O O Ø O O O O
Objective What?
In case you missed it, bad things have happened down in the southern United States over the last twenty-four hours. I doubt you have missed it, however, as all of the TV news channels/groups (no, I will not link to them) have been covering it. You’ll notice I say covering, because what I’ve seen so far hasn’t been reporting; it’s been more along the lines of asking leading questions and highlighting visceral details to “sell” the news instead of report it.
It’s upsetting, and I’d like to offer some recommendations—which I know no one would ever follow— that I wish were in place:
- Don’t spin it. There is no good news, and clichée pictures of a flag waving in the wreckage to finish your spot will not make it better. Tell it like it is, and remember your opinion is just that.
- Don’t try to interperet what I’m seeing for me. The pictures speak for themselves.
- Don’t use a hard syllable on every, single, word of your commentary. The type of job that requires that kind of drama is already filled.
- Don’t constantly interrupt the experts, who are actually giving people information about what’s going on, with asinine questions about worst case scenarios. We don’t need to hear their reaction to the uninformed, asinine opinion you’ve already voiced 14 times in the last twenty minutes. It’s ok to be stupid, it’s not ok to let everyone in on that fact.
- Try to hide your excitement over getting new videos or information from the affected area while you’re sitting comfortably in New York. News of a fresh new disaster, or video of same, is not Viagra, and it sure isn’t a cause for ill-disguised glee. Your increased ratings are coming at the horrific expense of others — try to remember that.
- Attemtpting to quantifying the magnitude of a disaster or tragedy by how many people died is appalling. It’s not a game, and body counts shouldn’t be high scores.
- Spend more than fifteen seconds of a fifteen minute segment telling people how they can help. It’s the least you could do.
- Quit cutting things short just so you can go to commercial on time. Sometimes things can’t be scheduled to the second; deal.
Everything that’s happened in the wake of hurricane Katrina along the gulf coast has been sobering and depressing. The commercial media outlets down here have, as usual, used it to sell more spots. I’m not naiive enough to be surprised by their behaviour, but it’s times like these that I really miss the good ‘ole days of objective reporting.
TV sucks.
Kev Needham
August 30, 2005
OOØOOOODCCXIX
September 1st, 2005 at 3:29 pm
“We did not feel it so necessary to assume an objective tone in our reporting then. We were more honest and straightforward and did not make such a sanctimonious thing of objectivity, which is finally a way of constructing an opinion for the reader without letting him know that you are.”
E.L Doctorow - “The Waterworks”
Something to think on.
September 5th, 2005 at 5:32 pm
“Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.” It’s a shame but now the norm in the ‘news’.
September 6th, 2005 at 9:28 am
Heh - I agree that some editorialising will always be imparted on stories as they are told, and found that as the week wore on, it moved from the sensationalistic to “this is an embarassment”. My biggest complaint remains with the fact that they stick to their commercial advertisement scheduling like glue. Informative interviews would get cut short on the mark, because it was time for the ad. I understand the ads pay a percentage of the costs and have a decent margin, but sometimes it makes me shake my head.
I was happy to see field reporters start asking why their anchor’s continued to ask incredibly stupid questions, and also to see some folks in the media finally start questioning the effectiveness of their administration. About fucking time.
Still, it’s depressing to see the Ken and Barbie anchors affix their plastic smiles and spout off the same trite remarks about the “devastation” over and over. It’s also saddening to see networks like NBC censor people’s opinions because they deviated from a script and let their feelings show.
Ah well, it won’t change a whole lot, but maybe folks will feel a little more comfortable asking some hard questions of their gummint from now on. Here’s hoping.