By Lexie Little, M.A. student at the University of Georgia

Michael T. Martinez, an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, spent 26 years contributing to the “first draft of history” as a professional photojournalist, graphics editor and web producer for The Associated Press, the Louisville Courier-Journal, The Detroit News, The Cincinnati Enquirer and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram before entering the academy. He earned his bachelor’s at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln before completing his master’s and Ph.D. at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. Now he reminds students and fellow scholars about the importance of digging into the past to understand the future through lenses of media history and law.

His research interests include media law, specifically media and the courts, the history of journalistic practices and political coverage in visual communication. His research endeavors have largely explored the public’s memory of U.S. presidents – from Kennedy to Trump –  through the lenses of official White House photographers.

Q: How did you come to be a photojournalist?

A: Oh, man. That’s kind of a weird story. When I was a kid, my father had a little rangefinder camera. I used to play with it as a toy. I was always imagining taking pictures and that kind of stuff. I got to high school, and I took mechanical engineering and then architectural engineering, and I started out as an undergrad in architecture for a year. And hated it. Just absolutely hated it. I got one hour of credit out of a whole year.

Clearly, I needed to change majors, and the only thing I could think of that really interested me was photography. The choice was art school or journalism, and fortunately, I chose journalism. Made a little bit of money at it even though my stepdad, at the time, said, ‘Can you make a living at that?’ Well, you know, ultimately, I did. I got more and more interested in the journalism part of photo and progressed from there.

Q: What prompted your decision to enter the academy?

A: To get to academia, I was in journalism for 26 years and moved up: first shooting, then editing, then managing departments and staffs. Then, it moved to the web. It was a natural progression at that point because it was becoming more multi-platform.

I was in Fort Worth at the time, and Knight-Ridder was forced to sell all of its newspapers. I had been through the sale and a joint operating agreement with Gannett. I knew whenever somebody new comes in, they start downsizing, and I saw the redundancy in my position. Anyhow, I’d been thinking about going back to school, so that was my opportunity.

Q: How did you come to your areas of scholarship?

A: I’ve got two streams of scholarship: legal scholarship and historical scholarship. Sometimes, they overlap. Many times, they overlap. The legal part started when I was a photojournalist in Louisville, Kentucky, when I worked at the Courier-Journal. My boss at the time was trying to get cameras in the courts in the state, and as a picture editor there, I was helping him try to get that through. Then, I went to New York and started dealing with contracts and copyright issues as a senior photo editor at the AP. I was always fascinated by the legal aspect of it. When I went back to school, I thought, ‘Hey, you know, that’s what I want to pursue.’

A lot of legal research is historical research as well. My dissertation was on cameras in the courts – whether there really is access. The founding president of the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) spent 30-40 years trying to get cameras back into the courts after Canon 35 and Estes v. Texas banned them. All of his papers are in Syracuse, and I went and started doing some historical research there. I found his battle between advocating for the NPPA battling the American Bar Association. I really got heavily involved in that kind of archival research.

Q: Can you tell me a little bit about your latest historical research project?

A: Back to my working days, a lot of things I covered were political. I covered a lot of sports, too, but I covered presidential debates, and I covered Clinton’s transition in Little Rock. Just a lot of politics. So, I ran into [the subject] various times: official White House photographers. I was always fascinated with the fact that they had access that working journalists didn’t. I started looking into it, and the position starts with Kennedy. It was still related to government, park service, and military service covering Kennedy. It was kind of the creation of a White House photographer, but President Johnson was the one that officially created a civilian position that was not government affiliated. That established an official White House photographer. And ever since then, except for Jimmy Carter, there has been one. I became fascinated with how they progressed over time.

Kennedy’s had to kind of create his own position, if you will, and even then, he had limited access. President Johnson gave Yoichi Okamoto unlimited access, and he really set the standard. With Nixon, the situation fluctuated back and forth. Nixon was a very private person and didn’t allow his photographer any kind of personal access until the very end. Ironically, when Nixon decided to resign, that’s when his photographer gained personal access. Then came President Ford’s photographer, David Kennerly, who’s still alive. Ford really wanted to heal the nation, so he wanted complete transparency, and he gave Kennerly all kinds of access. That’s probably the most intimate we’ve ever seen a president. As I mentioned, Carter didn’t have an official White House photographer. He wanted to get away from the imperial presidency. He had a White House photo staff, but they had very little access. It’s all meet-and-greets and events like that. As the position has progressed to now, President Trump’s photos are “Look Who I’m Standing With” kind of photos. There’s some behind-the-scenes photos, but not a lot.

