Paris Hilton’s release from jail is certainly non-news reporting, and most if not all major networks are guilty of covering it. Certainly plenty of news consumers are disgusted, and at least one news anchor has, purportedly, refused to cover the story, throwing a tantrum before MSNBC’s Morning Joe program and trying to burn the paper her copy was written on.
Some background on the offending anchor: Mika Brzezinski, a fairly accomplished television news anchor, having been the CBS News correspondent at Ground Zero, is now at NBC News and her role has recently been expanding. Which is what makes me think her hissy fit was staged to up her celebrity-anchor status.
If that’s the case, I simultaneously praise the network for its creativity and deft in pulling together a timely stunt and deplore it for its hypocrisy. Network news covers Paris Hilton for ratings; if MSNBC staged the stunt, it did so for the same reason. What could be more fake than news that’s staged in protest of other news?
[An update on this conspiracy theory of sorts: One of the brighter practitioners I know, Peter Shankman, noticed the incident and didn't smell a rat, so to speak, so maybe ... just maybe ... I'm terribly off base.]
And regardless of whether the incident was staged or not, how is it a good thing to have in-fightings among the producer/anchor teams that bring news forth to the masses? Brzezinski should be gunning for the producer’s seat if she wants to influence news coverage instead of read it.
Other network anchors have quipped before about outlets’ celebrity coverage, but, staged or not, Brzezinski’s incident is likely to introduce “protest journalism” into the lexicon. If this is an indication of how future news anchors will behave, then I think it’s worth calling out as a leap backwards in the credibility of television journalism.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment