Speeded up news
| 14:32 UK time, Wednesday, 29 August 2007
President Bush makes a bellicose , President Ahmadinejad reacts, within hours US troops arrest Iranians in Baghdad, and then they are .
It sometimes seems when covering events between Baghdad, Tehran and Washington that normal news timeframes are compressed as news and information fly between capitals with instant action and reaction.
The days of governments and leaders sitting there waiting for despatches from ambassadors and officials to filter through and then slowly and carefully preparing responses which take another age to find their way back again are over.
With 24 hour news you can cut out the middleman as stories whizz around the globe. We've done a decent job of covering this story on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ World, including the first reaction from the Americans acknowledging their error in making the arrests.
But the challenge in this speeded up news environment is to keep analysing what's happening behind these events - President Bush's words spoken, no doubt, with one eye on the upcoming , Iran watching a potential vacuum develop and paying close attention to talk of British withdrawal from southern Iraq. It all links together and sometimes the speed of it takes your breath away.
Comments
Oh, that pesky Paxman speech has got you rattled, hasn't it dears ??
As my mum would say, 'If the cap fits..'
The speed of the news is not near-lie as important as the veracity or the accuracy of the news.
The amount of disinformation in the alleged news (and on the internet) is astounding. I've got to pick and choose carefully... which is why I never (and I mean never) listen to the Amerikan corp-rat owned media anymore. Bad enough that our unstable $ociopathic leaders here in Amerika contant-lie mislead us, but the news (actually the NEWES) is in collusion with them.
Loath though I am to agree with someone who substitutes dollar signs for the letter S, I utterly concur with Guy Fox's first sentence (#2) - I'd rather have a broadcaster giving me information I can trust later than a batch of sketchy, possibly incorrect information right now. What's the point of getting the story first if you've got it wrong? And if you can't handle news that happens quickly and still get it right, why be a journalist?
I do think the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ has a better track record in this regard than other broadcasters but we all also know what happens when the temptation to be first at all costs gets the better of you...
America and Iran are on a dangerouus collision course: each determined to outmanoeuvre the other by dangerous deception, by verbal and physical means. The hatred is couched in diplomatic language but it is evident that the gloves are out. Of course United Nations resolutions will be used to force Iran to comply but the Iranian President is no respecter of sanctions. So the saga goes on. Would President Kennedy have handled this crisis in a more dignified way with America's reputation high? The mind boggles! Today's leaders have so much to learn. Unfortunately wisdom is not the strong point of many leaders. That explains why the world today is especially in a mess.
I agree with poster number 2. Accuracy and factual truth are more important than speed (or lack of it). For a news station, truth is always preferable to hysteria. What I object to most is when speed translates into the on-screen panic attack.
A shrink putting Western TV media on the couch would have a field day:
* patient exhibits control-freak tendencies - feels the need to tell people what to think, rather than treating others as adults by giving them the facts and allowing them to make up their own minds;
* patient exhibits the same dysfunctional behaviour as the extreme capitalist society within which its embedded;
* in a word, obsessive-compulsive tendencies, driven by a neurotic need to 'be better', 'look better' or 'own more' than the competition;
* compounded by hysterical-paranoid elements that translate into the '... and now the helicopter hovers overhead as a white car containing a suspected Muslim terrorist approaches the Reading off-ramp on its way to court, and yes, that's the car there, heading off to the left, containing the suspect..and .. oh, we've just heard the car, the car you see there, actually contains two suspects, yes, two suspects suspected of planning large-scale terrorist attacks', etcetera.
This is why our family have switched off the TV and turned to books, academic studies, documentaries and blogs for our news supply.
It is great the way news has improved the way and speed it's delivered to us.
I just recently got a N95 phone and can get Sky News on it for free. Whens ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ going to be available ?