TMZ for boogens

Local news sucks. Though never a paragon of quality journalism, the local stuff is now sinking ever closer to total irrelevance. As a journalism professor, I should be fighting this trend. But no. “Go with the flow” is America’s 21st century catchphrase, and in the immortal words of the Eurythmics, “Who am I to disagree?”

In order to aid my professional colleagues in their transformation from semi-legitimate reporters to the boogen version of TMZ, I offer the following eight suggestions for new show segments:

Looky That There! – This part of the show will feature video of something blandly unusual, such as a cat wearing a bowtie or a kid in Malaysia smoking a cigar. And if you’re about to observe that they already do this kind of thing all the time, that’s true. But now they’ve got a name for it. They can further brand it by coming up with some graphics for the intro, and at the end everyone in the studio has to shout “looky that there!” just like hapless Red Lobster employees singing Happy Birthday to the matriarch of a pack of grinning yokels.

Oh No You Didn’t! – When things get dull, one of the anchors or other on-air folks can toss in a brief rant about their Tea Party political views. Or if they’re crunched for time, someone can just say a mild swear word apropos of nothing. Flash the “Oh no you didn’t!” super and get on with the show.

OMG Hairdo! – Start with a reporter who already suffers from unfortunate hairdo decision-making skills. Then make her stand outside for half an hour in high wind and/or heavy precipitation before going live to her for 30 seconds. This segment also comes with two companion pieces: “OMG Hat!” and “OMG Outfit!”

Noise Tube, You Has One! – In this segment the producer waits like a crouching spider until one of the on-air folks can no longer resist the urge to start yapping about his golf scores, newborn that cried all night or other irrelevant bit of personal information. Then he presses a button, and the audio is replaced by a string of cartoon noises (buzzers, springs, trombone slides, cricket chirps and the like). The noises stop when the news resumes.

Shame Shame Shame Shame Shame! – After reporting about some horrendous case of child abuse or whatever Mel Gibson’s done lately, the anchors cluck their tongues and mutter “shame shame shame shame shame” over and over while the word “shame” flashes on the screen in big, bright letters.

You Make a Better Door Than You Do a Window! – Hey, weather dork. Shut up about your golf scores and move the hell out of the middle of the screen so we can see the upcoming forecast on the graphic you’re currently blocking. Okay, that isn’t really a new segment. Just a small, treasured dream.

News Only Cute! – We report on upsetting world events. Then we show a parade of gooey baby pictures to celebrate the subjects’ first birthdays. Why not combine the two? The audio can still be the latest about natural disasters, crazed gunmen and the like. But at least give us gooey babies to look at while we’re hearing the bad stuff.

Pie! – This one starts out looking like an OMG Hairdo! segment, but then someone runs up behind the reporter and hits her in the face with a cream pie. Hilarity ensues. Far more entertaining than whatever story she was trying to report. This one will be extra fun because honestly it’s the only thing they aren’t already doing.

The Green M&M vs. RockStar

I don’t mind that the CBS Evening News featured a story on the latest ultra-violent video game from RockStar. I don’t mind that what they aired could scarcely be considered news. Has RockStar really produced something scandalous? Isn’t that what they do? Is there really anybody in the country who cares anything about videogames and yet has not heard of the likes of Grand Theft Auto?

Of course companies like RockStar thrive on this kind of publicity. Games such as GTA and the new one (which I’m not going to name because I don’t intend to help them plug it) don’t look very good. Even in their ads – where presumably they have their best foot forward – the graphics look boxy, very last-gen. But hey, if you can’t make a game good enough to sell itself, why not move product by tweaking some noses and cashing in on the resulting publicity?

And the nose tweaked this time belonged to Katie Couric. At the end of the story we were all treated to her Church-Lady-esque snipping about how she couldn’t see why anybody would buy such an awful game. Because you said not to, Katie. Precisely because you and people like you say they’re bad. And for almost no other reason.

Obviously the purpose behind bemoaning the passage of the legacy of Murrow and Cronkite faded away sometime during Dan Rather’s tenure. But surely such obvious side-handed hucksterism ought to be beneath anyone who puts the word “journalist” on a business card.

Since I quit watching Olbermann (part two)

Because Amy and I were loyal Olbermann viewers for some time, I feel the need to add a bit of detail to last week’s posting. We didn’t just randomly decide to quit watching his show. Indeed, in the end we made the decision because he left us with no other choice.

