The Blood of Others: Television Documentary Journalism as Literary Engagement

Abstract

The provocations that spurred literary engagement (littérature engagée) also motivated documentary journalists, yet their work is defined narrowly as journalism history, instead of engaged literature. Like their literary counterparts, documentarians immersed themselves in research and location, reported comprehensively, and posed existential questions that animated civic action. Long-form documentary journalism is thus analyzed in concert with engagement—meaning political involvement by intellectuals denoting commitment and obligation. Engagement arose after World War I, transformed during the Spanish Civil War, and emerged as a dividend that permeated network documentary journalism after World War II. Historical-critical method establishes foundations and criteria, combs existing scholarship for markers of engaged documentary journalism, and moves exemplars from the corners of journalism history into the spotlight of engagement.

Notes

1 “The Complete Library of America Series” (Volumes 1 through 301), accessed January 17, 2018, https://www.loa.org/books/395-the-complete-library-of-america-series-volumes-1-through-281.

2 New Yorker writer John McPhee developed a course at Princeton University on the “literature of fact,” interpreted by some in documentary contexts. See also Johanna Cleary, “Creating ‘America's Storyteller’: The Early Radio Career of Charles Kuralt,” Journal of Radio Studies 11, no. 2 (2004): 226–38. Reporting World War II: American Journalism 1938–1946 (New York: Library of America, 2001) presents a few radio scripts, pp. 40, 363, 625; Reporting Vietnam: American Journalism 1959–1975 (New York: Library of America, 2000) omits broadcasting altogether (Lawrence W. Lichty, member of Advisory Board, email to author, March 4, 2017). Regarding television as “literature,” see Michael Agresta, “‘Girls,’ ‘Mad Men,’ and the Future of TV-as-Literature,” The Atlantic, June 15, 2012, https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/06/girls-mad-men-and-the-future-of-tv-as-literature/258469/; and Vanessa Thorpe, “Salman Rushdie Says TV Dramas Comparable to Novels,” The Guardian, June 12, 2011, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jun/12/salman-rushdie-write-tv-drama.

3 Frank McGee, The American Revolution of '63, NBC television, September 2, 1963, quoted in Mary Ann Watson, The Expanding Vista: American Television in the Kennedy Years (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 110.

4 A. William Bluem, Documentary in American Television: Form, Function, Method (New York: Hastings House, 1965), 13–72.

5 Erik Barnouw, Documentary, A History of the Non-fiction Film, 2nd rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Betsy McLane, A New History of Documentary Film, 2nd ed. (New York: Continuum, 2012); Ian Aitken, ed., The Documentary Film Movement, An Anthology (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998).

6 David L. Schalk, The Spectrum of Political of Engagement: Mounier, Benda, Nizan, Brasillach, Sartre (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), ix.

7 Hazel E. Barnes, “Key to Special Terminology,” in Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay in Phenomenological Ontology, 6th ed. (New York: Citadel Press, 1969), 549.

8 Barnett DeRamus, From Juby to Arras, Engagement in Saint-Exupéry (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1990), 1–10, esp. 5; Konrad Bieber, “Engagement as a Professional Risk,” Yale French Studies, no. 16 (1955): 31, 38–39; Fullbrook and Fullbrook, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, 128–67, esp. 129, 147, 157; Walter Kaufmann, Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre (New York: Penguin, 1989, expanded ed.), 49. See also Ronald Aronson, Camus and Sartre: The Story of a Friendship and the Quarrel That Ended It (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).

9 DeRamus, From Juby to Arras, 8; Bieber, “Engagement as a Professional Risk,” 30–34.

10 Granville Hicks, “George Orwell's Prelude in Spain,” New York Times Book Review, May 18, 1952, section 7, 1.

11 Kate Fullbrook and Edward Fullbrook, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre: The Remaking of a Twentieth-century Legend (New York: Basic Books, 1994), 128–167, esp. 129, 147; “Littérature engagée,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, accessed August 31, 2016, https://www.britannica.com/art/litterature-engagee.

12 Fred Friendly, Due to Circumstances beyond our Control (New York: Random House, 1967), 41; David Lowe, CBS Reports: Harvest of Shame, November 25, 1960, accessed March 10, 2017, http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/1960-harvest-of-shame/.

