Charlie Brooker is a journalist and comedian. In this video, he pokes fun at the former profession by illustrating how television news is structured according to a standardized style that tries to impress the viewer without necessarily being informative. Content warning: some NSFW language.
via reddit
LisaL
Gliding through the F-ing matrix.. HA! That part made me crack up.
Great video though. Yep, looks like pretty much every news report.
Thomas
Good grief, this 2 minute segment is exactly what I try to explain to everyone around me: you don’t watch “the news”, you pretend to be informed by people who pretend to care and cover issues, and prentending to be neutral.
Necronomic Recovery
Charlie Brooker is a goddamn legend.
Watch his programme on BBC4. It’s called “Newswipe” and is a scathing view of the media. Brilliant stuff.
seb
Charlie brooker is my favourite comedian, his screenwipe and newswipe series are amazing
Burton
Yup, a good guy. Also does a couple of excellent columns each week for the guardian.
Vic
Brilliant. Very well done. I felt like I was sitting watching the “news.”
Glenn
as much as i like charlie, does anyone else get the feeling he’s a bit of a chris morris derivitive..?
Necronomic Recovery
I wouldn’t say derivative. He’s covering similar territory that Morris did with Brass Eye way back when so comparisons are inevitable.
Ben Eshbach
The best is when the news interviews itself. “Now joining us is special correspondent So-and-So. Tell us, So-and-So, what’s happening in Haiti?”
Or when they switch to a camera in the “newsroom” where people are bustling around and the anchor has his shirt sleeves rolled up. And he’s telling us what’s going to be on the news in the coming hour.
Ian Aspin
Having worked as a TV news reporter I found Charlie’s piece very amusing – some of us have long believed reporting like this is a rubbish way to do things!
But even if a journalist wants to tell stories in a more authentic and engaging way, the constraints of the so-called “house style” in many news organisations make it quite difficult to achieve.
What’s needed is a massive culture shift and a complete re-think of what we understand quality broadcast news reporting is.
And guess what? That’s exactly what’s happening, though you’d never believe it from what we’re still mostly seeing on TV.
Anyway, the new digital technologies, and shake up of “old school/old mainstream” journalism means new platforms and styles of “news” storytelling can now emerge.
Let’s hope fresh and appropriate ways of funding appear too, so we can kill off this dreadful formulaic reporting and delivery, and clear the way for more natural and interesting ways to treat stories and content. Ian Aspin. http://www.twitter.com/ianaspin
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