TV news sucks. The 24 hour cable channels repeat the same stuff over and over. The networks give a few moments for news stories and take up most of their time with weather, sports, and celebrity gossip. The best example to me was Jon Stewart last night on the Daily Show commenting about coverage of Hurricane Wilma. He showed clips of weather reporters standing out in the storm being blown around and hit by debris. Al Roker literally had a man holding his legs so he wouldn't blow over. That didn't work and we saw them both blow over. How absurd is this?
I imagine Edward R. Murrow would be appalled but not surprised. He became famous doing radio reports from London during World War II. After the war, still working for CBS he moved to television. See It Now was the first news magazine show on television, though it didn't make a lot of money, it won many awards and was on the air for 5 years. He also hosted Person to Person which were celebrity interviews as we know them today. Murrow didn't like doing Person to Person but it was popular and brought in revenue.
Murrow is probably most famous for a series of broadcasts that led to the downfall of Senator Joe McCarthy. They were brave shows because anyone that went against McCarthy was attacked by him. Murrow, his team, and CBS all took a big risk. But Murrow was highly principled and felt a duty to stand up for what was right. This film covers these episodes of See It Now.
At an hour and half this is a short film and it was made on only an $8 million budget. it doesn't try to cover the topic exhaustively, skipping over almost all of the investigation and reducing several of the scenes to musical montages. It does try to acurately show the episodes in question, the risks the reporters took and a bit of what live TV was like. Murrows studio was tiny, with the camera so close to him that his producer Fred Friendly (played by writer, director George Clooney) could sit next to him, light his cigarettes and queue him by tapping him on the leg. We also get scenes within the CBS offices of meetings of the staff and management on the effects of the reports.
David Strathairn plays Murrow recreating several of his broadcasts. He's remarkably convincing, an Oscar nomination is certainly possible. In the Sen. McCarthy role we have original footage of McCarthy which is just stunning. it's very effective to have the actual menace playing himself.
Much as The Crucible was really an allegory against McCarthism this movie is really about the current state of journalism in this country. To make it clear, the story is bookended by Strathairn giving a speech Murrow really gave at at the Radio and Television News Directors Association convention in 1958. It was a scathing criticism of the use of television and the civic mindedness of Americans. He worried if in 50 or 100 years, television was only used for entertainment, what a waste it would be. He asked if we had an hour a week on civic education what a difference it would make. And he realized that Americans were probably to fat and lazy to watch such things but said we should still try.
Sadly his predictions came true. This film is a wake up call. A very good one. It's not so much a great movie as it is a compelling civics lesson. The media needs to do better, the audience needs to do better, and our government should be on alert. McCarthism could happen again, maybe it is already.
5 comments:
One of the classes I remeber from elementry school is a study of TV.
I recall the teacher breaking down comercials into different catagories: bandwagon (everyone likes X!), celebrity (Be like Mike!), or shame (Do you smell bad?). And explaining these were all ploys to sell things. Not everyone likes candy, you won't be like Mike if you drink his drink, and you probably dont' smell.
Similarly TV news was studied: open with hocks (10 dead in plane crash details at 11), move to hard news, then close with weather or a panda baby at the zoo so people go home happy. And remember to smile even if you're reporting a triple murder. You can see this formula repeated regardless of the loss of live, or cost to society.
News is news. Let comedians and actors entertain.
I am not sure that that even that TV news recipe is followed. For example, I am yet to see the moving to "hard news" part somewhere.
I tried the NBC Nightly News tonight. It was a good news day overall what with the Libby indictments and all. it stuck to news topics, no sports, weather or celebrity stuff. They had a little over 10 mins on the Libby stuff including a review of the indictment, the fact that Rove wasn't indicted (is it news that Rove wasn't indicted because the news media has been speculating that he would be?), and a review of how Bush's week went ("worst political week of the Bush presidency"), and a review of the timeline of the leak events. Tim Russet, an NBC newsman testified to the grand jury and for the first time talked about what that was (that he didn't talk to Libby about Plame, even though Libby says he heard about Plame from Russet).
They then had a 2 minute story about oil companies having record profits (Exxon made $10 billiion this quarter, more than 492 of the S&P 500 made all year, combined, though I find that hard to believe). We heard a 30 second recap of the market numbers, how the New Orleans police are in turmoil and that Rosa Parks body will be in repose at the capital, the first woman to be so.
We also got a 2 minute "preview" (aka commercial) of a Tom Brokaw special tonight on evangelicals. They ended with a segment of Fitzgerald's speech where he gave baseball analogy. NBC then superimposed imagery of baseball, a flag, a soldier, the CIA seal, and Libby. News as music video. And the final bit was an announcement that next week they will do news segments on the gulf coast reconstruction. Somehow news that you can predict doesn't seem like "news".
So not horrible, but no depth. Though on the Libby story I guess depth would be speculation (as opposed to news or analysis) because there isn't more than what's in the indictment. I've seen online confusion over whether Plame's status was "classified" or "covert" and Fitzgerald answered a question about it, but it seems clarifying that is too detailed.
So why was it bad? There was no mention of anything outside of the US. Nothing about Iraq. The President of Iran called to "wipe Israel off the map". The UN SeIsrael killed a Palestinian militant in an air strike in Gaza curity Council issued a statement saying it "condemned" Mr. Ahmadinejad's remarks. There were new developments in the Oil-for-Food scandal, but we didn't hear about it. Tropical Storm Beta was approaching Nicaragua, but no mention. Denmark detained 4 suspected terrorists, and Bush didn't claim it as a victory in the war on terror. But nothing about any of this was mentioned.
Your unheard non-US stories list is a pretty good example. Of US stories, one was, what I would consider, a current news event, the other (Exxon) an odd editorial-like thing which probably deserves deeper analysis and a special program; then there is Brokaw ad and the run-down of the rest...
I like French TV5: its refular 30 minutes news segement consists of current news events, the time slots are balanced with major news having decent but not diproportionate slots, almost everything (one would find on BBC site, for example) is covered, Iraq - always... no smiles when gruesome stuff is talked about... and occasional panda to ease things off at the end... It is all very simple, non-scripted, natural.
... and one more thing about TV5: it has, for example, weekly hour-long program "Kiosque" where invited foreign journalists discuss... international news of the week. What a concept! This weekend the panel will include journalists from Russia, Israel, Canada, Ireland.
p.s.: I am not paid by TV5
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