13 Schalk, The Spectrum of Political Engagement, 19.

14 Ibid., 5–7.

15 Adam Gopnik, “The Trial of the Century, Revisiting the Dreyfus Affair,” New Yorker, September 28, 2009, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/28/trial-of-the-century. See also Louis Begley, Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010).

16 DeRamus, 16–19, 17, note 5; Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front (New York: Little, Brown, 1929); Schalk, The Spectrum of Political Engagement, 5. For a depiction of World War I's slaughter, see William M. Anderson, Gallipoli, Peter Weir dir. (Paramount, 1981).

17 Schalk, The Spectrum of Political Engagement, 13–18.

18 Ibid., 19.

19 Giovanna Dell'Orto, AP Foreign Correspondents in Action, World War II to the Present (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), throughout, esp. 359–75; see also Martha Gellhorn, The Face of War (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1988 edition), 1–3.

20 Schalk, The Spectrum of Political Engagement, 25.

21 Ibid., 8.

22 Hicks, “George Orwell's Prelude to Spain”; Adam Hochschild, Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939 (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016).

23 Hochschild, Spain in Our Hearts, xvi.

24 Adam Hochschild, “Foreword,” in George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (Boston: Mariner Books, 2015), xiii.

25 Hicks, “George Orwell's Prelude in Spain”; also, Adam Hochschild, “Foreword,” and Lionel Trilling, “Introduction,” in Orwell, Homage to Catalonia, v–xliv.

26 Martha Gellhorn, The Face of War, 14–15.

27 Hochschild, Spain in Our Hearts, xiv.

28 Albert Camus, quoted in Hochschild, Spain in Our Hearts, xvii.

29 Pier Francesco Paolini, “The Hemingway of the Major Works,” Hemingway and His Critics: An International Anthology, ed. Carlos Baker (New York: Hill and Wang, 1961), 134–35, cited in DeRamus, 35–36, n. 34.

30 Hochschild, Spain in Our Hearts, xvii–xviii.

31 Ibid., 158–59, 164–65.

32 Jean-Paul Sartre, quoted in Schalk, The Spectrum of Political Engagement, 8.

33 Fullbrook and Fullbrook, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, 128–67, esp. 129, 147.

34 Ibid., 150–51.

35 Simone de Beauvoir quoted in ibid., 145, note 55.

36 Ibid., 157.

37 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness (New York: Citadel Press, 1969), 409.

38 Joseph Mahon, Existentialism, Feminism, and Simone de Beauvoir (UK: Macmillan, 1997), 18–34; Elizabeth Fallaize, The Novels of Simone de Beauvoir (London: Routledge, 1988), 44; Simone de Beauvoir, The Blood of Others (originally published in France as Le Sang des Autres, by Librairie Gallimard, 1945; New York: Knopf, 1948; Bantam ed., 1974).

39 Fallaize, The Novels of Simone de Beauvoir, 10–11.

40 See, for instance, William Stott, Documentary Expression and Thirties America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986); Aitken, The Documentary Film Movement, 1998; Phyllis R. Klotman and Janet K. Cutler, eds., Struggles for Representation: African American Documentary Film and Video (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999); Patricia R. Zimmerman, States of War: Documentaries, Wars, and Democracies (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000); or Dorothy Fadiman and Tony Levelle, Producing with Passion: Making Films that Change the World (Studio City, CA: Michael Weise Productions, 2008).

41 Raymond Lee Carroll, “Factual Television in America: An Analysis of Network Television Documentary Programs, 1948–1975,” diss. 1978, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Ann Arbor, MI: Xerox University Microfilms, 72; also http://www.oldtimeradiodownloads.com/drama/columbia-workshop/columbia-workshop-38-05-21-091-ecce-homo-behold-the-man.

42 Bluem, Documentary in American Television, 63; Saul Carson, “Notes toward an Examination of the Radio Documentary,” Hollywood Quarterly, vol. 4, no. 1 (1949): 69.

43 Dr. David Dallas Jones, “The Place of the Negro Woman in American Life,” transcribed from audio file, accessed July 10, 2016, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=87780799. See also Barnett, “Radio Show Chronicled Blacks' Harsh Realities,” March 3, 2008, NPR, All Things Considered, accessed September 1, 2016, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=87780799.

