"If you want to tell them the truth, make them laugh." - Either Shaw or Wilde. People, especially supposed intellectuals, who dismiss all comedians as "just comedians" instantly lose my respect. Often, they are the only ones who CAN tell the truth -- and that's the problem with news media in general: too many of them take themselves too seriously, ESPECIALLY the ones on TV. Isn't it weird how, at a minimum, every person with a show has a hip 'n quirky look, and almost all the women could be models? Obviously that's largely a ratings issue, and I'm not saying pretty people can't news, but from the clips I see, it looks like they don't have the self-awareness to realize that being fuckable does not equal credibility. I regularly imagine something Jon Stewart brought up years ago: what if someone with a huge bankroll started a news media company that took FOX's approach to -- wait for it -- telling the truth and NOT manufacturing stories and beating them to death? Wouldn't that be weird? The BBC seems close, as does Al-Jazeera, but why not go further: get smart AND funny people mixing together to go after politicians and fellow media members (and each other, in house, when necessary). And for fuck's sake, enough pretending to have no bias. We all do. That doesn't make our opinions wrong -- how well we argue them does (or does not). I agree with maybe 60% of what Bill Maher says, but Real Time has some of the most honest discussions on TV (I also think having a live audience helps). At least the pandering is minimal, which is the sad, low bar that anyone needs to clear in order to be better than TV news. Imagine if a network corralled him, Stewart and Oliver with people like Gwen Ifill and Jim Lehrer to run a line up of shows and news broadcasts. "I totally killed Hitler with my dick." #BrianWilliamsMisremembers (Sorry, I got nothing).
That's what VICE is for MMMAAAYNN unbiased truth with a comedy slant. They still pretend to be unbiased which I think is funny. I give that they are pretty savvy when it comes to targeting younger demographics with their reporting.
I got repped for my original post so I'll expand my line of thinking. Clearly trained observers have value. If me and a police officer watch an accident, who is going to remember more details accurately or the sequence before them. Having people that are trained observers feeding the news beast does make it more credible. However, I'm pretty convinced that doesn't make them inerrant or not prone to bias. I think new mediums such as twitter decentralize news. In the 60s and pre-internet era, you didn't have much of a choice where you got your news. It was the newspaper or the national news in the evening. Now in the internet and twitter era there are many more sources. Not all sources are equally credible and my tweet about the Red Wings is not as credible or rich as Pierre LeBruns. But if we're both watching the same game, and we both see a play and comment on that play, I do believe that in that moment our comments have equal weight. I remember distinctly the night OSB was killed, a college student in Abbotabad tweeted about the power outage and hearing helicopters. Does that not constitute news? In terms of in the moment reporting, despite the lack of training, I think Twitter and other diffuse sources still hold a lot of value. Another problem big news sources have is the implicit trust people place in them. That trust has been rattled quite a bit recently but people really do want to trust that Brian Williams is being truthful in the things that he is reporting. People really don't want to have to hear what he says and try to decipher for themselves if what he said was accurate or not.
One of the most interesting news reporting events I've ever seen was with the Boston Marathon Bombings, and Reddit. I was on the couch at my parent's place with my laptop, following along the Reddit monster thread, and they had CNN on TV. It was absolutely amazing just how much more interesting and relevant information Reddit provided was than the shit that CNN was reporting. It was almost like CNN had people following that thread and were then feeding that information to the reporter, in a shitty time-delay. The only real difference was that they had some talking head on the street in front of a bunch of cars with lights going and police tape up. People in the houses around the search areas were reporting what they heard, pics that they were taking, etc, and posting it to Reddit so much faster than CNN was getting any information. By contrast, the CNN reporters were more wrapped up in guessing and postulating about what had or could have happened, rather than relay what actual news they had, because they didn't really have too much information and had to fill time. Sure, Reddit had its own issues, such as their "investigation" into who the bombers were, and a bit of an online mob justice mentality, but there really was something amazing about the way the information was being gathered and relayed as quickly as it was. The number one complaint I hear about the issue with that is the lack of credibility of the sources, but really, mainstream news is dropping in credibility more and more every day, so it's not like they're immune from that criticism. I think there will evolve some sort of crowd-funded news that is moderated in some way, and it will be a hybrid of the mainstream media news and the raw Reddit aggregation.
