Is it possible that "Breaking News" might have become just a little bit too breaking. Is there an element of reflection that is necessary to call something a news report? I wonder if live coverage of events in process maybe ought to not be about news, but rather something else. I mean, I get that covering a political convention or a debate live is news, but I'm not certain there is as much value from seeing a hurricane or a car chase in real time. Especially in the environment where the breaking story of the moment will then be repeated 10,000 times over the next 48 hours.
Do we really need to know this stuff so soon? What makes a story worthy of being reported live?
Did you hear about the London bus bombing earlier this week? As I've said earlier, mornings lately have included quite a bit of CNN. A couple of days ago I was watching a story about I don't know what, probably how hot it is, when they broke into their own coverage to join ITN from London for a breaking story. Police had shut down a couple of blocks of traffic and one underground station because of a bus sitting out front of the station. It was smoking.
So first we had 10-15 minutes of a picture of just that, and just that information. There was a bus, it was smoking, police had closed the street and the station. Then we had a statement issued by London police. That statement was that they were not going to have a statement until they had more details.
So there was another 10 minutes of the picture of the smoking bus, the closed street, people running around, all accompanied by the non-statement statement from the London police.
Then, as luck would have it, CNN got through to a civilian on the street near the smoking bus on their cell phone. This person was able to confirm that there was a bus, it was smoking, and that the street had been closed. They did that a couple of times. They did it in a lovely English accent. Probably for like another 10 minutes.
So, 30 minutes into this "Breaking Story from London" we've seen and had a local confirm that there was a bus, it was smoking, and that the Police had closed the street.
Amazing detail.
Of course this was accompanied by the requisite amount of speculation, was this connected to the prior weeks botched bombings, is it significant that this bus was stopped out front of the same station where the first group of bombers embarked from a month ago? Would this be a foreign national, or was this caused by someone domestic.
10 more minutes.
Then, startlingly, the next detail - a tremendous surprise, something nobody was expecting. It turns out that the bus, that was stopped and smoking, that was outside the station and on the street that the police had closed. The bus that that lovely accent confirmed was smoking, the bus we'd been looking at on American TV for the better part of an hour, that bus...
The bus had a mechanical problem and the engine was smoking.
BREAKING NEWS: LONDON: Bus Overheats!
Maybe news directors just need to relax the slightest bit. Just maybe.
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
CNN, Just Relax
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3 comments:
You have a point... an excellent point. I'm laughing because sick as it is, I know there was someone in that chain who was really disappointed that they didn't get to film the bus exploding.
You're absolutely right they need to settle down and reflect and confirm before reporting-- the whole lot of them, CNN, MSNBC, FOX, etc-- but they never will because every one of the networks lives in unreasoned and hysterical fear that if they don't go Live! (tm) right now with whatever they have, the other guy will and they'll look bad for not doing it, too.
What really makes me laugh is how the local news seems so obsessed with doing every report Live! (tm) from somewhere that they will send a reporter out to a deserted stretch of highway where an accident occurred earlier in the day or a dark government building where the City Council met six hours ago to do their reports. Nothing is actually going on at any of these places now, you understand, but the news stations seem compelled to do a Live! (tm) report from there anyway. It adds absolutely nothing to the story that we wouldn't get from the anchor just reading it from the desk, but hey, at least they can say it was Live! (tm).
I recently made a point in one of my posts about the disappointment on the anchors' faces when something horrible does *not* develop out of breaking news. Like, "It's nice that no one died, but if someone had, boy, that'd make much more interesting news." Ghouls, the whole lot of them.
And David, I wonder, is a smoking bus like a smoking gun but bigger?
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