[INTRO]: Good morning, All!
[A-1]: Thank goodness for the news. If it wasn't there,
how would we ever know what is going on in the world?
More to the point - How the heck would I fill up these
pages every week? There are still some good, serious
reporters out there, who sometimes accidentally unearth
the nuggets of goofy news I can use in this silly
thing. Nice to know they are out there, isn't it?
Everyone thought that all the progress in
technology would have brought better news delivery.
The Internet, TV, radio, the telegraph - each was
expected to revolutionize the news. And they all did,
just not necessarily for the better. The telegraph
ushered in the age of yellow journalism, and TV
eventually became the triumph of style over substance.
On so many stations, anchors with blow-dryer brain
damage have replaced the heavyset old guys who knew how
to write an actual news story with words and
everything.
Now that ratings for TV news shows are dropping
across the board, news directors and general managers
are getting progressively more desperate to find where
all those viewers have gone. It's as if they are
hoping that all these folks are hiding up a tree
somewhere, and all they have to do is shake them loose.
They've tried flashier graphics, sexier features, more
far-out sets and prettier anchors, all without success.
One newscast I saw this week had a long feature on
women's underwear. The teases promised everything, but
you had to know it was going to be as family-rated as
the underwear section of the old Sears catalog. Sadly,
this stunt wasn't even an original - a station in Miami
did the same story last year. Probably the only thing
worse than exploitative crap journalism is plagiarized
exploitative crap journalism.
[A-2]: Strangely, none of the stations seem to have made
a serious attempt at better delivering actual news
stories that have meaning. Probably because real news
is expensive and not very flashy. You have to hire
reporters who know the difference between a noun and a
verb, for one thing. The one possible exception - in
Chicago - didn't work.
[B-Roll]: The TV station where I used to work at had the
original patent on the "You shoulda been here" live
shot. We would go live to anything, especially the
scenes of fires that been put out many hours earlier.
The staff could never get the news directors to catch
on that burned-out buildings are dark in the nighttime.
This is something that most retarded six-year-olds can
be made to understand. By the time we were out there
for the 10 O'clock News, all of the firefighters were
home in their jammies, and there was NOTHING at all to
see. Nothing except a reporter standing there brightly
lit against a black background that could have been
anywhere from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Mihara, Japan,
and trying desperately to make this one-alarm weeny
roast sound like the Chicago Fire, the Great Fire of
London and the Apocalypse, all rolled into one. No
wonder so many people find it hard to trust the news.
[SUPER]
Credits: People we can trust this week - and every week -
are our SUNFUN friends and contributors, including:
P.Y. & Emmie Yen (and Happy Birthday P.Y.), Dennis,
Fumiko, Mary & Elizabeth David, Roger & Marilyn
Bogenberger, Jerry Taff, Catherine Cassidy, Wallace
Adams, Kerry Miller, Anna Macareno, R.J. Tully, Tim
McChain, Chuck Maray, Major & Judy McCallum, Caterina
Sukup and Kiyomi Kanazawa.
[CLOSE]: If we can't always trust the news, we need to be
more careful about what we believe of what news we do
hear. But how is that so different from the rest of
life?
[TAG]: Have A Good News Week,
[Graphic]:
[OUT - 29:30]
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"Never believe in mirrors or newspapers."
- John Osborne
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WHO READS WHAT - AND WHY...
------------------------
News organizations are always doing surveys and monitoring
their ratings to see who reads or watches their news. Here's
what we've been able to figure out about America's newspapers:
- The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the
country.
- The New York Times is read by people who think they run the
country.
- The Washington Post is read by people who think they ought
to run the country.
- USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the
country, but don't understand the Washington Post.
- The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn't mind
running the country, if they could spare the time.
- The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run
the country.
- The New York Daily News is read by people who aren't too
sure who's running the country.
- The New York Post is read by people who don't care who's
running the country, as long as they do something stupid and
scandalous.
- The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren't
sure there is a country, or that anyone is running it.
- The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another
country.
