Natural Traveler

September 17, 2001 12:50 PM

Natural Traveler quotes David Hubler of Potomac Tech Journal talking about the media. Sorry I couldn't find the article in the original magazine. He says he's peturbed media labeling the WTC event. On Tuesday, from a friend's lower east side apartment, admittedly in shock, I thought the media took the title America Attacked with naked clarity. The media, in its job of broadcasting uses devices as titles and eye witnesses and all obvious whatnot and often does so with bad taste. Not to over praise the media, but that morning I couldn't have thought of a better title. In another difference of opinion, David Huber thought the sunshine was a symbol of New York going on. Triumphant, if you will. And it was some of the most beautiful weather we ever get here. But I thought it was vulgur. The scenery for the wrong show. Perhaps again something naked, exposed. I'm finding that my response to this event is symbolism exploding everywhere.
posted by Laurable (7 comments total)

I have developed new loathing for the television media's penchant for creating theme songs and title graphics for major news events. The public doesn't need to hear the melancholy horns and West Wing-style visuals to know what the story is. Some have even incorporated a tower's collapse into the title -- I'm beginning to twitch when I see it, like I'm being subjected to the aversion therapy in A Clockwork Orange.
posted by rcade at 1:10 PM on September 17, 2001

Again, I hate to be the media's advocate, but while it was happening, they had to do something. Are you suggesting a minimalist approach? I know that would be more my personal style. But when it was happening and I still couldn't believe it, any media alter-ego coming out would have freaked me out more. It wasn't the last time I found myself coddled by routine. The choas in New York is making for some remarkable media circumstances.
posted by Laurable at 1:18 PM on September 17, 2001

...but we need "shorthand" to reference significant events. It certainly wouldn't do to refer to "the day that Japanese airplanes staged a sneak attack on American naval forces in Hawaii, resulting in much death & destruction and launching the US into war." Simply saying "Pearl Harbor" immediately evokes the associations.

I don't know how we will eventually refer to the events of 9/11, but I'm sure that a similar "shorthand" will ultimately evolve.
posted by davidmsc at 2:33 PM on September 17, 2001

I don't know that we need to go so far as a minimalist approach, although that did prove to work just fine in the past, when we didn't have the technology to throw such stuff together so fast. (Cf. the JFK assassination coverage.) But some of this stuff is just too much. NBC in particular had a nasty little background graphic, that replayed a stylized version the top of the tower with the antenna on it collapsing, over and over and over ad infinitum whenever they did splitscreen interviews.

I know TV news graphics artists get a boner whenever they get opportunities like this, but they need to have someone around to look over what they come up with, rather than just racing it on the air in an attempt to display video art supremacy over the other networks.
posted by aaron at 2:55 PM on September 17, 2001

Such a newsworthy event, to a broadcaster, is a valuable asset. As such, it must be protected by differentiating it from similar products being hawked by competitors. Coming up with a name for the coverage -- "Attack On America" for instance -- is one way of branding it, as is a proprietary logo whose real purpose is not to identify the story but to identify the broadcaster.

Disasters are a natural resource. Corporations process them and sell them back to us at a profit. If we're unwilling to swallow that, maybe we should look more critically at our pervasive culture of selling.
posted by maniabug at 3:37 PM on September 17, 2001

All of the TV news channels are losing money because of the lost ad sales. They could make up some of that loss by firing the people who create these graphics and anyone who is involved in branding a tragedy like it was a new talk show. Would anyone notice their absence?
posted by rcade at 4:04 PM on September 17, 2001

So, the question is, what will the media name our new war?
posted by rushmc at 4:50 PM on September 17, 2001