How bad TV news is (and what to do about it)
And I thought TV news was bad only here in India. Here's Jeff Jarvis on the pervasive 'badness' in TV news and how it is sliding surely and noisily into irrelevancy:
TV news is stuck holding onto its orthodoxy of inanity. It wastes resources trying to fool us with stand-ups at sites where news occurred 12 hours before and where there is nothing left to witness or report. It repeats much, saying little. It adores fires that affect few. It goes overboard on weather. It gives us BREAKING NEWS that isn’t breaking at all but is long over, predictable, obvious, or trivial. It gullibly and dutifully flacks for PR events created just for TV. It presents complex issues with false and simplistic balance. It speaks in the voice of plastic people. It stages reality (no that guy in the b-roll isn’t really typing on his laptop). It has little sense of the utility of what it presents. And did I mention its pyromania?
Read the whole thing
here. It also covers the innovation being done with news video
Labels: TV news
Swami Agnivesh to Barkha Dutt: Practice what you preach
I have stopped watching NDTV 24*7 for quite a long time now. Like other English news channels in India, NDTV 24*7 is just a hangout place power brokers, lobbyists, and assorted self-important carnies. On the other hand, NDTV India Hindi channel is good. It has three good people -
Abhigyan, Ravish and Pankaj, as well as the always-wonderful
Vinod Dua, who focus on news and analysis, and not on martketing themselves.
So, this news item about when social activist Swami Agnivesh gets Barkha Dutt to shut up is from another source. When Barkha, the '
star anchor' ('
star columnist' and 's
tar investigative reporter' I get, but '
star-anchor'?) tries to go
preacher-mode about the presence of the father-son duo of Shanti Bhushan and Prashant Bhushan as the s civil society representatives on the Lokpal drafting committee, it goes like this:
Barkha Dutt asks,
“Swami Agnivesh… you will see that the number of people who had to resign from public office—and many people believe this is a good thing—just because of suspicion or allegations or accusations, I mean, from Shashi Tharoor to Ashok Chavan to Sharad Pawar, there are so many different examples where legally, the allegation has not been proven, but even before the trial has begun, these politicians have stepped aside. Now some people are making the argument that those drafting the Lokpal bill must do the same. How do you respond? Do you believe the same standard must be applied as they are applied to politicians?”
Swami Agnivesh replies,
“Well, Barkhaji, let me put it to you this way. Supposing there is an accusation of corruption on some mediaperson who is an anchor of a very famous TV channel, and if that person is initiating debate after debate on corruption and such [a] person is asked, first get yourself cleared of all these allegations and then only you will have a moral right to start or initiate a debate on corruption, should that person step down? What would be your answer?”?
Related:
Why Vir Sanghvi and Barkha Dutt aren't importantLabels: TV news
Terrorist Tube
Today, Channel 4 in Britain is going to give Abu Muhammad, a radical Muslim the opportunity to
air his support for terrorism on television. The Director of the show Phil Rees, is the author of the book “Dining with the terrorists” and he thinks that '
Journalists should present the views of radicals in such a way that they are not pushed towards violence'.
The reasoning is thus: you take away someone’s voice; you are making him/her really pissed off.
This should be interesting, way more entertaining than ads from politicians, politicians reading speeches and manifestos during election time, and that most vaunted of all Terrorist Media tactic – the Video.
I look forward to see what British Audience thinks about a Muslim radical calling upon British Muslims to,
arm themselves to prevent the kaffir [non-believer] from coming into their home, terrorizing their families, frightening their children and invading their privacy . . . they have to be prepared to pay the price and fight back."
The word is mightier than the bullet? We shall see.
Labels: controversey, trends, TV news
Three Things I don't like about CNN
The other day, I read an article quoting the Time Warner chairman saying that the real problem is CNN not CNNmoney.com which is doing well.
So, here is a take from the Asian side:
Too begin with, CNN is too, for want of a better word,
'magaziny', perhaps trying too hard to become Time magazine-like, whose time is itself gone now, for the increasingly prosperous and aspirational Asian audience.
1. Interviews far too many celebrities.
2. Lots of bland anchors and presenters who try too hard to inject their personalities into the program -everyone wants to become Michael Palin.
3. Few shows worth watching week after week: the only two shows worth watching on CNN right now are
The Daily Show (from Comedy Central) and
Richard Quest's show.It doesn't grab you the way BBC does with forthright text and imagery- documentary like video - or, maybe I have better reception than my friends.
Labels: CNN, TV news
