I've been pretty disgusted by the network (and newspaper) coverage of the Virginia Tech shooting. Everyone from the editors writing the tasteless, disrespectful headlines (Bloodbath at Blacksburg!) to the Art Directors and graphics guys mocking up the images with tacky "distressed" type and implied blood spatter are guilty of exploitation, fear-mongering and just poor taste. Maybe I'm getting old (a recurring fear-based theme here on the FP) but whatever happened to the Walter Cronkite "newsmen" style of reporting?
Needless to say I was delighted to read a great article in today's Times about an increased number of television viewers changing the channel over to ABC to watch Charles Gibson's slightly different approach to reporting the news. The following is excerpted.
The excruciatingly close-up and continuous coverage of the massacre helps explain why viewers are increasingly turning to Charles Gibson of ABC. When it comes to an anchor’s presence at a major breaking story, less can be more.
Network anchors often behave as if they are the nation’s grief counselors. One reason that Mr. Gibson has been gaining in the ratings could be that he acts like the nation’s newsman.
And particularly in the middle of so wrenching a tragedy, tone matters as much as content. Hurricane Katrina, even more than 9/11, emboldened television newscasters to fold themselves and their feelings into the story, and that has led to the Anderson Cooperization of the evening news.
(NBC's Brian Williams) Mr. Williams is polished and authoritative when delivering the news, but he turns longwinded and cloyingly personal in one-on-one interviews, perhaps trying to compensate for a stuffy Savile Row style or to relive his more emotive reporting during Katrina.
(CBS's Katie Couric) Ms. Couric, who anchored Monday’s broadcast in white slacks and very little makeup to signal to viewers that she was hard at work in the field (actually, it was a university alumni room), is less wordy, but in interviews she tends to lower her voice to signal compassion and to gaze at the interviewee with gauzy, sorrowful looks.
Mr. Gibson, who didn’t arrive on the scene until Tuesday, was better than either of his rivals at keeping an even keel. His interview with a group of survivors on Tuesday night was more bearable to watch, mostly because his questions, posed in a kindly but neutral manner, solicited information, not emotion.
“And how would you describe his facial manner and demeanor?” Mr. Gibson asked, referring to the gunman. “Could you feel him pushing against the door?” Perhaps relieved to be asked for facts and not just their feelings, the students delivered both.
Mr. Gibson, who comes across on-screen as rumpled, pleasant and serious, doesn’t try as hard to look softhearted. Mr. Gibson didn’t look as if he were simulating emotion or fact-finding; he looked professional and self-effacing. And in a calamity, that is actually a comfort.
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