Mark Steyn on Obsolete Format of the TV News
The hat tip goes to Kathy Shaidle who is around my age, I think. I remember someone smuggling that Billy Idol EP Don't Stop to Summer Camp in 1984 and she was actually mentioned in that B-side interview with Martha Quinn. I guess he actually knew her; they had gone to the prom or something.
Anyway, the reason I mention her being the same age is that I think that as conservative Gen-X-ers we share a similar derision for the network TV news which is shared by a slightly older guy, Mark Steyn. I'll excerpt a slightly larger bit:
I would wager, even as Williams read his line, that most everyone who mattered on the show knew it wasn't true. And maybe one or two of them looked nervously at each other in the control room, but let it go. Hey, he's the star, right? NBC Nightly News with Walter Mitty reporting.
Hardly anything on TV at the Bryan Williams level is accidental. That riveting account of death-defying derring-do with Letterman would have been worked out during the pre-interview for the show - in other words, the misremembering was painstakingly rehearsed. Maybe Williams is delusional. Maybe he is to anchors as Anthony Weiner is to wankers - a guy so cocksure he figures he can push it a little further each time.
Thirty years ago, it would be difficult to imagine a liar or fantasist surviving in a job that supposedly depends on one's trustworthiness. Yet today Brian Williams' survival is the way to bet - because the obsolete format of Big Three "network news" is a dinner-theatre exercise that now bears so little relation to real news that Williams' ability to project the aura of authority and integrity trumps the reality that he doesn't actually have any. If you get your news from old-school "network news", you're not actually getting any news, you're watching a guy 'cause he has great hair. So getting it from a delusional narcissist is only taking it to the next level.
As I write, NBC has announced an internal investigation into Williams. We'll see. He was on the bird, he was on the bird behind the bird, but no one at NBC is gonna give him the bird.
Italics around the good stuff, bold italics around my favorite line. Nothing on TV is unscripted, and especially nothing on the TV news. Of course, I've been around people who thought the Rats and Snakes speech from the original Survivor series was, aside from being one of the great moments in human history, made up directly on the spot by Susan Hawk like she was ordering a pizza, as well as a few members of the sorry lot who claim to know that pro-wrestling is "real". So it shouldn't surprise me that most Americans don't find the TV news to be an insult to their intelligence and their credulity, not to mention their sex-drive.
Also, just to anticipate the envy objection, I think that everyone can agree that Mark Steyn has great hair for a fifty-something, so no need to go revisit the Purgatorio on that point.
I found Maureen Dowd's characterization bang-on in this area:
ReplyDeleteThe nightly news anchors are not figures of authority. They’re part of the entertainment, branding and cross-promotion business.
The "entertainment, branding and cross-promotion business" - that's the disease in a nutshell, the "soma" we were warned about, and that's why I loathe Elmer Gantry hustler's like Dreher and have such admiration for AOSHQ: while the former is pureeing everything from religion to cleavage (if you were offended by Mrs. Bream's tiny revelation, stay away from the bazongas Dreher's hawking today) into the same soylent green look-at-me smoothie, Ace will break an ankle bending over backward to make sure his information is accurate, even more so when it sounds like it's stroking his POV too readily.
I'm not blaming her, really. She's part of an apparatus.
DeleteThis is what I think is behind the picture you posted. She shows up with an attractive, business-like look, a touch of make up, etc. Someone from the set crew comes up to her in a dressing room, yanks her top down 2 inches and paints her eyes black. While they are at it, they brush some dark stuff in her cleavage to accentuate that. The whole thing would be totally natural for the female lead in a Tom Cruise movie, but this is the news and it sucks all the seriousness out of it for me.
...it sucks all the seriousness out of it for me.
DeleteWell if that's the case, here's your seriousness. No credibility, mind you, but "seriousness".
To further the nothing-is-accidental-on-network-news point, I wonder if the Brian Williams exaggerations began at or soon after his competition at ABC (whom I believed had been named the nightly anchor at the time) was severely injured while embedded in Iraq.
ReplyDeletePerhaps he/they thought they needed a little attempt to catch up to ABC in the brave anchor cred department. Again, I don't know when the lies started, but it wouldn't shock me if Bob Woodruff's injury were a factor, if not in starting the myth at least in perpetuating (and tolerating) it.
Kick 'em when they're up
DeleteKick 'em when they're down
Kick 'em when they're stiff
Kick 'em all around