I started watching Pro Football last season and was really impressed by the first down marker.
(To the unitiated: the networks are now drawing a yellow line on your TV screen, sideline to sideline, 10-yards from the first-down line-of-scrimmage which shows you the (until now) imaginary line the offense must cross to earn a new first down. This line does NOT exist in real life, but is there, clear as day, on your screen.)
This line on the field “exists” under the players - their feet and bodies cover it up. This blew me away - the games are broadcast live; how the hell did they do it? That is one big-ass computer!
Then, the new-millenium-eve crap came on TV. I didn’t watch it, but I read an article in Time about how CBS changed the Times Square NBC logo into a CBS logo for the entire length of their broadcast.
In other words, CBS changed the way Times Square looks (in their broadcast) and passed it off as reality (They do this sort of thing on their morning shows also, slapping their logo on people, cabs, horses, etc).
At first I thought this was cool, then I began to get worried. Remember that scene in The Running Man where Richard Dawson kills some guy then makes his face look like Schwazzaneger’s on TV so that everyone thinks he died? I watched that (years ago) and laughed, saying “They can’t do that!”
But now they can.
Television producers can now change what we see in “live” broadcasts to the point that their gaffe is indistinguishable from reality.
If CBS can do that, what can the Secret Service, CIA or NSA do?
Television has always been a visual medium, “What you see is what you get”. It’s just the nature of the beast.
Saying that it’s “wrong” for TV shows to tamper with what you see on your screen so that it doesn’t represent “reality” is like complaining that Annette Bening can’t really be in love with Kevin Spacy because she’s married to Warren Beatty. Although I suppose there are people who think that–every time a soap opera kills off a character, they get hate mail, “how could you DO that to Ashley, that sweet creature? You must be Nazis…” completely ignorant of the fact that “Ashley” just got a hot two-picture Hollywood deal and doesn’t need the “soap” anymore.
So it’s all about the line between fantasy and reality. TV has always blurred it, so it’s getting worse, so what? ::: shrug :::
Now if they were tampering with things like the SCORE of the ball game, or rewinding the footage and altering it somehow so that it showed that Dallas won (or whoever), that would be different. I think the reason Running Man suceeded as a horror film was precisely because of this–it showed “reality” being tampered with. Kind of the same thing as Total Recall, you know? “Who do you trust/which reality should you believe?”
I dunno. ::: shrug again :::
My mother tells me that when I was four, I truly believed that Dancing Bear on Captain Kangaroo was real, and would go hide behind the big armchair every time he came on. But that was in the early days of TV, and I think most sensible people understand that anything you see on TV is, if not actually constructed, at the very least edited. We never hear the entire speech, only the sound bite.
I’m comfortable with that, I guess, mainly because I don’t see any other alternatives. How could you force TV to suddenly “get real”, when the very nature of the medium is pretty “unreal”? Tiny talking heads and dancing bears come right into your living room.
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen
As long as the public remains informed, we’re fine.
There are plenty of questionable newspapers and magazines out there that don’t always restrict themselves to reality. We just need to get used to the same thing in TV. Some stations will be more believable than others. Corroborated stories will seem more authentic. Anytime a station is found to have fabricated something, it’s going to lose face (and viewership).
The world would not end if CNN released a staged video of Juan Miguel beating Elian – because FoxNews, MSNBC, CBS, etc. would trip over themselves pointing out that it didn’t really happen.
I find myself more and more watching the History channel, A&E, Home & Garden or even PBS. I’m tired of being pandered down to like I’m an idiot by the major networks. Let the brainless masses have their Katie Kuriks (sp?) and Briant Gumbels. I’m exercising my right to tune them out every time I turn on my TV. I’m so sick of the manufactured dramatic stories and exposes that serve only to stir the viewer’s base emotions without actually informing or educating them on the given subject. If today’s TV is a true reflection of our society then I weep for the future.
Back to the OP, part 2: Yes, I think it’s wrong - things like changing logos and such for aesthetic purposes. National Geographic did something similar…I dunno, about 10-15 years ago?..where they “moved” one of the pyramids at Giza to make the picture on the cover a little nicer and more convenient. It’s wrong because it is a false portrayal of reality, and because it seems to glorify perfection of just about anything anymore. Don’t like a senior picture? Retouch it and then print it! Don’t like where Bill Clinton is standing in that news photo? Digitally alter it! Whew - sorry. I’m a bit passionate about that.
