Thanks to Cal P. for his thoughtful response.
 
There are, of course, lots of people interested in the ethics of documentary
representation.  But it seems that not too many of them are in film and TV
studies.  I myself discuss the ethics of filmmaking quite extensively in the
classroom, but it isn't an issue that I am likely to take up in my own
scholarly work (partly because I'm not researching documentary, though I do
enjoy teaching it).
 
But my underlying point is this: the reigning conceptual frameworks in
film/tv studies don't make ethics a very central issue.
 
Perhaps I'm missing something, though.  Is "politics" (which is pretty
central to film/tv studies) just our way of addressing ethics?  Or is there
a different set of issues involved in ethics, issues that the field doesn't
particularly want to take up?
 
 
___________________________________________________________
James Peterson
University of Notre Dame
[log in to unmask]