David Letterman used to have peculiar attacks of semi-brain-freeze. He’d get something stuck in his head, decide it was funny, and then keep repeating it over and over. This annoying tic was cleverly lampooned in a skit on Saturday Night Live in which Norm McDonald (as Letterman) repeats, “Hey, ya got any gum?” ad infinitum.

From time to time, Countdown resorted to a similar substitute for substance. There can be no doubt in the minds of loyal viewers that we share the planet with an actor who resembles the Italian prime minister, at least on a pixelated web video in which he thrusts his pelvis against a meter maid. And can a tranquilized bear be counted upon to fall out of a tree directly onto a trampoline? Apparently so.

We’ve even seen whole segments run over again lock, stock and barrel. At least part of why we’re all sick of the tranked trampoline bear is that it’s a key feature of the Animal Wing of the Countdown Hall of Fame, a segment we’ve been treated to so many times that “treat” has become more than a little ironic. I can only assume that the show’s producers do this because they have no actual news to report. Or maybe Keith just needs a coffee break in the middle of the show, and the stock footage lasts long enough for him to get in a few sips.

But the beginning of the end was a re-running of the story about the automatic weapons festival, an event that marked a new low point in Countdown’s history. The story was only two days old when viewers were treated to a second helping. This wasn’t a quick clip, either. It was a whole, long segment. It was only vaguely interesting, and by no means relevant or useful to most viewers. In other words, it wasn’t news.

However, the most serious problem with this piece was dishonesty.

One of the most hateful things about Fox News (and there are many to choose from) is the network’s reliance of a simple-minded, “us versus them” world-view. For Fox partisans the United States is divided into two groups: good Americans and pointy-headed, Democrat-voting, tree-hugging, gay-marrying, terrorist-loving liberals.

Unfortunately, this Foxgeist has an evil twin. From the opposite-yet-equally-wrong viewpoint, the “us versus them” becomes a battle between good Americans and low-brow, Republican-voting, pointy-hood-wearing, shotgun-toting, televangelist-tithing conservatives. Remove the “good American” parts, combine the two equations, and one begins to see why we’re in such a state of unrest about our national image. Living with this “liberal or conservative” false dichotomy is like being next in the “cake or death?” line just as they run out of cake.

Thus I was extremely disappointed when Countdown ran the gun story and fresh out of vocabulary to describe my reaction to the rerun. “Look at the quaint provincials!” this story seemed to say. “Don’t these NRA-cap-wearing hicks have anything better to do than blowing up old cars and shooting used appliances with machine guns? No wonder they all voted for Bush. They’re as dumb as he is.” Now that’s entertainment. Hey, let’s watch it again.

I’m a bit thick when it comes to noticing things like bias, but when it’s rubbed so liberally in my face even I take note. It left me wondering when Keith was going to balance the scales a bit. Let’s see some idiots in New York City moronically living the liberal stereotype. Shortly after the gun story ran (and then re-ran) on Countdown, the Assignment America segment on the CBS Evening News threatened viewers with the possibility of a story about commune-dwelling hippies who may actually have to get jobs now that the market for handmade hammocks is bottoming out. Tackle something like that. Reassure your viewers in the fly-over states that Countdown isn’t a big, partisan joke with us as the unfairly-stereotyped butts. If you have to do this sort of thing at all (and that’s a big if), at least spread the love around.

But no. The longer we watched the farther Olbermann slid into his new role as the Bill O’Reilly of the left wing. At first his “Special Comments” were an entertaining break from endless conversations between the host and his gang of pet pundits. But the more he did it, the more inescapable became the feeling that at any moment he was going to demand that we all go to our windows and start screaming “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

And therein lies the heart of Countdown’s departure from our “to record” list. Clearly Olbermann has deluded himself into believing that he’s some kind of Edward R. Murrow for the 21st Century. And equally clearly, the network is using him as a Howard Beal for brainless liberals who need rabble-rousing mouthpieces as badly as their conservative counterparts require the likes of O’Reilly and Limbaugh.

I recognize that desire in myself. From time to time I’ve wondered what it would be like to pick up a newspaper and read a story about how three Klansmen who went missing years ago were dug out of an unmarked grave. What would it be like to learn that the racist bastards were killed by leftist locals and that nobody would ever be prosecuted for the crime?

For that reason, Olbermann had to go. Well, that and the extra 20 minutes I now have to read a book.

