Charlie Brooker
The Hannibal Blog thought that Michael Kinsley did a pretty good job critiquing bad writing in the news media. Now Charlie Brooker, a Guardian columnist and TV satirist, does an even better job critiquing television news.
It helps to be British, of course.
Watch:
Hannibal and Me: life lessons from history 
I have watched hours and hours of the pap that Charlie Brooker lampoons so exquisitely. The scope for biassed reporting in all this mindless goo is immense.
And the man/woman hours devoted to producing it! There is a big row going on now about cost and wastage at an unaccountable BBC, which all we TV-watching Brits have to pay for through the “Licence Fee”.
Ah, the licence fee. I do recall being strong-armed into paying it when I lived in the UK.
Brooker cracked me up, not only because I’ve endured watching TV news in the past (I no longer own a TV set now, but still occasionally catch up in hotels), but also because I was once complicit in this dross. I did two internships for CNN as a young’un, and we did exactly this sort of thing — collecting mindless and stupid “MOS” (man-on-street) soundbite for hours at a time.
This week’s Economist indicates that the license fee is US$214 per household.
He’s absolutely right. Isn’t it about time TV news updated their ‘brand?’
Either that, or TV news as we know it simply expires.
Now there’s a thought! I don’t see why anyone wants to be spoon-fed news that the mode of production thinks they should hear at the times that the network chooses to make it available when with minimal effort people can get the news they want, when they want it and quickly avail themselves of alternative viewpoints.
Bill Clinton and others have said that the internet will bring freedom and democracy to tyrannical states. Maybe it can have the same result in the western democracies!
I was at first surprised, nay shocked, that you went to the website of that left-wing socialist rag, the Guardian. Then I realised that, it being so long since you lived in Britain, you had probably forgotten about the leftist leanings of the Guardian, so you went to its site innocently.
No doubt had you not forgotten, you would, when wanting to go to a British news site other than the Economist, have gone to the site of the august London Times, owned by that tireless advocate of fair and balanced news, Rupert Murdoch.
😉