As you start seeing a timeline through all of these to present –  how the presidents have changed, the photographers have changed, the technology has changed and what the public sees as the president, the person in office – how these evolved over time, that’s what fascinated me. And I’m still in the midst of it. I’m still trying to piece the different parts together and see how different presidents act with different people.

I’ve been able to visit all of the presidential libraries from Kennedy up to George W. Bush…I’ve been able to visit the archives and look at the photographs, and more importantly, from a historical perspective, look at the papers of these photographers, their correspondence and some of their oral histories. Those that are still living, I’ve been able to interview and conduct oral histories. It’s given me insight into what life was like in the White House.

It’s been fascinating. It’s been a lot of fun.

Q: How does your research inform your teaching?

A: I want to emphasize to students that there’s institutional memory in the photos and accounts behind them. If we can get an idea of who the person is in the photographs, it will help us understand the person in the White House and the key moments they had to deal with during their presidency. And, really, how human they are. I mean, that’s a person. We, the public, are insulated from who that person is, and the media certainly doesn’t get the same kind of access that would show the person. Media show the public persona, but the White House photographer – knock on wood – should have access to give us an idea of who the real person is.

When I do lecture about photojournalism, one thing I talk about is that you need to develop a relationship. It’s important to emphasize it’s not fair to do “hit and run” photography. It’s not good to just show up for five or 10 minutes, get a portrait and get out of there. Spend some time with the person. Get them comfortable with you. Let them become human. That’s when you start getting real photographs and get some insight into the person.

Q: What is the single most important piece of research advice you have for junior scholars or faculty?

A: Beyond the photographs, beyond studying the images, beyond the content, look at the person…As a historian, talk to the people [if at all possible]. Don’t just rely on the photographs [or content]. You’ll get a much richer idea of what went on and how they got to the story that they got to.

Q: What is the single most important piece of teaching advice you have for junior scholars or faculty?

A: There’s a big concern that with everything being electronic, we’re losing documentation. We’re losing archives. I just read an op-ed in The New York Times saying that the National Archives are not going to maintain historical records in the same way they have in the past. Even with the Presidential Records Act, they are limiting what they are going to keep. That scares me.

Encourage current students to fight for archives. And this is nothing new. This is what my history teachers taught us: go look for archival material not necessarily in the archives, but in people’s family histories and that kind of thing. Let me give you a good example:

One of the first presidential libraries I went to was the Carter Library in Atlanta. Serendipity, very much serendipity: Michael Evans was President Regan’s White House photographer, and his wife, Story Evans works at the Carter Library. When I told the archivist what I was researching, he said, “You’ve got to meet Story Evans. You’ve got to talk to her.” And she agreed to have lunch with me…She gave me a whole insight into her husband…She said to me when I start writing the chapter on Michael Evans, if I have holes, to please get in touch with her and she could help fill that kind of stuff in. Who would have thought I would have run into the widow of Michael Evans in Atlanta? At Carter’s library, of all places…So, don’t just look in the archives. Look in all the ancillary stuff that you may run into as well.

Q: In the year 2020, what do you believe is the most important issue the Fourth Estate faces? How can media history scholars and educators address that issue?

A: The biggest issue is media credibility. And media literacy. They go hand-in-hand. We are under a constant barrage that we are ‘fake news,’ ‘fake media,’ biased, perpetuators of political agendas, and the general public, for the most part, is buying into this. That’s the biggest problem we face.

Journalism is the “first draft of history.” And I’m a firm believer in that. I believe that we do it in real time, virtual real time, certainly subject to interpretation, and as time progresses, it may evolve. We revise a little bit as we gain more knowledge…As journalism writes the first draft of history, it’s up to historians, I believe, to then interpret that as we get a fuller picture as time goes on. Hindsight is always 20/20 as a cliché, but it helps when you start putting things in context and start getting at various aspects as more ‘truth’ becomes available or comes to the forefront.

History is extremely valuable in learning the future. Learning how to deal with things as they evolve and where we’re going. And, hopefully, it will give us some guidance as to where we’ve screwed up in the past and can maybe fix it in the future.

Interview conducted by Lexie Little, M.A. student at the University of Georgia.