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Nov

6

We didn’t start the FEMA/faux news/faux press corps fire


From Jonah Goldberg’s column in the LA Times:

The problem of parsing fact from fiction, news from entertainment, has been inherent to broadcast journalism from the beginning. Radio newsman Walter Winchell got his start in vaudeville. But in the modern era, I blame “Murphy Brown,” the show about a fictional TV newswoman who talked about real newsmakers as if they were characters on her sitcom. When Brown had a baby out of wedlock, Vice President Dan Quayle criticized the writers of the show. Liberals then reacted as though Quayle had insulted a real person. Ever since, journalists and politicians have been playing themselves in movies and TV series, perhaps trying to disprove the cliche that Washington is Hollywood for ugly people.

TV news is, and always has been, the shallowest branch of journalism. This is why TV journalism in particular operates like a trade guild — not because it’s so hard to do but because it’s so easy. (The Brits more forthrightly call their TV anchors “news readers.”) For instance, in 2000, Sam Donaldson led a successful internal revolt over a plan to have Leonardo DiCaprio interview President Clinton for ABC News. The essence of the complaint was that viewers wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between DiCaprio and a “real” TV reporter. Let’s face it, that’s true. Even DiCaprio can read questions off an index card or TelePrompTer.

“Yes, it’s a changed business,” Donaldson said at the time, “and we ought to recognize that. But we also all have to recognize that we have to do things according to the standards that will help us retain our credibility.”

I think Donaldson was right, but I also don’t mind that TV news is trying to be relevant to viewers not on the AARP’s mailing list. What I find dismaying is that “relevance” is literally coming at the expense of reality.

We have to do things according to the standards that will help us retain our credibility. Where have I heard that before.

No – we all have to do things according to the standards that will help the audience discern the truth.

Narcissists. Feh.

NB: Yesterday’s post and the PD’s editorial on this topic.

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 1:44 pm November 6th, 2007 in Blogging, Media, Wide Open 

Comments

4 Responses to “We didn’t start the FEMA/faux news/faux press corps fire”

  1. 1 Becky on November 7th, 2007 8:11 pm

    I’m reading your latest posts first, so I haven’t read what you already wrote about this. That said, my response (to the columnist quoted) …

    Blame Murphy Brown? As if she were real? That’s the problem. As a fictional character, Murphy Brown could talk about as many real people as she (or the show’s writers) pleased. It’s OK for her to step over the fictional line and blur fiction with fact.

    The vice president who thought a fictional character’s situation applied to real life? Not a journalist.

    The FEMA folks? Not journalists either. They’re in public relations. To journalism’s credit, it was a journalist on the “listen-only” telephone line that smelled a rat. To its discredit, some media outlets ran the “news” before the real story came out.

  2. 2 Jill Miller Zimon on November 7th, 2007 8:32 pm

    Thanks Becky for weighing in.

    And then there was the big fluff up last year about how news stations were using what amounted to infomercials that just looked a bit more like hard news stories during their broadcasts – remember that?

    Here’s an article about how the entities we call traditional journalism outlets, (which should be, we or at least Susan Goldberg is saying, held to this certain standard) blur the lines between news, ads and infomercials.

    So – again – what’s being asserted as something so threatened by four bloggers who got less than 1000 a day on average and were expected to be political seems to really be at risk due to the money-making decisions of its members of the old guard.

  3. 3 Becky on November 7th, 2007 10:34 pm

    I got an error with your link. But, yeah, I believe you’re talking about VNRs (video news releases)? Still happening. That’s bad enough. But what also happens is “journalists” basically reading from press releases. No fact-checking. No reporting. And no middleman or VNR to blame.

  4. 4 Jill Miller Zimon on November 15th, 2007 11:23 pm

    Thanks, Becky – got a bit overwhelmed and not able to stay on top of the comments – I apologize.

    Reading from the press releases – I would ask, how is that any different from an endorsement of whomever wrote the thing? How can bloggers be accused and smeared for no original reporting without hypocrisy?

    Sigh.

    Thanks for commenting.

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