CBS News in New York
I’m up early looking over Manhattan arising, the most powerful city on earth. In a center of commerce, culture, and culinary arts, you’d think the media would set the standard for excellence.
AT 5 am the CBS news has a blown-dry male host who makes pointless jokes, which are laughed at hysterically by the female host who has a completely inappropriate low-cut dress, raccoon-like eye makeup, and puffy lips. Six people must have worked on her hair. The weather guy, emanating constant patter as though he’s warming up a vaudeville audience, acts as if he’s creating the weather. His hair is a chestnut color not found in nature.
The male host reports on a woman who can’t sell her house because of a discriminary law. That’s right: discriminary. He has notes, a teleprompter, and a brain (or maybe two of the three) and he can’t tell that the correct work is discriminatory. At another point he loses his place completely and is redirected by his guffawing co-host.
Then there is this segue from the woman, I’m paraphrasing, but not by much, giggling: “What’s your favorite song to wake up to, I always wonder? Wake up songs are really important. And now, the horrible shooting and death of a New York police officer.”
Periodically, the four of them (there’s another woman whose function I’m not really clear on, maybe it’s traffic) are stood up and stand in a row, for no apparent reason, to exchange more banter. If it were a police lineup, you’d identify all four as being obnoxious.
Who writes this copy? Who demands these phony looks? Why the demand for “happy talk”? Have any of these people ever been near a journalism course? Is the lack of respect for the viewers’ intelligence that profound?
You might tell me to just sleep later, but it gets no better as the day goes on.
© Alan Weiss 2015