44 Barnett, “Radio Show Chronicled Blacks' Harsh Realities.”

45 Ibid.

46 Carroll, “Factual Television in America,” 74.

47 Bluem, Documentary in American Television, 63.

48 Carson, “Notes toward an Examination of the Radio Documentary,” 69.

49 Ibid., 70.

50 Ibid.

51 William E. Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932–1940 (New York: Harper Row, 1963), 330–32; see also Mary Ann Watson, Defining Visions: Television and the American Experience in the 20th Century, 2nd ed. (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008), and Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation (New York: Random House, 1998).

52 Bluem, Documentary in American Television, 65–66.

53 Matthew C. Ehrlich, “Radio Utopia: Promoting Public Interest in a 1940s Radio Documentary,” Journalism Studies 9, no. 6 (2008): 859.

54 Ibid., 861–62.

55 Shayon quoted from Shayon papers, box 3, folder 12, ibid., 863.

56 Ibid., 861.

57 Ibid., 869.

58 Shayon quoted in ibid., 870.

59 Bluem, Documentary in American Television, 69–70; Michael C. Keith and Mary Ann Watson, eds., Norman Corwin's One World Flight: The Lost Journal of Radio's Greatest Writer (New York: Continuum, 2009), 199.

60 Ehrlich, “Radio Utopia,” 870–71.

61 See Daniel J. Leab, “See It Now: A Legend Reassessed,” in American History/American Television: Interpreting the Video Past, ed. John E. O'Connor (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1983), 1–32; A. M. Sperber, Murrow, His Life and Times (New York: Fordham University Press, 1998); or Bob Edwards, Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2004).

62 Daniel Einstein, Special Edition: A Guide to Network Television Documentary Series and Special News Reports, 1980–1989 (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1997), 96–97.

63 Ibid., 99.

64 Micah Van Hove, “Werner Herzog & Joshua Oppenheimer Examine the State of Humanity & Documentary Film,” Sundance 2016, January 30, 2016, accessed July 4, 2016, http://nofilmschool.com/2016/01/herzog-oppenheimer-examine-state-humanity-documentary-film.

65 Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 452, 485.

66 Joseph S. Catalano, A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartre's “Being and Nothingness” (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 213; Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 530–31.

67 Fallaize, The Novels of Simone de Beauvoir, 12–13.

68 Ibid., 3–4. See also Joseph Mahon, Existentialism, Feminism, and Simone de Beauvoir, 18–34, the chapter on The Blood of Others, and Fallaize, The Novels of Simone de Beauvoir, 44.

69 Robert Rogers and Ted Yates, The Undeclared War transcript, NBC News, June 15, 1966, Papers of Ted Yates, Scripts, 1961–67, box 2, folder 3, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, State Historical Society of Wisconsin. Film viewed courtesy of Desmond McElroy. See also Tom Mascaro, Into the Fray: How NBC's Washington Documentary Unit Reinvented the News (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2012), 233–45.

70 Rogers and Yates, The Undeclared War transcript, 1–2, 18, 22.

71 Fallaize, The Novels of Simone de Beauvoir, 49–51.

72 Ibid., 16–17.

73 Same Mud, Same Blood, NBC News, New York: NBC Universal, December 1, 1967, accessed July 20, 2016, from NBC Universal Archives, http://www.nbcuniversalarchives.com/nbcuni/clip/51A9571_s01.do. See also Gerald F. Goodwin, “Race in the Crucible of War: African American Soldiers and Race Relations in the ‘Nam,’” diss. Ohio University, 2014 (dissertations available online through OhioLINK, www.ohiolink.edu).

74 Martin Luther King Jr., “Beyond Vietnam—A Time to Break Silence,” speech delivered in New York, NY, April 4, 1967, accessed September 1, 2016, http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm.

75 Same Mud, Same Blood, NBC Universal, quoted successively, at 49:32,00, at 51:02,95, at 38:01,16, at 50:35,00. For a counterpoint, see Rod Serling, “The Challenge of the Mass Media to the 20th-Century Writer,” lecture given January 15, 1968, Library of Congress, Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress 25, no. 2 (1968): 130–33.

76 Steven R. Weisman, “White House Assails CBS News, but a Bid for Reply Is Rejected,” New York Times, April 23, 1982, 1. See also Robert Benenson, “Social Welfare under Reagan.” In Editorial Research Reports 1984, vol. 1, 189–208 (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 1984), accessed July 20, 2016, http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/cqresrre1984030900.

