teevee news lesson from charlie brooker

Broadcast new scripts have always been loaded with clichés, but I never thought much about the visual clichés. Until I watched this video:

Here is his take on the U.S. media:

The only thing he didn’t get was Chris Matthews asking a guest a question then talking over the guest as he or she tried to answer.

TV news, cable news in particular, gets so tiresome. Rachel Maddow is currently the only one I can stand to watch for an entire hour, and even her show gets chopped up too much and gets boring when she has the same group of pundits, night after night, almost always spewing the correct political line, though she does try to get “the opposition” on.

I don’t so much mind pundits with credentials (especially when the shows reach out from the usual gang)—attorneys, professors well-versed in the topic area, actual government officials elective or bureaucratic. But I usually don’t get how hearing another journalist/pundit opinion adds anything to the topic—just smacks more of making sure buddies give each other paying gigs, more of a circle jerk than substance. I want to see these so-called journalists interviewing people that are involved in whatever the topic is rather than interviewing another journalist or pundit or commentator unless they absolutely add something substantive to the report.

Even 60 Minutes bugs me sometimes, particularly when one of the pack of on-air so-called journalists ask a head of state a question such as “How dare you build nuclear weapons?” rather than asking them to please explain things from the head-of-state’s perspective. Or explaining why it is wrong for Country X to do exactly the same thing we do. I guess investigative journalism, at least in broadcast news, is a lost art. Too bad.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 02/19/10 at 01:20 PM
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