How to trivialize a disaster

Scott Fybush, editor of the trade publication NorthEast Radio Watch, wrote me last night after seeing some of the stunning pictures being delivered from New Orleans by cameramen for NBC and ABC:

The photojournalists on the scene are doing yeoman work under unimaginable conditions. Yet CNN, and to a lesser extent the other cable networks, insists on burying those pictures behind a screen full of redundant, useless or even insulting information. I do not need a brightly-colored banner telling me I'm watching "BREAKING NEWS" or "DEVELOPING STORY" or, as Larry King's graphics told us last night, "KILLER HURRICANE KATRINA." Nor do I need text informing me that I'm seeing "GRAPHIC IMAGES FROM NEW ORLEANS CONVENTION CENTER." What I want to see are those images, not little bits of them behind distracting graphics. I single out CNN because it's decided to leave its lower-third graphics up nonstop. It's not only an insult to me as a viewer, it's an insult to the men and women putting their lives on the line to get these pictures to us.

I won't even get into "The Situation Room," where those pictures are then rendered into a meaningless visual jumble on a wall of mismatched monitors.

Well, then, I will.

"The Situation Room" is a travesty. First, there's the sterility of it: Wolf Blitzer in his hermetic bubble, far from the crisis. Then there's the display. "Meaningless visual jumble" is exactly right, Scott. Imagine if, instead of writing a column, I copied and pasted four sets of notes and two press releases and called it a column. That's the "Situation Room" effect -- no context, no room to breathe, just a bombardment of images.  Is Condi Rice conducting a press conference worthy of a picture the same size as the other five? Then why include her?

Yes, I know they can join four pictures together to create an effect not much different from a traditional split screen. But the images I'm seeing on local New Orleans TV are so much more compelling, because they usually show just one at a time, and nobody is trying to pimp their news talent on screen.

During times like these, news directors should have a rule: One picture, one graphic at a time. Anything more creates circuit overload and emotional distance and reduces compassion.

***

By contrast, "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" (8 ET, MSNBC) has shown it understands the power of pictures. It also understands that sometimes, more is more.  I've been struck by how long Olbermann lets the tape play out. He must have done 10 minutes on the crisis at the Convention Center, and nine of those minutes were of the NBC cameraman who took the pictures. The night before, same thing -- just letting the power of pictures and words overwhelm us. Olbermann has had a sense of urgency and outrage in his newscasts all week.  He's to be commended.

***

Miracle of miracles, CBS plans to devote a small amount of its prime time schedule to report on the crisis. Good thing "60 Minutes II" is regularly scheduled (although in three weeks it makes way for "The Ghost Whisperer").

Other highlights include a telethon at 8 ET on NBC, MSNBC and CNBC. And for something different, a Discovery Times series, "Only in America," begins tonight:

Kansas City Star | Barnhart | Rule No. 1: No cameras in the fight club

And on the jump page: Where's Charlie Rose?

A reader writes:

Where in the world is Charlie Rose, that suave man-about-town with the Carolina twang that all the Uptown gals love so much?  Is he having another round of heart surgery, or is he in Mississippi or Louisiana, working as a Red Cross volunteer under an assumed name?

Or, is he STILL in The Hamptons or Nantucket or Provence or Tuscany?

Unless it's the first one, he ought to be ashamed of the cowardly, microwaved gruel he's served up this week -yet another week of repeat programming, following last week's- when this country is facing THE worst natural disaster in its history.  Charlie, just because I liked you in the past doesn't mean you're on scholarship for life, comprende?  You seem to have forgotten.

 

I've watched Charlie Rose since he was manning that barely-watched, little-noticed CBS overnight news program in the early Eighties, when I was still in Bloomington at IU. 

I still remember like it was yesterday -in those pre-VCR days- the evening I stayed up all nite just to see his famous interview with Charlie Manson, in all his raving lunacy, proving, if nothing else, that nobody could elicit answers from a crazy person like Charlie Rose.

I've been a loyal viewer of his for all these years, thru thick and thin, whether watching the  failed experiment that was Sixty Minutes II, or the CR programs he's done with his society friends as guests, when he's given their half-baked ideas a wet-kiss -the Charlie Rose Seal of Approval, great for moving book sales among the presumptuous elite.

Since I returned to South Florida from the D.C. area almost two years ago, I've even gone so far as to complain to all three South Florida PBS stations I get on cable -two in Miami/Ft. Lauderdale & one in Palm Beach- every time they've simultaneously conspired to go into full-time fund raising mode, even refusing to repeat his show at noon on WPBT Ch. 2 in Miami.  This mean that South Florida doesn't see his show for about 3 weeks, 2-3 times a year!

I think I've shown my loyalty to him, no?

 

So is it really too much for him to cancel or postpone his vacation, and actually man his own TV show when something of the scope of Katrina happens, or, failing that, to at least have the gumption to respect his viewers enough to nab a sufficiently smart and savvy guest-host, like David Remnick?  (I'm NOT asking Charlie to go to the Delta, just to his studio in New York.)

