Ok CNN, C-SPAN and (ugh) FOX News, I get it. If you’re going to have 24 hours dedicated to the transfer of the latest news the quality suffers inevitably.
I’m sure even the pundits swallow hard when they’re on live standing outside the parents house reporting inane minute by minute updates of the unknown whereabouts of a missing little cute girl.
“yeah, we still don’t know anything…oh wait here’s someone now, no I guess it’s just the mailman.”
I don’t even blame them for regurgitated talking points, like baseball players getting interviewed there really just isn’t that much to say about any given topic, even if it hadn’t been beaten dead yesterday, or the day before.
But there’s an untapped resource here.
There are 57 countries around the world that have English as a national language, not to mention many more that have native news programs in English, why can’t we have a channel that patches in their stories? At 2 in the morning instead of watching full coverage of the Senate’s roll call voting for the Mattress Sticker Law, lets see whats going on in Barbados. I think even a run-of-the-mill story in Cameroon would be fun to watch. What’s the crime like in Vanuatu? Are the locusts back in Sierra Leone? What did the hurricane do to Gambia? Is there any night life in Malta?
I would think those countries would love to donate some of their news program to a world televised channel.
It may still be in the works, but back in the 60’s when videotape was a new deal, Vanderbilt University began a project of taping the then-3 major network news programs at the 5:30 hour (6:30 EST I suppose) so that analysis could be done on bias, tailoring, slanting, etc., by the various news organizations. I haven’t checked on the status of that project but the mere fact that it existed is enough reason to think that there could be a meta-news outfit that just reports on the reporting of news as a major topic. Not the news itself, just the reporting of news as an issue.
I’d love to see an Ebert-styled review of the day’s FOX News, Daily Show, Katie Couric, Brian Williams, etc. All sorts of talk about how they were dressed, the voice stylings, head bobbing and shoulder shrugging, the cleverness of the camera angles, and so on. Then have awards shows for which reviewers of the reporting did a better job of holding the mirror up to the mirror.
That pretty much is The Daily Show. I’m not sure where you’d find them, if available even, but I would say that The Daily Show covers the media far more than it does the politicians themselves. Of course, the cast of characters in the last administration didn’t give them a moments of rest and probably helped to balance that ratio out.
I do agree that the study you mentioned would be very interesting to here more about.
As far as the Ebert reviews, there is already far to much focus on style over substance as is. The N-jays(news jockeys, not reporters) mug enough for the camera as is, no need to give them trophies to chase. Brian Williams’, one of the worst offenders, face really might just stay like that. Satire and irony are completely lost on them as well, so even if the intentions of the reviews were to be snarky, they would be taken with absolute sincerity by the villagers.
A quality review of the media can be found at NPR’s “On the Media”. They review bias, trends and do overall press criticism (their manifesto) They pay no attention, alas, to who has the best camera angles, best-dressed, or head bobs.
SBS does that here in Australia, but it’s not the English-language stuff. They have a channel called SBS World that has local news from something like a dozen non-English speaking countries.
I agree with the OP, though- I think it would be great to see “Foreign” English language news broadcast during slow periods on 24 hours channels; “Well, Tom, as it’s 1am AEST, we’ll cross now to CBC in Canada…”
IIRC TV3 News (from New Zealand) has also been broadcast on one of the Pay TV channels here; and the BBC World Service is also available on Pay TV and re-broadcast on ABC NewsRadio overnight.
From outside the US, CNN International comes across as a fairly typical American channel, just with a bit more international news than the others. For an English-language channel which really reports on ‘the world’, Al Jazeera is your best bet.
I like the idea of a channel such as the OP describes, although I don’t see commercial news outlets wanting to ‘donate’ their product.
On the BBC’s domestic news channel, there’s an point somewhere in the dead of night when they do this, and cross to ABC (America) for their evening news programme.
I know it’s not TV, but ABC NewsRadio rebroadcasts the BBC World Service and NPR on from about 9pm-5am or thereabouts. The Beeb used to keep me company when I was working Nightfill, and I knew it was time for my dinner break once All Things Considered had finished.
