YouReport

  There’s a new watchdog in town, and it’s you.  Yes, you, with your video-capturing cell phone.  Who would’ve guessed that Time’s Person of the Year would also be leading the pack in news journalism?  When news happens, you are there, quick to draw your cell-cam and capture for the world events that may otherwise go unnoticed.  When Saddam was hanged, you were there.  When Kramer’s career went down in flames, you were there.  When an Iranian-American student was unjustly tasered in the UCLA library, you were there.  When news happens, you are there, ensnaring the events that shape our world in your tangled web of grainy video and garbled sound. 

  Of course, in the days following the execution of Saddam Hussein, cell phone video of the hanging swept across the web like a California brushfire. The video has been condemned as much for its existence as for its content, which shows the taunting of the former dictator on the gallows and a post-mortem clip reveals a gruesome, gaping wound on his neck.  Authorities are now calling for the prosecution of the man who captured the footage, in a classic case of “shooting the messenger.”  Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking at a press conference on Monday in Ramallah, said that she hopes those responsible for the video will be punished. “We were disappointed that there was not greater dignity give to the accused under these circumstances,” she said.  Let me remind you that, if not for the fear of terrorist attacks, the hanging would’ve happened in a soccer stadium in front of at least 10,000 cheering fans.  “I hope that those who are responsible for the way that came out will indeed be punished,” Rice said.

  I think that video, which I haven’t seen, was a good thing—not because I enjoy the macabre, but because it immediately subverts any conspiracy theories that would have immediately began to swirl.  “Saddam is alive and well in Acapulco,” or “The execution was actually staged by the Baathist Saddam loyalists, who released him, and now he’s living in Bahrain with Michael Jackson,” or “That fat guy in a ski mask was really Elvis Presley.”  The cell phone video eventually made public the hanging that was originally going to be public.

  The Hussein video may be the highest-profile among a recent rash of phone-captured news, but it is certainly not alone.  It’s quite possible that racist tirade unleashed by Michael Richards (a.k.a. Kramer) wouldn’t have been the news story it was if it hadn’t been captured on an audience member’s cell phone. 

  Week after week, we are seeing more of these videos make their way to television news, and they are almost always shocking.  And while most people don’t carry around a video camera at all times, most people do have cell phones.  According to a recent study by InfoTrends and The Yankee Group, about 70 percent of Americans have cell phones, and about a fourth of those have video capability.  Of the estimated 55.5 million cell phone users with video, one-third claim they use it at least once a week. 

  Overall, that’s almost 6 percent of Americans who use their cell phone video recorders once a week, and that number will only rise as video-capable phones fall into more hands.  We certainly haven’t seen the end of this trend. 

  Keep those phones handy, and when news happens, you’ll be there.

 -From Pulse
   January 18, 2007

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Cable News

  It all started when the Pope was dying.  I sat in front of the television, eyes glued to the lights in those three Vatican windows, listening to the commentary from everyone who had ever been in the same room as the Pontiff.  His assistants, other Cardinals, various biographers, a lady in Boston who saw him give mass once, two teenagers in St. Peter’s Square.

  In the past three weeks, I have become a junky for these talking-head shows.  Actually, we don’t call them that anymore.  We call them “news shows.”  The face of television news couldn’t have changed more over the past thirty years if Michael Jackson was its poster child. And if you’ve been watching recently, you might think that he is.  Calling MSNBC (for example) a “news channel” is like referring to Spam as steak. 

   Nevertheless, I’m hooked on it.  It’s a guilty pleasure, I know, because it perpetuates the sensationalizing of news.  Every time MSNBC breaks away from its coverage of the Michael Jackson trial to televise another high-speed chase in Los Angeles, or a standoff with the BTK Killer, and millions of us tune in, we contribute to the softening of television news.  But it’s a temptation that I’m not strong enough to resist.

  Network news can’t compete with this kind of programming.  The networks have all lost the anchors we grew up watching: Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, Peter Jennings.  Who needs nightly news when CNN is being pumped into every household in America?  And if you don’t have the attention span for CNN, there’s always Headline News.

  Why would we want to watch the nightly news for the highlight reel of the car chase, when we can watch the whole car chase live on MSNBC?  The so-called news channels understand this, and the viewers are starting to figure it out.

  The cable news channels are starting to veer away from reporting the news the way MTV gave up on music videos.  It’s all specialty programs, with your favorite celebrity’s commentary on the day’s top news stories.  CNBC, for example, was once of interest only to stock brokers.  Now their dry stock-market analysis is peppered with reality shows like “The Contender” and Conan O’Brien reruns and Dennis Miller and Donny Deutsch.

  HBO has even gotten into the game with “Real Time with Bill Maher,” “Real Sports,” and they’re bringing Bob Costas back for his own sports show.

  I haven’t seen the numbers lately, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart is more watched than any of the networks’ nightly newscasts. 

  Our sense of news has changed.  It’s no longer Walter Cronkite sitting at a desk and reading the day’s top stories.  We are always looking to be entertained, and news is no exception.  We no longer care about “fair and balanced” reporting, which explains why Fox News is still around.  We want our news anchors to have common sense, but we don’t want them to take themselves or the news too seriously.

  It seems that we have realized that news and entertainment don’t have to be mutually exclusive.  Now they are inextricably intertwined, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

 -From Pulse
   April 21, 2005

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