77 Judy Towers Reemtsma and Bill Moyers, People Like Us, CBS News, April 21, 1982. Viewed at the Library of Congress Motion Picture and Recorded Sound Division Reading Room, 1993. Quotations cited from transcription while viewing.

78 Fyodor Dostoevsky, epigraph Beauvoir, The Blood of Others; Fallaize, The Novels of Simone de Beauvoir, 49.

79 DeRamus, From Juby to Arras, 38–39.

80 Ronald Aronson, email to author, October 6, 2011.

81 Camus, quoted in Aronson, Camus and Sartre, 169.

82 Bieber, “Engagement as a Professional Risk,” 33; DeRamus, From Juby to Arras, 26–27; Aronson, Camus and Sartre, 174, also 114–26, 145.

83 Aronson, Camus and Sartre, 186–87.

84 See, for example, summary explanations of the Frankfurt School in Key Contemporary Social Theorists, ed. Anthony Elliott and Larry Ray (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003).

85 DeRamus, From Juby to Arras, 3.

86 Robert F. Rogers, Spying for Uncle Sam, NBC News, March 28, 1978. Viewed courtesy of Desmond McElroy; Claudia L. Bach, “The C.I.A. and the Funny Men,” America, September 17, 1977, 142–45.

87 Letter Robert Rogers to R. G., April 7, 1978, Papers of Robert F. Rogers, box 2, folder 21, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, State Historical Society of Wisconsin.

88 Einstein, Special Edition, 17. Transcribed from author's recorded viewing, June 26, 1987.

89 Mark Schwed, “‘They Have Souls, Too’: Plight of Mentally Ill Examined by ABC News,” June 26, 1987, UPI, accessed July 21, 2016, http://articles.latimes.com/1987-06-26/entertainment/ca-6623_1_mental-illness.

90 Albert Camus, “The Myth of Sisyphus,” in Albert Camus: The Plague, The Fall, Exile, and the Kingdom, and Selected Essays, with introduction by David Bellos (New York: Knopf, Everyman's Library, 2004), 589–93.

91 Vietnam: It's a Mad War, NBC News, December 1, 1964, Robert F. Rogers film collection, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, accession #M2014-098. Viewed courtesy of Elizabeth Rogers.

92 Mascaro, Into the Fray, 151–191; quotations 182–84.

93 See Jean-Paul Sartre, “Marxism and Existentialism,” quoted in Kaufmann, Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, 283, 354, 357; Beauvoir, The Blood of Others, 70, 117, 271; Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1943), 5; Flight to Arras (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1942, 1986 ed.), 27, 43, 61, 64, 115–18, 123–29; Wind, Sand, and Stars (Orlando, FL: Harvest Book, Harcourt, 1992), 26–29, 87–88. David Schalk, The Spectrum of Political Engagement, 21–22, qualifies this portrait of the adventurer seeking salvation.

94 DeRamus, From Juby to Arras, 30–34.

95 Beauvoir, The Blood of Others, 70.

96 Saint-Exupéry, Flight to Arras, 118.

97 Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand, and Stars, 29.

98 A. C. Sedgwik, “Polk, Missing CBS Man, Is Slain; Bound Body Found in Greek Bay,” New York Times, May 17, 1948. Re: the Polk award, see http://liu.edu/polk. NBC correspondent George Clay was killed in the Congo. His comrades wrapped Clay's body in a sheet, wrote his name on it with a pen, and buried his remains in the jungle. NBC trade releases November 24, December 1 and 7, 1964; February 24 and April 23, 1965. When Ted Yates was killed in Jerusalem, his colleague Robert F. Rogers stayed during combat so he could escort Yates's remains home. Mascaro, Into the Fray, 293–312, 317–18.

99 Søren Kierkegaard quoted in Kaufmann, Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, 117.

100 Beauvoir, The Blood of Others, 178.

101 Lois Farfel Stark, telephone interview with the author, September 18, 1998.

102 Mascaro, Into the Fray, 146, 159, 284, 303–08, 312.

103 Fred S. Siebert, Theodore Peterson, and Wilbur Schramm, Four Theories of the Press: The Authoritarian, Libertarian, Social Responsibility, and Soviet Communist Concepts of What the Press Should Be and Do (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1956).

104 Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins, A Short History of Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 243, 245.

105 Ibid., 243–82.

106 Jean-Paul Sartre, quoted in ibid., 277.

107 Barnes, “Key to Special Terminology,” 549.