north south

issues and the economic conflicts between developed countries and developing countries have been considered the most important (Veseth, 2002). This article chooses to divide media into those of developing countries and those of developed countries to avoid

confusing terminology and to situate the study in the post-Cold War global political order. Nonetheless, it should be noted that the countries of Western journalism still form the most important part of the developed world.

4. Except for nature documentary works (e.g. beautiful birds), almost all awarded

environmental photos tell stories of people influencing or being influenced by the environment, thus representing the relationship between humans and their environment. However, a few works focus on people and use the environment only as a distant background of news. For example, one photo story depicted the life of Afghan refugees in

Pakistan, who escaped from their country because of political instability and drought. Images of this type are excluded from the analysis.

5. All the works were accessed on the WPP website. These works cover 11 of the 21 contest

categories, including Nature, Nature Stories, General News, General News Stories, Spot News, Spot News Stories, Contemporary Issues, Contemporary Issue Stories, People in the News, People in the News Stories, and Portraits.

6. More coding of organizations, such as types of media (newspaper, magazine, news agency,

TV, etc.), was conducted in the preliminary study, but it did not lead to findings of professional struggle over ideas of objectivity and professional boundaries.

7. The 20-year period is divided into three time spans of similar length. Another benefit is that each started with a key event in global environmental politicsthe Earth Summit in June

1992; the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol in December 1997; and the publication of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment in April 2005so the possible contextual influence of such events was balanced among the three time spans.

Notes on contributor

Yang Liu received his masters degree in journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 2010. He is a doctoral student in communication science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His theoretical interest is the tension between the journalistic field that reproduces

power and journalism as a democratic instrument. On the empirical level, he is intrigued by photojournalism, citizen journalism, and journalism ethics.

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