You know, someone who'd grill New Orleans resident and Kerry-pal Douglas Brinkley about why he didn't evacuate, and ask whether the celebrated 'laissez-les-bon-temps-rouler' attitude had, over time, become a straight jacket for the city, with deadly though predictable results?

Like most of you, I already know that the city's (so-called) preparedness drill showed that a

very high percentage of the city's poor residents would refuse to leave or relocate, regardless of the threat.  Given that the city and state officials knew that in advance, knew they were dealing with people who'd be reluctant to give up the only thing they had, and with their work already cut out for them, why did they fail so miserably to take this knowledge into account?

From past shows, we all know that Charlie loves having on urban planners and sociologists and ... But to what useful end this week for the viewer, if he never shows up for his own TV show?  None.

He could've asked someone why, considering how many New Orleans cops headed for the hills and never reported for work, has the New Orleans police dept. so consistently earned a reputation for being so profoundly corrupt and inept?  Why are so many former officers on LA's Death Row?  Are those questions too hard to ask, Charlie?

Where are the young William Julius Wilson wannabes going to appear if they aren't on the Rose show during something like this?

 

A few months ago, Charlie had a guest-host for yet another one of those important-at-the-time Middle East programs, where a panel of experts knowingly discussed the story du jour -which nobody even remembers now- where as usual, in the end, everyone nodded approvingly and collectively said, "Yes, but it's the Middle East, so who can really say?"

But somehow, he couldn't do this for Katrina and the fall of an American city into Third World status before the eyes of the whole world?  Am I really supposed to believe that?

All my friends and family know how much I respect Tom Friedman, and have, over the years, not only read his columns and bought his books for myself and them, but also taped just about every TV appearance of his for the past ten years or so, and seen him in-person at SAIS or Politics & Prose in DC.

But I already taped Tom's spring appearance 2-3 times the first two times it was aired, capece?  I know it backwards and forwards.  I wanted to see something about the biggest story of the year. 

 

The most galling guest of all came earlier this week, when it was clear to everyone on the scene in New Orleans that Mayor Nagin and Gov. Blanco had no clear idea how to get ahead of the coming emotional deluge and cri de couer, when they aired a year-old interview with cartoonist (and failed satirist) Garry Trudeau, hawking/trumpeting that dreadful "Tanner" show of his, that was largely and rightfully ignored even when it was, ahem, relevant.

You mean Charlie and Company couldn't book the Times' renaissance man, Johnny Apple, to talk one more time about crazy Louisiana politics & politicians and his favorite New Orleans restaurants, before they were swimming with the fishes this week? 

Or book the Neville or Marsalis family, much less crooner Harry Connick, Jr., who, to his own great personal credit, went to the Morial Convention Center early yesterday, a place named for a past beloved New Orleans mayor?

Connick tried his best to try to calm the fears of the thousands of rightfully indignant people, completely ignored by the city they trusted, even while FEMA Director Brown and the mayor and the police and the Red Cross couldn't -or wouldn't- show up there in person and tell them what was really happening, much less, provide the resources they've needed since Monday.

Kudos to Harry Connick, Jr. for talking the talk and walking the walk!

(History, though, I think will not be kind to most of the men and women who've unnecessarily put American lives at risk, nor should it.  Ted Koppel helped carve Brown up last night on Nightline, and the blood from those wounds will now no doubt embolden others to finish the job.)

 

Despite the fact that I receive the daily Charlie Rose email, I thought that surely somebody in NY would have the common sense to realize that airing a year-old interview with Trudeau, given what was going on, was completely unsatisfactory.

But sadly, nobody did, and with that decision, it seems that the much-celebrated Charlie Rose Show has shown it's true Achilles heel: a complete inability to adapt to changing news when its namesake host is on vacation.

In case you forgot, Peter Jennings never went A.W.O.L.  Never ever.

Let the news go forth from this day forward: this week, the Charlie Rose Show officially jumped-the-shark.

 

Dave in Hallandale Beach, FL

Comments

[Mark Jeffries]

For me, the most distasteful trend in TV news is what I call "sports barization"--the assumption that everyone is watching from a sports bar where the TV's always muted and they don't turn on the captioning. The pre-Roger Ailes Fox tried it on their local stations in the late 80s and early 90s and the failed experiment that was the original fX also did it on their live shows, but it didn't take off until Fox News Channel became the ratings success it is. And to prove Fred Allen right again, everyone else has started imitating FNC on graphics and their presentation--and "everyone" includes ESPN (the use of it on their morning show "Cold Pizza" shows how pre-scripted that show is). Is the sports bar market that important to glom up the screen with garish graphics just to glom up the screen and show that you've got Chyrons and Paintboxes with infinite disk capacity?