Rolling Over in His Grave

Posted on Wednesday 6 April 2005

WHDH-Channel 7 has a promo touting an Edward R. Murrow around they received. So far so good. Only the promo juxtaposes footage of Murrow with WHDH reporter Ryan Owens covering the Michael Jackson case. Why mention in one breath and take away in the next?

Of course, this weird juxtaposition gets to the heart of the simulacrum that network news has become: whereas Murrow was sent to location to provide immediate coverage of events that in fact were quite distant, today’s reporter goes simply to have live feeds for which liveness adds no value to the news coverage. We get no more from David Muir standing in a Qatar desert than we would from anchors or voiceovers reading Centcom’s responses.


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