At a more basic level, an assumption that images do not reflect a particular point of view is simply unsupportable. Images are texts without words and are therefore more difficult to analyze because they are nonlinear.[1] CNN's own expert analyst for the sniper story, for example, made clear that the sniper videos were filmed in a particular way precisely to maximize their emotional impact:
TUCHMAN (voice-over): The first thing the sergeant notices is that, in his opinion, the sniper's gunshot is coming from a place and an angle that is different from the cameraman's location.
COUGHLIN: Just because of the angle where the shot comes from and from the camera view.
TUCHMAN: Coughlin says, this shows the sniper team is trying to maximize publicity opportunities.
COUGHLIN: It tells me that their shooter is farther away than the cameraman is. The cameraman gets up close, so he can actually get a good video of it, but you don't need to be that close to be able to shoot like that.[2]
Images, whether moving or still, make arguments, and these videos, particularly when shown as a group as CNN showed them, are a perfect example of how arguments are expressed visually (keeping in mind that images are always contextualized by the words that accompany them, whether captions for still photographs or the reporter's voice-over for news footage.) Taking the CNN sniper tapes as an example, they first and foremost make the argument that the insurgents use snipers because they are a precision weapon, and the insurgents are profoundly concerned that they not cause civilian casualties. This is made clear in the translation provided by the CNN reporter/narrator, as he translates the soundtrack.
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