TV news is a form of extreme flattery: a person incessantly addressing you about what’s important via news stories that have required countless hours to compile. It’s a god-like view.
But let's be clear – we are not gods.
What underlies TV news is passivity in which the representation of reality comes down to us in highly mediated form. It’s a slick, constant flow delivered with the precision of a
Theo Jansen sculpture.
That’s what’s great about seeing the reporters stuff up. There’s a candidness to it, which offers the relief of the real (or somewhat real) penetrating the mediation. The massaging influence of the medium has been corroded when the reporter flounders. It’s a refreshing draft blowing through our
Soma coma. It’s a glitch in the Matrix. It’s a fart in the psychic sauna. For a brief moment, we are all set adrift and exist in an authority-less fugue.
By now, most people, even those with 28k dial-up Internet connection, are familiar with the
off-camera antics of ex-Today Tonight host/ freaky femme-bot Naomi Robson. Inspired by Robson’s deathly cackle, here are ten more examples of the wheels falling off the TV-news bandwagon.
Our biggest disappointment is that no one has put a video on YouTube of the night Mike Willesee appeared drunk on
A Current Affair.
10.
Live news in the 24-hour environment increases the possibilities of tripping up on those small details.
9.
Another case in point. But really, easy mistake to make right?
8.
TV news – it’s a minefield of sensitivities. Conservative commentator, and general human roach, Pat Robertson’s Gaydar goes off, he inadvertently shares this to the viewing public and then gets confused when he’s inundated with hostile callers.
7.
I, for one, welcome our new seagull overlords.
6.
With mugshots like that, is it a crime to LOL?
5.
Cameraman has had enough. Doug!
4.
This reporter’s husband is an asshole apparently.
Or is he?
3.
Why let a news story get in the way of an opportunity to reprimand your colleagues?
2.
Do they have awards for keeping it together while your producer has a meltdown and insults 50% of population? If you stuck this man in a room with Christian Bale what would happen? What would happen if you filled it with snakes, rolled it down a hill and opened it on child’s birthday party?
I’ve put this question on Yahoo Answers to try and find out.
1.
There is nothing ‘fair and balanced’ about being Rick-rolled. Even a consummate professional (prick) like Bill O’Reilly reaches the limits of his patience with this insidious Internet meme.