YOUR TRAGEDY HAS BEEN SCRIPTED

So today, as I'm puttering in my office, I'm flipping through the channels on my TV as I'm looking for something inane to watch, to have on as sort of background noise

Well, inane I found

It was one of those satirical mock news shows, like Stephen Colbert or John Stewart. Like those shows, they were using an actual well known news story as the jumping off point to poke fun at modern journalism

The stor was the missing Malaysian airplane. The one about which we know little: Someone on board deliberately (they think) shut off communications and diverted the plane from its original course. Beyond that there a few salient facts

But here on this satire show the hosts were mulling over theory after theory, flinging all kinds of speculative crap against the walls and not caring if any of it stuck. The "experts" they assemble are just journalists with no background or credentials and generally just yelling and wildly gesticulating over one another not to make a point, but to just gain face time on TV.

Chuckle chuckle

The "host" of the show is an actress and she does a great job of playing the role of what a female news anchor should not be; emotional, weepy, responding to tape of a mother crying and wailing by pressing her hand to her chest and staring out at the audience to say "It just breaks my heart" As if any journalist, of any gender, would make such a proclamation

Guffaw guffaw

The scene with the mother is real; she is at a press conference, surrounded by what appears to be hundreds of camermen as she is encouraged to ramp up her grief; this is TV mother, your words are not enough, could you possibly throw your hands up and toss your head back and maybe scream for us? The woman does indeed do this and the camearmen crush around her, enveloping her, literally knocking her off balance. As the poor woman is pushed to the floor the cameras follow her down so that she completely disappears

Back to the set of the fake news show the anchorwoman does not take this opportunity to critisize the media for not only ramping up the emotion but disregarding the mother's emotional and physical safety. Instead, sticking to her script, the actress presses both hands to her face, readies herself for her close up by biting her cheeks to get the tears welling and proclaims "Oh the tragedy of it all, that woman's scream will haunt our viewers for a generation to come"

Holy shit, some venomous, acid blooded satirical master penned that scream. Chortle chortle

I admired this show. By taking everything to a ridiculous level, by presenting journalists as profit whores who's only interest is to keep eyeballs on the screen with wild speculation, by outright lies and by doing what a journalist should never do .. by telling us how to feel about a story instead of us giving us data so that we can sort our our own response, and by encouraging real journalists (ie the cameramen and reporters at the conference) to influence the course of the story .. this brilliant satire shows us how a news program can go terribly terribly wrong

Golf claps all round

And the title of this clearly fake, satirical, made up TV news program? CNN

TRAGIC

Something tragic happened at a school in Connecticut.

Something this is very difficult for me to process. To be honest, that act is something I'm not really prepared to think about at this time. I don't want to dismiss it or ignore it but at this point it's a terrible event about which we know little when you come down to it. This will take time

Another tragedy occurred. On the day of the shooting I turned on my TV, it was set to CNN and there were children, children who had been in the school while their friends and classmates and teachers were being slaughtered, some of them had just exited the school, and they were being interviewed

There was a reporter, an adult, with a mic in the face of these very young kids who had just had something horrible happen to them and they were being asked questions: Who was he, did you see him, do you know which children have been killed ...

What the fuck.

North American media is ruled by ratings and profit. Our lives our ruled by immedicacy; Facebook, emails, Yahoo, all flying at the speed of light. All available right there, right that second, when we want it. Media sees that as competition. They want to put out the story right there, right that second, when they think we want it.

Even if the story is nascent, even if we really don't know what the story is; get it out get it out there fill up the space that may be filled by another source

So let's get a kid who may not be able to properly process what has happened for a long time, and let's put the event in crystal clear focus for them, so that a percieved void in a viewer's life may be filled. "Did you see the gun, did you see a body, do you know you were almost killed"

And no adult seemed to think about it, no one said "Hey, leave the kid alone, this just happened" I saw an adult hand on a child's shoulder as the little girl was asked to elaborate on this horrible event

Tragic