Preamble:

Many of the TV news documentaries we are seeing this semester have influenced their offspring seen on TV today. Although TV news documentaries have been scarce in the 1990’s and 2000’s, some networks continue to air occasional programs with national or international impact. Unlike programs about wildlife, celebrities, the arts, sports or science, news documentaries are about social and political developments in which we, the people of the United States and the world, have major stakes, roles and responsibility.

Project:

Find another student with whom to work together on this assignment. You may divide your work as you wish, including the paper. You will be asked to confidentially “rate” your team partner’s efforts when you submit this project.

For this assignment, keep your eyes out for a current TV news documentary which seems to fit the mold of the programs we’re studying in “Raiding the Lost Ark.” Look for a program which tackles a significant national or global issue (as distinct from a purely local problem or crisis), and which attempts to raise public consciousness and perhaps even to spur social or political action.

Don’t settle for a program which merely documents non-controversial history or which merely presents a biography. Likewise, don’t choose a program full of “pretty pictures” of nature or science if it doesn’t have a “cutting edge” like the documentaries we’re watching in class. For the purpose of this assignment, “segments” of programs such as “60 Minutes” and “Prime Time Live” do not qualify as TV news documentaries.

Don’t confine yourself to the “big-three” broadcast networks (ABC, NBC, CBS); look for documentaries on PBS and the cable channels, too, from HBO and CNN to MTV, Discovery and others.

You might want to record a few programs before selecting the one about which you want to write. Make a video tape of the program you choose, and submit the tape together with your final paper. Label the tape with the name of the program, its date of airing, its network, and your names.

You must secure my approval of the program you select. You may do this in email or in a brief conversation with me.

Attempt, through research (perhaps even by contacting the producers of the program you select) to determine the size of the audience which saw the program, motivations for its being created, tidbits about its role in the history of television (Does it imitate a similar previous program? Does it have roots in some aspect of current TV news history?), and any evidence of impact the program might have had.

Write:

Referring to specific examples of the programs we have seen and to the political and social times in which they were broadcast, analyze your chosen program on the basis of the characteristics of the documentaries we watch this semester. Compare the program you’ve selected to those in the “Lost Ark.” How is your program similar, or different, from its “parents” in the “Lost Ark.”

Describe the role you think your chosen program played, or should play, in American society. Why was it produced? Is it disturbing in some way? Whose goals does it meet? Has it been an effective – or an ineffectual – tool in influencing the conduct of our society? How? Has it succeeded? Or failed? Might it succeed? Why?

Be sure you include in your final report critical details about your chosen program, such as its title, producers, date(s) of airing, network, audience size and makeup. Take note of techniques inherited from those pioneered in the “Lost Ark” programs.

Ten to twelve pages.

Reminder:

You need not wait until the last week of the semester to complete this project. Networks often air their best programs early in the season, and during ratings “sweeps” periods in February-March and April-May. And the TV networks might not have a documentary scheduled to air on May 22. If you work on it throughout the semester, you’ll be able to refine your work, gather more “string” for it, and produce a better product.