I heard something interesting awhile back about the drop in credibility of mainstream news sources in relation to online news. Since the internet became so mainstream and everyone is on it people have come to expect that the information they receive be almost instant. They want to know right now what is happening and can't wait. Whereas years ago you had to wait till 11 for the news unless it was a huge story and they were following it as it developed, but even so the news had time to vet things and check it out. Now though with the internet they don't have time to check and just run with stuff because people want the info RIGHT NOW and if the Mainstream News waits to report it they're going to be behind and everyone is already going to know what happened and not care about their article or broadcast. So they just run with the rumors as they are coming in and then that bites them in the ass when that shit is completely made up by some people on the internet. Look at just how many stories go viral now only to be disproven a day or two later because no one at the major news networks fact checked it when it got posted on some obscure news site that people started linking to. The major networks just regurgitate the article and then woops...fake. Look at it this way: Say if 30 years ago a celebrity got arrested. News gets tipped off. They had time to call the celeb's publicist and the Police Department and wait for them to give statements before reporting on the story. The most you would hear is on the radio saying "so and so got arrested we will report more as it is developed." Those were your only sources of news you had to wait. Now, if a celebrity gets arrested within 30 seconds the entire internet is abuzz with "what happened" and everyone gets caught up in it including the News because they need to get the story out there. So the guy that makes up the reason that Britney Spears got arrested was because she was participating in a Tijuana Donkey Show is spread by everyone in order to be the first and most update to news source that no one bothered to confirm or fact check because it has to be true an "insider" at the Police Department said it to an anonymous source. Then 5 hours later, woops...nope. She was just drunk at a club, had a melt down and threw a bottle of tequila at someone. Sorry all, we were working on bad information. All you have to do is look at the Bruce Jenner accident. Everyone was publishing stories about it and every single news site had a different story. Who said he wasn't the driver. Who said he was the driver. Who said he was drunk and admitted, who said was drunk but didn't admit it, etc. etc. If we didn't live in an age of information all those different news outlets would have had time to get the story straight.
Couldn't agree more. Maybe it's because I practiced law for a long time, but the reality usually was you really didn't find out what happened until a long time into the process. People lie, forget, are not sure what they saw. Try this experiment with friends (whenever this topic comes up with my friends, and we're out, I do this and they sit there shocked): Ask them to describe in detail someone you've interacted with in the last 15 minutes, bartender, waitress. Tell them 'don't look, just tell me what color our waitress's eyes were, her height, her hair color, any distinguishing marks, etc.' I've never done this and had someone be able to accurately describe that person to any degree of certainty. People don't know what they see most of the time. You can probably find it on youtube, but Ellen did an experiment on her show where people were shopping at the Ellen store (at the studio) and she would literally change people that were helping someone at a register - and no one noticed. That's my issue with the whole 'wow, the internet is so fast and great and people are describing things as they happen' = better news. It isn't. It will never be. People are just not that good at describing things that they are not expecting. EDIT: On the most recent Real Time on HBO, Bill Maher, during his 'New Rules' section at the end, does a good bit on the National News.
I don't mind Vice. Don't feel like I've ever learned anything new from an episode, and there's a tinge of hipster stench that's unappealing, but it seems like they could make something out of it. Definitely give them props for taking a Jackass approach to some messed up places and cultures, even if the gratuitous gore can be a bit much. Sums it up quite nicely: If other news anchors talked about how they, as a whole, have lost credibility over the last 15+ years, and that this particular war story fib is really a symptom of a broken, capitulated "news" culture, I'd say there's a chance of reform. I'd also be completely shocked. If anyone has heard any of them doing this and NOT feasting on Williams like vultures eating their own, in order to save face (in their minds, at least), I'd love to be proven wrong.