- The National Enquirer is read by people who think that the
country is being run by aliens from the planet Xeno. And
that Elvis is their king.
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REAL WORLD JOURNALISM...
---------------------
In Mineola, New York, the local newspaper, Newsday,
published an expose on wasteful spending in the Nassau County
police department.
Within the next 48 hours, the newspaper's delivery trucks
received 15 tickets for various violations from county highway
patrol officers. The cops say they're just doing their job, but
Newsday's fleet manager doubts it, saying his trucks usually get
an average of only one ticket every few months.
[ "If you're not upsetting anyone, you don't
have the real story." - Attributed to ex-
Chicago newsman Ben Hecht ]
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THE COLD FACTS...
--------------
Using stunts to attract viewers to the news goes back
farther than most people remember. At the very dawn of
television news, the news folks at NBC were so worried about
losing the female audience by presenting hard news that they had
fashion shows, light features and background music inserted into
the nightly "Camel News Caravan." That didn't leave much time
for real news in a fifteen-minute newscast.
But I'm sure the staid folks from the early days wouldn't
have ever dreamt the gimmick a Canadian Internet news outlet
would use.
The name of the site gives it away - Naked News.
Journalism is not a requirement, as the four female and one
male anchor host a news show that is surprisingly like other news
outlets, except that the anchors aren't wearing anything.
"Getting naked is part of the shtick," said former Montreal
investment advisor Lucas Taylor. "CNN is 24 hours live all the
time, and we are news without clothes on."
The combination of nudity and news has made Naked News a
popular sites on the Internet. It boasts that since it premiered
15 months ago, viewership has grown to nearly 300,000 a day.
(Reuters)
[ This "Nudes-cast" thing may prove popular, but that
buzzing sound you hear is Edward R. Murrow spinning in
his grave. ]
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ASKING THE KEY QUESTIONS?
------------------------
It's the business of reporters to ask questions... But
reporters, especially these days, have limited knowledge, so I
suppose it's inevitable that some of their statements and
questions are this stupid:
Jon Snow: "In a sense, Deng Xiaoping's death was inevitable,
wasn't it?"
Expert guest: "Er, yes."
- Channel 4 News, England
"In the Edmonton Journal of June 20, 1978, a map
appeared which reversed the positions of the provinces
of Alberta and Saskatchewan. The Journal is Alberta's
largest newspaper."
- Bill James
"As Phil De Glanville said, each game is unique, and this
one is no different to any other."
- John Sleightholme, BBC
"If England are going to win this match, they're going to
have to score a goal."
- Jimmy Hill, BBC
"The very first news story I edited at Community
Newspapers in Milwaukee's 'burbs concerned a
fundraising bowling marathon being planned to benefit
the Muscular Dystrophy Association. I was horrified to
see the headline on the Thursday paper:
'Bowel-a-thon planned for MDA.'
- Malcolm Woods, Editor, Exchange
Magazine
"The Milwaukee NBC-TV affiliate, WTMJ-4, had sent
a reporter to cover a plane mishap at Chicago's O'Hare
Field. The reporter had done a reasonably good job on
what turned out to be one of those 'it could have been
a lot worse' stories.
"After chatting live and on-camera with the
airport manager, the reporter then addressed the
co-anchors back at the station. 'You know, Mike and
Carol, I think it is important for us to remind the
viewers that air travel is still the safest way to
fly.'"
- Terry P. Gillick
"In the late 70's, when the current pontiff was
elected, the Scripps-Howard p.m. daily, The Hollywood
Sun-Tattler, intending to comment on the ascension of
the first Polish Pope, instead offered the following
headline to its readers:
'VATICAN ELECTS FIRST NON-CATHOLIC POPE.'"
- Charles Glasser, lawyer, Willkie
Farr & Gallagher
"Beethoven, Kurtag, Charles Ives, Debussy _ four very
different names."
- Announcer on BBC's Radio 3
Caller to a talk show: "My most embarrassing moment was when
my artificial leg fell off at the altar on my wedding day."
