"Pat Philbin, the man who staged a fake FEMA news conference on the
California wildfires last week, has lost his promotion because of the event,
which begs the question: What does it actually take to get fired from FEMA?"
That was the lead story on the latest installment of "Weekend Update," the
faux news broadcast on "Saturday Night Live."
Something bothered me about this, and not just Amy Poehler's misuse of the
phrase "begs the question." Nor was it the idea that FEMA's staged news
conference was scandalous simply because reporters, listening by phone,
weren't able to ask questions while FEMA bureaucrats lobbed "fake"
questions. There's no such thing as fake questions, after all, only fake
answers. Was FEMA's fabrication any more fraudulent than, say, press
releases written like real news stories? Video "newsitorials" edited for
easy rebroadcast by local news stations?
Yes, FEMA's fakery was foolish. But - and here's what really bugs me - what
isn't in the TV news business these days?
Consider the irony: Poehler was co-anchoring a fake news broadcast
denouncing a fake news conference. All the while, the guest host of
"Saturday Night Live" was NBC's real news anchor, Brian Williams.
Or take Stephen Colbert, host of a fake cable news show, "The Colbert
Report," itself a spinoff from the fake newscast "The Daily Show With Jon
Stewart." Colbert was recently a guest on "Meet the Press" - the Thunderdome
of real news - as he was trying to mount a bogus campaign for president
(abandoned Monday). Colbert stayed in character. So did Tim Russert,
grilling Colbert as if he were a real candidate, of sorts.
The exchange vexed Ana Marie Cox, Washington editor of Time.com, who rightly
ridiculed the stunt as "painfully so-ironic-it-was-unironic." Cox has a good
ear for such things: Her own meteoric rise started with her tenure as the
founding Wonkette blogger, where she mocked newsmakers the way robots mocked
bad movies on "Mystery Science Theater 3000." Cox sized up the
Colbert-Russert show as cringe-worthy - bad journalism because it was bad
entertainment.
Williams fared better at "Saturday Night Live," successfully showing off his
lighter side. But, as with Russert's stunt, it was another naked attempt by
NBC to lure younger viewers back to real news. Indeed, while the network
news broadcasts are sustained by the consumers of denture cream, adult
diapers and pharmacological marital aides, it's "The Daily Show" and "The
Colbert Report" that have a grip on the hip, iPhone crowd. And plenty of
those younger viewers seem to believe that they can deduce what's going on
in the real world from jokes on a fake newscast. It's no longer funny
because it's true. It's true because it's funny.
Now that's begging the question.
The problem of parsing fact from fiction, news from entertainment, has been
inherent to broadcast journalism from the beginning. Radio newsman Walter
Winchell got his start in vaudeville. But in the modern era, I blame "Murphy
Brown," the show about a fictional TV newswoman who talked about real
newsmakers as if they were characters on her sitcom. When Brown had a baby
out of wedlock, Vice President Dan Quayle criticized the writers of the
show. Liberals then reacted as though Quayle had insulted a real person -
and so did the fictional Brown, whining about how she'd been personally
attacked. Ever since, journalists and politicians have been playing
themselves in movies and TV series, perhaps trying to disprove the cliche
that Washington is Hollywood for ugly people.
TV news is, and always has been, the shallowest branch of journalism. This
is why TV journalism in particular operates like a trade guild - not because
it's so hard to do but because it's so easy. (The Brits call their anchors
"news readers" for a reason.) For instance, in 2000, Sam Donaldson led a
successful internal revolt over a plan to have Leonardo DiCaprio interview
President Clinton for ABC News. The essence of the complaint was that
viewers wouldn't be able to tell the difference between DiCaprio and a
"real" TV reporter. Let's face it, that's true. Even DiCaprio can read
questions off an index card or teleprompter.
"Yes, it's a changed business," Donaldson said at the time, "and we ought to
recognize that. But we also all have to recognize that we have to do things
according to the standards that will help us retain our credibility."
I think Donaldson was right, but I also don't mind that TV news is trying to
be relevant to viewers not on the AARP's mailing list. What I do find dismaying is that "relevance" is literally
coming at the expense of reality.