Now, as for things like drawing the line of scrimmage in sports…that’s a nice touch! When FOX introduced the highlighted puck in its hockey broadcasts, boy, that was great. The regular pucks just move so quickly that it’s hard to see them on television. Innovations such as these also make life easier for the newbie viewers - you can see exactly what’s going on where.
Christopher Robin Hood - he steals from the rich and gives to the Pooh.
The simple fact is that it has always been possible to misreport the news. The things referred to in this thread simply mean that they are getting better at it.
In a way it is good: The more people know that news reporting can be biased or falsified, the more skeptical they are likely to be.
Only a small number of people are truly awake. These people go through life in a state of constant amazement.
I found that neon halo around the puck offensive in the extereme. Thousands upon thousands of Canadians (and Americans) managed for years to see the puck and follow the action. Children first getting interested in sports (hockey in particular) don’t find it difficult to locate either the puck or their favourite player.
The glowing puck was simply another TV stunt to draw the slack jawed wrestling fans of the WWF to a sport that demands a longer attention span. The most obvious way to do that was to allow the viewer to follow the pretty glowing light around the screen.
These are all excellent points - but I think that I want to sharpen my original observation a bit:
When CBS changed what people saw in Times Sqaure, they didn’t tell anyone that they were doing that - that’s more than just misrepresenting the news… (but I don’t know what it is).
What’s more, to return to movies, most of us saw Wag the Dog. right? In that flick, the government used technology like this to misinform the public; to present false news.
That is what I fear.
TV is a most basic medium of communication because it recreates actually being there - despite insipid anchorpeople - if you simply mute the babel and watch the image they are showing, you can gather the facts for yourself. Or, at least, you could.
So what you are saying is that TV, or rather the big networks specifically, are distorting reality without disclosing it to the public.
It’s one thing to show Baywatch and not have to explain to the audience that all the actors and extras have been selected for their physical attributes. It’s quite another thing to televise a live event and digitally alter the image without notifying the viewer.
Well, so far I don’t know if your position will generate a great debate. I think most people will be in agreement with you. At least most people here.
I think that if you are a thinking and reasoning human being and you have a healthy habit of questioning the source and content of the information you receive, be it from the TV or the newspaper or sunday school, then you have already won the battle. Trouble is, as many here often quote, “the masses are asses” and any slide of hand or slimy journalistic trick has an irrisistable appeal for them. They’d just as easily believe an image of the Eiffel tower standing amongst the pyramids of Egypt as they would believe that OJ is innocent.
News has been spun for decades now. It should not come as a shock to anyone that images are now being spun as openly as the angles on a story.
Colour me a cynic.
Okay. Let me clarify - I apologize if this is not the place to do this, but you don’t leave an e-mail address. My friends that had been watching hockey for years initially did not like it. As a new hockey viewer with limited vision, it was wonderful for me. I really object to you saying it was just another way to attract short-attention spanned viewers from the WWF, because it was an experiment in broadcasting.
Meara: I take your point about the media (and I should admit at this point to having been a member of the profession) and their competitive nature representing a barrier to true deception. However I think there’s an inherent problem in an industry being self-regulating. Too many factors can influence what is published/broadcast and all too often nowadays ‘truth’ appears down the list. It’s quite a pandora’s box.
Yet, I’m not advocating censorship - something I don’t believe in. A tad contradictory on the surface I know but I’m an idealist.
What it boils down to is that manipulation of images that result in a misrepresentation of reality is ethically dishonest. Doing so deliberately and in a self-serving way is despicable.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means
just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” -Lewis Carroll
What would happen if an entire society began to disbelieve everything that was shown on the Network News? Or was found on the Internet? Or was published, or promulagated by anyone in any medium?
It seems to me that credibility is becoming the new commodity. Everybody wants their reality filtered, sure, but what happens when paranoia becomes the status quo?
If you think about it, though, reality is already being filtered to serve the network’s interest. If you turn on the news, you will see traffic jams, murder charges, court cases, police brutality, etc. You’d think we live in the most violent of Shadowrun/Bladerunner worlds.
Yet we all realize (perhaps subconsciously) that the reality being shown has been edited for content. We know that the network is not going to show us the boring, mushy stuff.
Similarly, we will all get accustomed to the fact that CBS is not going to show us NBC’s logo. In fact, we can probably safely assume that whever there are advertisements in a broadcast, there is manipulation.
Instilling skepticism is probably one of the best things the networks can do at this point. If we learn now to question what we see on TV, we won’t be as easily duped later when the technology gets REALLY good.
