Channel 9 Newscast 12/03/03

Last night I stayed in and did some chores while watching TV. At ten, I grimly tuned in the local newscast--the term "news" in this context is a little generous, if you ask me--but Donna Britt did something that really made my head turn (and my skin crawl). First, to clarify "made my head turn--" I usually try to do SOMETHING while watching the local news. Sorry to keep using the term empty calories, but, damn if it doesn't apply. Local television news is the visual equivalent of a giant Big Grab bag of Cheetos.

Britt read aloud as the teleprompter ran a story on Dru Sjodin, the missing young woman in North Dakota. This is beginning to look like a horrible tragedy. But then, without missing a beat--in fact, I thought she was still on the Sjodin subject--Donna cocked her head, put on a cheerleader's smile, and proceeded to crow about "the news just keeps getting better and better on the economy--worker productivity increased by 9.4 percent!"

I almost expected her to close with a nod to co-anchor George "what-about-motorcycle-helmet-laws" Sells' and a "doubleplusgood, George!"

Newscasting, especially on the local level, is to news what a food product is to food. Yeah, I know it's difficult to conclusively say what a newscaster is thinking when they curl their lip, raise or drop an eyebrow, or otherwise seek to add "emotion" to "content." But I found Britt's change in tone offensive--because it displayed a sense of vacuous failure to understand the relatively simple words in her script. First, I think that if you're going to do the somber tone when reporting something that is, indeed, somber, you should at least give a pause before reading something less so. Second, crowing about worker productivity like it's a football score displays an appalling lack of understanding as to what the statistic implies. Third, why the hell does this Bureau of Labor stat, among all others, become part of the local newscast? I watch WAFB's local news pretty regularly and I never see reports on joblessness, declining wages, decreased availibility of public services, escalating salaries of management, and so on. But there's always room for an awkward joke and an embarassing pause, followed by sports...and the damn productivity index--which, incidently, means that it takes fewer workers to do the same job--which means less money paid out in salaries on an aggregate basis. Who knows? Maybe Donna is all excited because she might see a jump in her mutual fund as a result.

But, damn, I forgot again--is it the EURASIANS or the EASTASIANS we're fighting these days? I'll check Channel 9 to find out tonight...