"Breathless reportage"

[Ron Green]

The electronic media have congealed into a style that Don Henley sang about years ago in "Dirty Laundry." Every story has to carry some gee-whiz kind of importance with it, so that a viewer might imagine that after eighty-something days of her disappearance, some new angle about a possible witness to a missing teenager's actions is a desperately serious piece of information.

This sort of "breathless reportage" was probably pioneered by the local news stations and affiliates, because there was a steady supply of crimes, car wrecks ("Is the head dead yet?") and missing children, and because the news readers in local markets had a limited ability to deliver such news in a sober and believable way, but instead adopted this desperately serious histrionic tone.

Someone just noted that a recent explosion in San Francisco is getting this treatment. It's as if every story that's required to fill this insane 24-hour news cycle is something that will affect our lives and our country.

[TwilightZone]

1. Dirty Laundry has certainly passed the test of time.

It's as accurate now as it was then. Even more so.

And, yes, I'd agree that a lot of it has to do with filling 24 hours a day on several news channels. It also has to do with the fact that people want that kind of garbage. Otherwise, there wouldn't be 300 versions of Entertainment Tonight sprawled all over TV hell.

On a related note, it annoys the living hell out of me every time Wolf Blitzer says, "Quickly, 'cause we're out of time" or "in ten seconds, answer this complicated question, because we're almost out of time." CNN has so much time to fill that they'll never be "almost out of time."

[Ron Green]

3. A great point. "We're almost out of time." What a crock.

Time is exactly what they've got tons of. What they don't have is journalistic courage, or a hunger for the truth. So they keep this false urgency going all the time, and then go the the commercial for yet another pain reliever.

[TwilightZone]

5. Another pain reliever, which we now need because of Wolf Blitzer!

:)

Hey, we're lucky if it's a pain reliever commercial. Usually, it's one of those incredibly annoying Levitra ads.

I'm not sure which is worse: Wolf Blitzer or Levitra commercials.

:hide:

[tabasco]

2. I think Leslie Blitzer deserves an Academy Award

for his breathless reportage of the Swift Boat smears. He really worked to make it sound like news.

[Skidmore]

4. LOL... Beat me to it.

One of these days he is going to hyperventilate and pass out or have a stroke trying to deliver deliver his "exclusives" to the nation.