Monday, June 28, 2010

Protest coverage: "all live, all the time, all shallow"

From The Globe and Mail TV critic John Doyle's column:

"Thus, so much of our TV news seemed to be salivating at the prospect of protests. Dramatic footage! Riot police! Gangs of roving youths. Running battles on the street! And it became stupendously obvious in the lead-up to Friday and Saturday that local TV news was worshipping at the altar of local police authorities. Local TV news tends to gravitate toward authority on a daily basis anyway, but in Toronto in the last week the sense of paranoia fostered by the police was absorbed and spread to a ridiculous extent.

"As a result, obvious questions were never asked. No context for the rioting and destruction that was to come on Saturday in Toronto was ever provided. This was an occasion in which all the shallowness and predictability of TV news was glaringly illuminated."

Click on the title to read the full column.

No comments:

Blog Archive