Monday, November 14, 2011

The future of news ...

... Bryan Appleyard - Blog Archive - The Onion’s Psychotic Bitch. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)



So ... we now have the infuriating convention of the anchor interviewing the reporter in the field, a device that turns the reporter into a player in the drama, rather than a gatherer of information. It also wastes his time, which is why it is so often apparent that he knows next to nothing about the story and is forced to resort to cliché — “This tight-knit community is trying to come to terms with…” being the most irritating. Also, they can never challenge the anchor’s assumptions, so most of their responses begin with: “You’re absolutely right, George.”
ONN, of course, takes this to the limit by having Michael Falk, “the autistic reporter”, who can barely understand Alvarez’s questions, and whose main concern at the site where a man has died beneath a train is the wellbeing of the train. Do you, I ask Will Graham, ever get complaints on grounds of taste? “We get complaints on grounds of taste about everything we do.”

See also: Science Weekly podcast: The inscrutable brain.

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