Sadly, no reform is coming. There are two fundamental flaws preventing reform: The government made a huge mistake when it initially set up the requirements for public information television - they didn't include a proviso that advertising would be forbidden. In other words, Mr. TV station, in return for free use of the public airwaves, are required to give back 1 hour a day in public service broadcasting. Second, since 1996 (and starting in 1980) - pretty much every restriction on whom can own a tv station, and how many they can own, have been abolished. Why is this a problem? Because you're getting your news from a company that also owns defense contractors. Think it's a conflict of interest? All the news stations try to appear 'unbiased' and you will routinely hear this proviso after certain 'reports' - 'NBC is owned by GE, which is the parent company of company X which we just reported on' - why are they telling you that? To appear impartial. The reality is far different. News stations don't make a lot of money. Power companies, defense contractors, oil companies, etc. do. Follow the money, and you'll quickly see why the news is the way it is. There's no hurting of the bottom line by reporting on a dancing bear. A truly in depth report on energy policy? Yeah, going to hurt. So it doesn't get done. There's a reason people believe in a free and independent press - and the current climate is a great example of what it looks like when it isn't.
My favorite form of news is the local news in San Diego. Its my favorite because they report on the weather every 10 minutes. They love talking about the "micro climates".... Its San Diego, the weather never changes. Hell they don't really need to report on it once in an hour let alone 5 times. They love human interests stories as well and conveniently ignore the fact that Tijuana is basically the same city just on a different side of the fence. Its almost like they're saying don't worry about the narco-terrorists next door, look at this puppy and lets keep talking about the weather that never changes. I also think its a bit interesting people ever thought the news had integrity. In the early 20th century there was a giant newspaper mogul that was known for planting stories in his papers. Whenever people have had the ability to control the information other people get, they have, that'll never change.
If network news is shit, local news is shit concentrate. "Now we go over to Tad Atwater for our bi-daily segment of Look At These Crazy Brown Foreigners! following that will be ten minutes of weather boredom from our high school-educated meteorologist Stormy Wetdry but first some incredible news....a squirrel that can waterski!!!! Oh and BLAH blah blah something about catastrophic pollution and poisoned drinking water BLAH blah whothefuckcares blah." And if you live in a city that has "Action News" you have ZERO reasons to be proud of that. That gives TMZ a run for their rock-bottom money.
I wish there were more people in the "News" business like Jim Cantore. A lot of people saw and commented on this from this past weekend: where Cantore goes crazy witnessing Thundersnow and knowing they caught it on camera. There's a dude who loves his job. And, the really cool thing is he's still excited about it after all these years. He was excited for it back in 2011, too. He seems to genuinely enjoy not only the parts of his job that are interesting to him, but also conveying to viewers what to expect, when to take precautions and all that.
See, I'm of the opposite opinion. Local news is really the only news broadcast worth watching, in my opinion. The "big stuff" you can find online if you look, but the local stuff is more relevant to you and harder to find, usually. For instance, in London, I actually like the local news team, for the most part, at least for their local coverage. They do a reasonable job digging into local city issues and showcasing local content that is somewhat interesting.
I'm talking about American news. Don't forget around here we get Cleveland, Detroit, Buffalo, Saginaw etc. which seems to largely consist of ambushing "suspects" in at their homes/work and hard balling them with district attorney-style questions of whatever they're suspected of doing. Or a helicopter-shot police chase. I don't have much to say about news that's bad up here, local OR national. Hell, OUR Brian Williams is the CBC's Peter Mansbridge. He doesn't need a supreme hairstyle (or any hair at all for that matter). The dude reports shit that happens. I'm not crazy about CTV and CBC's Canadian Content Law (which is what restricts the good SuperBowl commercials) but they are FAR less bias than anything in the States. Down there network is fucking hopeless.
Local news all the way. Much better than anything national. The best one I've ever seen, and by far the most entertaining, is Charlie LeDuff:
Do people have to sign a release form before you put their face on the news? I know you have to on shows but sometimes I wonder WHY people want their face shown on TV if they're doing something scummy/idiotic.
Jesus fucking Christ. Must be nice up there is the Great Northern Ivory Tower! I mean, you're 100% correct in everything you said, but you don't gotta be a dick about it. And that video is golden.
Calm down, babycakes. I'm asking a question. The woman in that video is an idiot and that's evident. Do you want to answer the question, or perhaps somebody else can?
I do not think they have to sign a release because it is technically not for profit, marketing or entertainment purposes. Also, you're only supposed to call me babycakes in the bedroom. Or was that our safety word? Good times though.