I doubt I'm going to persuade those who have no problem with this, but I want to first clarify part of my argument, since it might have been misunderstood.
I was not referring to late night talk shows grabbing random injury footage and repeating it, but airing footage of injuries of guests (or in Conan's case, the hose) either in the context of an interview, or in connection with their appearance to do a trick/jump/stunt. In no way are any of these meant to be funny, and were - for the ones I can think of - aired only after the individual had been treated and/or recovered from the injury. Had these athletes died, I have a hard time seeing how the fatal acts would have even been broadcast. My take on this new baseball example - the network shouldn't show the impact of the throw, as I find it little different from a snuff film. Had Clemens drawn blood or seriously injured Piazza back in 2000 with that jagged shard of bat, I would hope that footage never made heavy rotation on Fox (but would probably have that dashed). I wasn't happy with outlets that have aired footage of Daniel Pearl's beheading, Saddam Hussein's execution, or the death of the one Iranian protester last summer that hit the interwebs. For the record, I'm also not crazy about the big crash footage (Paris Air Show back in the day, various people driving cars into crowds, etc.) being broadcast either. I'm not a fan of Jackass or America's Funniest Home Videos (accident/crotch bashing division) either, but there's an attention whore aspect to those programs that complicates things. FWIW, I'm not convinced that NBC would have sacrificed their journalistic imperatives in the service of a feel good sentimentality that pervades Olympic coverage by not showing footage of the lethal accident. They will sacrifice those imperatives once they air the treacly profile of the man shortly before the men's luge finals. A question I've seen asked that seems relevant - would we have seen this footage if it was an American luger who died? I have my doubts. David ________________________________ From: PGage <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sat, February 13, 2010 2:51:20 AM Subject: Re: [TV orNotTV] Not exactly the best thing... I don't defend the repeating of the video in question on late night talk shows or other entertainment shows. I have not seen any other coverage of this except for NBC's in the Opening Ceremonies. But NBC is covering the Olympics, at least in part as a news (and sports, which is part of news) event. When you are covering an event on television news and you have video of the event, you show it. Imagine this: A pitcher is angry at a hitter who grandstanded after hitting a homerun. In the next at bat he throws at the hitter, hitting him in the head and killing him. I don't think you would see any network covering that game showing only computer generated animations of it. NBC did not sensationalize it, they did not hype it, they did not dwell on it. I thought they showed good judgment and restraint in covering a difficult story. I think the real temptation would have been for them to sacrifice their journalistic imperatives in the service of the extended "feel good" sentimentality that is the heart of what will drive viewership for the next 2 weeks, and I am glad they did not do that. On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 11:34 PM, David Bruggeman <[email protected]> wrote: I think the decision was wrong, and likely due to an unnecessary (IMO) rush to get a video story out. > >You couldn't jury rig a simulation clip? You had to watch the actual injury? >Show a clip of the curve in question and use a telestrator to point out where >he hit and went over. Maybe it would take a little time to put together, but >you can have a ticker notice or brief breaking news read to address the main >story (athlete dead in training run) and give the details later. > >I don't agree about the baseball example, in part because I think it hard to >see a situation where showing the footage of getting hit in the head would add >significant information to the story. And I have a hard time seeing any >situation where that would actually be broadcast after the > live coverage of the game was halted. Same with those few unfortunate boxing > matches where a fighter died. > >I'm basing this next point off of watching various clips of sports and related >injuries shown on late night talk shows (Shawn White's recent face plant was a >minor scrape, but there was at least one X-Games style stunt on Letterman that >led to a more serious injury, Coco's head going bonk on the studio floor), so >I may be missing some relevant outlets. I do not recall any footage of an >athlete being injured that was shown without said person (or host, in the case >of Conan and his concussion) after they had recovered from said injury. And >these were events that were intended to be broadcast live to tape. This man >deserved no less. If the Georgian Olympic Committee or other local >authorities raise a stink, I won't blame them. > > >In other words, mainstream media, don't be those police chase video shows. > -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