Simon Fanshawe: "How awful! Do you still have an artificial
leg?"
- Talk Radio
Legend has it that the famously flub-prone Katie
Couric, at the Sidney Olympics with NBC's Today show, spied
a muscular young man carrying a pole. She asked him, "Are
you a pole vaulter?"
He replied, "No, I'm German. How did you know my name
is Walter?"
"At the L.A. Times ... I made reference to the Harvard-
educated poet e.e. cummings' line, "Cambridge ladies with
furnished souls." The daily arts editor, fearing that the
allusion might be too obscure for our dear readers, inserted
the helpful note that 'Cambridge is a famous University in
England.'"
- Free-lance journalist Lawrence
Christon
A correction from the Newport News (VA) Daily Press:
"An article in Saturday's Local section incorrectly
reported that a suspect identified as "Fnu Lnu" had
been indicted by a federal grand jury. "Fnu Lnu" is
not a name. FNU is a law enforcement abbreviation for
"first name unknown," LNU for "last name unknown."
Officials knew the suspect only by the name 'Dezo.'"
Interviewer: "So did you see which train crashed into which
train first?"
15-year-old witness: "No, they both ran into each other at
the same time."
- BBC Radio 4
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LOW RATINGS... WONDER WHY?
--------------------------
If you watch much TV news, and follow what goes one, you see
a regular cycle that the management at low-rated stations follow:
1.) Change the set. (This appeals to all of the
furniture freaks in the audience, I guess...)
2.) Change the anchor team. (It has to be their
fault.)
3.) Change the news director.
4.) Start over with a new set. (Did anyone notice the
last time?)
But often, clueless management doesn't have to look very far
for the reason for low ratings. Take the word of one of our pals
who was interviewing for a radio news job at a Midwestern
station:
"I was applying for a job at a local radio
station. While being interviewed by the station's
general manager, I asked a few questions of my own.
"'What sort of area promotions do you have planned
for the upcoming year? This is a new station, after
all, and you have established competition.'
"He said, 'Well, what I want to do is create a
listening base first, and then start promoting the
station."
[ Was that a chicken or an egg? ]
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TEASE ME NOT...
------------
One of the most disgusting developments of modern journalism
is the "news tease." These are generally presented as teeny
little newscasts between the entertainment program, but they
hardly ever have any real news content. What they really are is
a kind of commercial to try and convince you to stay around for
the real newscast. Something along the line of: "Will there be a
change in the weather? The surprising forecast later."
It gets worse. Not enough that they've teased us through
the whole night, THEN, every three minutes, the newscast contains
a tease for something that won't happen until later. This is a
news consultant's trick to keep you from switching channels.
Look up tease in the dictionary and you find that another meaning
is to vex or irritate. That's certainly true of how news teases
work. It wouldn't be so bad if this was done just once or twice,
but when it is repeated through an entire evening, it makes you
want to smack someone and throttle them until they tell you -
right now. After all, no one talks like this in real life, do
they? ...
HUSBAND: "Hey, honey, what're we having for dinner?"
WIFE: "The answer may surprise you. Also, details on
Bobby's report card. Was it good or bad? Wait until
you get home."
HUSBAND: "I went to the dentist today. Did I get a
filling or a root canal? The surprising story coming
up later."
WIFE: "I picked up a home pregnancy test kit today.
Did it come out plus or minus? I'll show you later in
our home segment."
HUSBAND: "Did I get fired today? And if I did, how are
we going to get by? A special report when I get home."
WIFE: "And later, a report on which major appliance
failed... Will it mean a huge repair bill? We'll have
the story."
HUSBAND: "More details too on the accident I had on the
freeway this morning. Will you be able to collect on
that life insurance policy? The answer could surprise
you."
WIFE: "Who's mother called this afternoon to say she's
coming for a visit? Could it be yours? And is she
planning to stay for the weekend -- or a month? I'll
tell you later when you're sitting down.''
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© 2001 by Bill Becwar. All Rights Reserved.
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