Posts tagged News Networks

It’s always interesting when a competition in the Olympics doesn’t pan out exactly like the story NBC and the commentators have been trying to spin.  They always sound so absolutely shocked and disappointed, and plagued with uncertainty.  What’s the story now? Who is the hero?  Who are we supposed to support as the clear winner now? 

Today, when Gabby Douglas was performing, the commentators kept talking with wistful regret about how they’d wished Jordyn Wieber had made it into the All-Around finals.  I don’t think it would have really made a difference; Gabby was very clearly the best gymnast in the room.  I also don’t think this was any sort of intentional, or even unintentional, racism on the part of the commentators.  It just didn’t fit the story they were trying to tell, and watching them struggle to come up with another one as the competition progressed was interesting.  First they seemed to be favoring team captain Aly Raisman (the object of several celebrities’ recent attention), but it soon became clear that Gabby Douglas was the unquestionable leader (with Aly following close behind - you got robbed, m’dear!). 

Still, the commentators tried to create tension by focusing on the threat from Russia, and finally seemed to find their center again during the floor exercise, when they finally declared Gabby an unequaled champion, something which her teammates clearly already knew, whether they were in the stands or on the floor.  It was like the commentators were gymnasts who’d taken a spill on the balance beam and had to go through a parade of balance checks before finding the focus needed to dismount with style.  Had they been more focused on narrating the incredible athleticism as it was and less on trying to come up with a relatable, manufactured story, they wouldn’t have floundered so much before the end.  Yet another example of the athletes showing more sportsmanship and grace than the network covering their feats. 

This is also true of any other sport in the Olympics when the unexpected happens and the network’s story has been interrupted: commentators are momentarily flabbergasted, and spend a minute or two reeling as they try desperately to pull together a new story that will look good when a montage is later edited together by NBC, which will, inevitably, circle back to its original hero.  This is a network used to telling neat, finished stories with a beginning, middle, and end, after all.  Changing a story suddenly right smack in the middle of everything is something new and frightening.  You can lead a horse to water …

It seems like most of the poor reviews of the Hunger Games were made by so-called star critics demanding more blood and guts.  They complained that the movie wasn’t shocking or violent enough, didn’t have the impact it should have had on its intended audience.  I’m very uncomfortable with this opinion because, as John Green says in his wonderful review, The Hunger Games is all about the “morally fraught” relationship between observer and observed.  Gary Ross and the cast and crew did a great job of making the violence uncomfortable and shocking without making it gratuitous; demanding more gratifying bloodshed inflicted upon children makes us like the people of Panem. 

Saying that the movie needs more bloodshed, more violent entertainment is more a commentary on our society’s darker desires rather than an honest understanding of the film and book’s message.  It’s like how the Western world pays attention to the struggles of developing nations when they spit out a hero or a particularly brutal event, but the media immediately drops the subject when the situation no longer proves entertaining.  Why the hell should we stop paying attention to something when it ceases to amuse us?  Doesn’t that make us no better than Effie Trinkett & co.?  We liked hearing about Egypt when it was giving us heroic young people battling against a totalitarian regime (sound familiar?), but now that it’s into the boring politics we don’t really care anymore.  And may I remind you that more attention was paid to Kenya as the possible birthplace of Barack Obama than it was as the graveyard for thousands of innocent people killed by famine. 

So to those reviewers crying “MORE GORE!”, I have this to say: You didn’t get it. At all.

… Lex18 News out of Lexington, Kentucky, is covering the OccupyWallStreet events fairly heavily.  See more here:

http://www.lex18.com/news/occupy-wall-street-protest-expected-to-widen/

Glad they’re doing it!

One trend that always infuriates me is that when a reporter arrives in our county after some significant incident, they always interview the most backwoods, missing-teeth-and-crazy-eyed person possible.  Do they actively seek out the most cartoonishly “hillbilly” witness possible?  I’m sure there are other people standing around.  Many Southeastern Kentucky towns, including mine, are home to college professors, schoolteachers, artists, successful businessmen, and plenty of well-spoken and perfectly normal individuals who you absolutely never see on the national news. 

Part of this is that you do have to be a little crazy to want to be interviewed by a reporter after some traumatic incident, and most reporters, especially local news reporters, just want to grab the first witness they can find and get on to the next house fire (Seriously, they’re at house fires - anywhere in the state, mind you - before the emergency services.  How exactly is that possible?), so they’re not very picky and will go ahead and interview the first nut who wanders up.  However, I also think another important motivation is that news services know that this is the Appalachia the world expects to see and so that’s what they provide. 

Whether it’s due to laziness or crowd-pleasing, this trend bothers me and makes me mad whenever I see it, especially when I know better people were on the scene at the time. Why did they interview the town nut when our library’s hilarious and well-spoken janitor saw that house fire as well?  Why did they speak to an obviously drunk county fair attendee when they could have spoken to the longtime school teacher who now sculpts fish, the head of the historical society, or the stylish wind-chime-making yoga instructor, all of whom were probably also in attendance?  This kind of journalism is lazy, unprofessional, and irresponsible.  Take the time to find a coherent and sober interviewee when you visit our area.  I swear it’s not hard and will take almost no effort.  Appalachian people are smart, honestly.

Most of my local friends, all of whom grew up here, know what a Large Hadron Collider is and know what its purpose is.  They also know about the struggle for freedom in Myanmar, that Batman is Bruce Wayne, that Pluto is no longer a planet, that the Chinese invented paper and gunpowder, and that O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a retelling of The Odyssey.  Did you know that Whitley County was one of the first places in the nation to fully integrate its schools? The whole region has a rich and complicated history oversimplified and trivialized in American media. 

Yes, there ARE people around here who have conspiracy alien theories or can’t find Canada on a map, but, as Miss Teen South Carolina infamously showed us a few years ago, you find those people everywhere.  The general population around here is not a cartoon.  It’s a community with a lot to say.  It would be nice if someone would listen.