On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 1:52 PM, Kevin M. <[email protected]> wrote:
> Not to go all "Studio 60" but if the news is being delayed for any > reason, it would only underscore how wretched they have become at > their jobs. The only reason to delay programing is to censor it, and > the only reason to censor the news is... well... can't think of any > reason to censor the news -- if the news is being produced well. If > the director can't call the shots, if the switcher can't cut away, if > the cameraman can't pull wide, if the anchor can't cover, and if > something tragic occurs, then you have a problem... that is four > preventable levels of professionally handling the same situation > without resorting to censorship. > I think this confuses several things. The use of the word "censor" in this context implies either the government deciding what can and cannot be shown, or non-news personnel exercising judgement that prevents newsworthy material from being broadcast. Neither of those apply here. The government is not requiring that suicides not be broadcast, nor are account executives pressuring news professionals to not broadcast suicides. In this case, news professionals have made their own professional news judgement that suicides should not be broadcast. If the mechanisms you note are adequate to ensure that this judgement can be enforced, then of course there is no problem. But I don't see how putting a 5 second delay on the footage from a police car chase is somehow any more "censorship", just because it might be more effective. Beyond the points that a time-delay is no more inherently censorship than cutting away from a live shot, and the point that the judgement to not air a suicide is being made by internal news professionals, not external government authority or internal non-news professionals, I am going to dispute the implied claim here that the "liveness" of an event has any inherent relationship to its "newsiness". This seems very curious to me. The ability to show any event live on television is relatively recent, so I am not sure how live broadcasting ever got equated with the integrity of news coverage. Indeed, if anything I think the argument could be better made in the reverse. Most events are probably better covered from a journalistic point of view if they are not live, and the news professionals have a chance to exercise their news judgement in preparing their reports. One of the biggest problems with both local news and cable news is the fetish they have made with "going live" when it is either not necessary or contraindicated (e.g. not enough facts are known to provide context or confirmation). How many times have we heard a CNN anchor cut to live footage from some event by saying something like: "I don't know what we are seeing, or where it is from, or what it means, but let's watch it". -- 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
