In the two tragedies this week in Boston and West, Texas, there's been some concern about the TV coverage. And I'd like to add my observation: there is such thing as talking to too many witnesses.
I understand the desire to talk to people who have personal experience with the event itself: you want to make the story more than just dry facts; make it personal. But the fact is that in a major tragedy it doesn't take much to evoke strong personal feelings. It's pretty obvious that a large explosion is a bad thing, and it doesn't take many personal accounts to bring out the horror of the event.
But TV networks seem to think that the more people they talk to on air, the more real it will seem to the viewer. Really, the opposite is true. Hearing one person after another recount the same basic story of shock, confusion and gore just anesthetizes us to the reality of it.
In the case of the explosion in Texas, there's the added dimension that most of the news interviews were with representatives of the local authorities. Here you have a small community taxed to the limit by a huge explosion, and the people leading the first responders have to answer the same questions over and over to reporters all over the world. It's not like they even have anything to say beyond the obvious, "We don't know what happened yet, but we're doing all we can." In the future, let's have the anchor in the studio tell us they have no information and let the people on the ground do their job?
No comments:
Post a Comment