Since I quit watching Olbermann (part one)

Eight ways my life has changed since Amy and I took Countdown with Keith Olbermann off our Tivo list:

Suddenly I have an extra hour every evening. Well okay, more like 20 minutes. Though we originally watched the whole show, of late we’d been buzzing past most of it.

I haven’t heard Michael Musto say anything nasty about a celebrity. I actually miss Musto.

Without the Oddball segment, I’ve become ill-informed about the wacky antics of people in foreign countries and “red states.” That evens things out, because even when I did watch Oddball on a regular basis I remained uninformed about whatever wacky antics people in “blue states” might be up to.

Is John Dean still alive? I have no idea.

I no longer believe in the Bushpocalypse, the imminent demise of the W administration that Olbermann seemed quite sure was just around the corner.

On the other hand, I’ve acquired a bit more patience about the whole Bush thing. My inclination to write angry letters to politicians demanding impeachment has been replaced by a sense of “and this too shall pass.”

I’ve lost the nagging feeling that I’m watching Network without being aware of it.

And last but certainly not least, I now have no idea what Bill O’Reilly says or does. It’s pure bliss to no longer follow every misdeed of the radical right’s most meaningless factotum.

Roh roh, Raggy! Rotten Rodcast!

One of the occasionally unpleasant parts of my job as a journalism teacher are some of the moments when a student asks me, “Do you think I can be successful at this?” That’s not an inherently awkward situation, as at least some students do in fact possess the talent to go on to illustrious careers. However, the ones I really dread are the kids who want to be sportscasters.

“Okay, here’s what you need to do,” I want to say. “Start be becoming a professional athlete. Learn to pronounce that last word with an extra syllable: ‘ath-a-lete.’ Have a career for a few years. Being a big star helps a bit but isn’t essential. Just be sure that you end up washed up, gain 50 pounds or so, and buy yourself a large collection of ugly ties that don’t go with your suits. Now you’re ready for the local news, ESPN, or any other announcer’s job that might come your way.”

Up until now, similar advice has been largely unnecessary for other journalism realms. Political commentators don’t need to have been politicians. Pundits don’t need to have done anything with their lives besides punditry. And if you want to be an entertainment journalist, it actually seems to help if you’re Ms. or Mr. Nobody-in-Particular. Just as long as you’ve got a big, toothy smile and you aren’t too fat.

But now a new danger to entertainment journalists has emerged, a threat so insidious that it could easily make the path of the sportscaster look like smooth sailing. Press junkets were never exactly the most challenging of interview opportunities, but now Entertainment Tonight has reduced them beyond absurdity. Instead of using real, live reporters, the show is now employing the M&Ms. Movie-plugging celebrities are now being interviewed by computer-animated, talking candy.

As if being an ex-jock isn’t hard enough. Now some aspiring journalists have to find a way to become imaginary pieces of chocolate.

Even more nightmarish is the notion that eventually even more high-minded news operations will tumble to the advantages offered by CGI characters. People like them, and the importance of popularity can’t be underestimated in a time when Paddy Chayevsky’s Network has gone from farce to documentary. And they’re cheap. You don’t have to provide them with health insurance or a pension plan. They don’t eat much, either.

Thus it’s only a matter of time before we see a scene like this:

VO:   This is the CBS Evening News, with the Green M&M.

GREEN:   Good evening. Tonight’s top story: more bloodshed in Iraq. Insurgents continue attacks on US and Iraqi forces in Baghdad. For the complete story, we go to our chief Iraq correspondent, computer-animated Scooby Doo. Scooby?

SCOOBY:   Rah-roh.

GREEN:   How’s the situation on the ground there? More sectarian violence?

SCOOBY:   Ruh-ruh.

GREEN:   No? Well, Scooby, we’ve got reports that several people were killed today. Is none of that happening near you somewhere?

SCOOBY:   Ruh-ruh.

GREEN:   Scooby, where are you?

SCOOBY:   Ragrad.

GREEN:   Yes, but where in Baghdad?

SCOOBY:   Reen Rone.

GREEN:   Scooby, don’t you think you should leave the Green Zone, go out into the city and get the story?

SCOOBY:   Ruh-ruh.

GREEN:   Would you do it for one Scooby Snack?

SCOOBY:   Ruh-ruh.

GREEN:   How about two Scooby Snacks?

SCOOBY:   Ruh …

And the negotiation continues.