"A traumatic start to the day… when dozens of baby birds are dropped from the second floor, many to their death…"
The reason I don’t watch network or cable TV has nothing to do with liberal or conservative bias. It’s that television has become so painfully inane.
Case in point: over the winter break (I’m a teacher), I traveled to Portland to see U2 perform at the Rose Garden. I reveled in the opportunity to sit in my hotel room and watch a bit of the news. I don’t have a TV at home, so on vacation I tend to splurge.
There I am, watching an interview with a congressman, listening to him talk about the war in Iraq. Suddenly, the interviewer says they have to cut away to breaking news in Houston. The breaking news? An apartment fire. I strained to see what was so remarkable about it. From my vantage, all I could see were a few puffs of smoke.
Charles Foster Kane ("Citizen Kane") once said the news is big if you make the headline big enough. Point taken.
I like to peruse the headlines at the Drudge Report. There’s a guy who knows how to make a headline big enough. If you’re looking for the latest big headline, no matter how unimportant the story, check out the Drudge Report. Today, Matt Drudge provided more fodder for my diatribe.
Check out this report about 45 baby chicks getting tossed from a second-floor balcony. This is a classic piece of leading news:
1. Dramatic, top-of-the-news plug
2. On-scene report
3. Multi-shot interview with horrified student
4. Interview with director of schools (zoom, zoom, zoom), cut to concerned reporter
5. Dramatic quote: “These kids formed a protective circle…”
5. Several cuts to cute, if not delectable, chicks
What might have been a parody in another time, still manages to come off as ridiculous. Compounding its absurdity is the highly polished production of the segment. The incongruity of form and substance is almost beyond comment.
So, I’ve taken to listening to National Public Radio, which has its absurd moments too, and watching BBC International news when I can. I’ll take five minutes of unpolished, substantive news over thirty minutes of polished dribble any day.
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