On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 2:35 PM, PGage <[email protected]> wrote:
> I think this confuses several things. Admittedly, several tangents have sprung up > 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. Yet, but if they knew the means were in place... Remember last year a few members of Congress tried to create legislation for the so-called internet panic button that could, in an "emergency," shut down all internet access across the nation. I don't want to ever come close to a system that could allow that to happen for any reason. > 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. Terminology aside, time delaying sports or an awards show has no underlying ethical ramifications because both are events of no consequence to anybody. The same cannot be said of news broadcasts. Let us say we delay car chases seven seconds, then maybe press conferences 10 seconds because sometimes people can utter a bad word, then maybe we delay footage of a war zone by several minutes to an hour for reasons of security. Where does that delay end? And the news would undoubtedly still have the word "live" in the corner of something delayed 10 seconds (even though it isn't), so at what point is the word "live" a lie? There is something to be said for your argument that any effective means is fine, but my argument is that honesty/truth is vital to journalism, and a delay can compromise that. > ... 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". I agree with you for the most part, obvious exceptions being severe weather or other potentially dangerous events unfolding in real time. The thing is that I don't want to have to guess what aspect of my news broadcast is live and what isn't. The reason media outlets cite for covering car chases live is as a public safety concern, allowing residents to know what is happening in their area -- this is, of course, bullsh*t, but that is their claim. However, in the unlikely event TV news actually becomes about something again, I don't want it to be handicapped by ideas created during a period when journalism did not exist and ethics went out the window. The solution for dealing with people who are f*cking up the news is not to create technological band-aids -- it is to get rid of the people f*cking up the news and replace them with people who can serve the public. -- Kevin M. (RPCV) -- 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
