In front of and behind the camera: Media images from Northern Norway

Based on Bourdieu’s concept of ‘field’, and my own dual experience as a journalist and interviewee, I discuss ways in which editorial policies intervene in journalistic decision-making in documentaries included in the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation’s (NRK) Faktor series. The empirical material includes one documentary in which I was an interviewee, and two documentaries that I produced. In a reflexive way, I discuss two positions within the journalistic field, the journalist and the interviewee, and describe how journalistic intuition is required to comply with the NRK’s written guidelines and how, in addition, negotiations between the external producer and the NRK intervene in the film-making process. The article exemplifies these processes by analysing how certain polarizing representational practices become central to how interviewees are presented. The article deals with diversity and representations of the Sámi people and Northern Norway, and who gets to decide how this is expressed in documentary films.