Between the Lines

1979, 23:27 min, color, sound

Between the Lines examines the "invisible mechanisms" that control and contextualize media information. Analyzing a news report to demonstrate how facts are mediated by television's limits, Muntadas focuses on the role and responsibility of the reporter — the person between the facts and the audience. Following a reporter for WGBH-TV, Boston, as she covers a meeting between Mayor Kevin White and a community development group, Muntadas observes the decisions, selections, schedules and editing that determine how the "news" is transmitted on TV. He states: "When we say we are 'reading between the lines' we are completing information from the text with our own process of thinking, knowledge, information, subtlety. With television, words and images are experienced together; there is no time to stop and think while we absorb information from a moving image."

Technical Assistance/Editor: John Barnett. Produced at M.I.T.'s Center for Advanced Visual Studies.