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Diletants: The Romanian News

author: www-data

This was initially supposed to become a new rant series: "Diletants". Here, I was going to present you every once in a while people in your (and mine) everyday life, who basically just don't take their job seriously. I still am going to do this, but I just don't quite feel that this justifies a "series" of its own. Instead, it's going to be mor of a "digest", i.e. something that gets in your way during the day and needs some more... well.. digesting :) Anyway, today's feature is:

The Romanian News Media

I saw a preview of a show today: "112 Politia in actiune" (112 Police in action). It is probably meant to be some kind of crime scene investigation reality show. It was a preview of about 30 seconds. 40% of the preview were cheap images of a blood scene -- the same one over and over again. Another 20% were scenes of a guy with a knife, and the rest... was mostly tears and a police car.

Welcome to romanian TV. In fact, I think I can go safely to state this is not what romanian TV shows, this is what romanian TV is. Still, I'm not going to bash at the complete romanian TV. Why? 1st because that'd be even for me too much to bash at, and 2nd because in my experience, TV is supposed to suck, so bashing at low quality of TV in general is like having a mud-fight with a pig: you get all dirty, and the pig will eventually end up liking it. I only picked the example above because it reminded me of something I wanted to do already a long time ago, namely bash at a particular subset of romanian TV: I'll bash at romanian news media.

Believe it or not, this summer a law was passed in Romania to make radio and TV stations broadcast at least as many good news as bad news. The law, of course, was found to be unconstitutional, and was abolished. But despite (or maybe because) of its endless absurdity, this law tells quite a lot about romanian news makers. You see, the reasons why the law was passed were quite understandable.

I don't really mean that the law was a good idea!... What I mean to say is that news media in Romania sucks. (Surprise! ;)

No, really. It sucks incredibly. It more-than-sucks. News media generally quite often sucks, but news media in Romania, well... it's outright insulting to the intelligence of every form of life with an IQ slightly above that of sliced bread. In Romania, whatever is blood, pain, and tears, is news-worthy. Whatever is not, is not.

(Actually, if you stop to think about it, this principle is so simple, that if for a moment you forget being disgusted, you might even be lured into admiring its divine purity... just... ok, I'm kidding ;)

The more blood, the more news. The more suffering, the more broadcasting. Tears lubricate the gears of eight o'clock's finest... Accident in a mine? 48 hrs special! Drunken man made meat loaf of his cheating wife? Show it in every commercial brake during prime time -- and be sure, the images with the most blood will be shown most. If they show the same bloody footage twice, then only because they don't have more blood to show! Basically, if it doesn't bleed, it's not TV-worthy. But if does bleed, then it's not only on TV, then it is TV!

But why does this make Romanian news media diletants? I mean... Why couldn't we just say "blood-thirsty people, these Romanians... like... y'know... there's Transilvania and all that" and call it a day?

Because it's not that simple: Try to get some real information out of Romanian mass media. Try to get some real information on political events. Try to get an information about pending politics, like the data retention law that was voted few days ago. Or get any serious information about science, arts, economy... Try consuming the news of Romania's mass media and feel the world! Two words for you: Good. Luck.

The majority of what I have ever seen in romanian news TV was either for hypocrites, with hypocrites, or ruined by some hypocritic reporter with an intelligence only slightly higher than a pet hamster.

So the key point here is: while the sensationalist romanian news media runs for blood and blood only, they do so in blatandly ignoring their job: information. Yes, it's as simple as that, and they fail. I wouldn't expect them to do it well anyway... hell, I'd be content if they did it badly, as long as they did it at all!

We, mere mortals, have few minutes every day -- say roundabout 15 -- during a news edition at prime time to get a fast impression of the day. (Not that it would be particularly advisable to rely on the 8pm news anyway... but that's another issue, I'm not going to talk about it right now.) Well, in Romania, you get about 8 minutes of blood, 3 of sports, 2 of wheather, and another 2 of... well, whatever stupidities you can think of not related to blood. Maybe sometimes real news, but mostly not.

Ant that is what makes everybody who works in Romanian news media diletants -- all of them.

The Romanians keep complaining about politicians being corrupt and leading the country to perdition. Well guess what, dear news media: it's your fault! You're supposed to inform people. Instead, you show blood. You're supposed to watch over democracy. Instead, you show blood. You're supposed to explain the dumb masses threats that might appear from currently discussed legislation before it actually gets passed... Instead, you explain blood. You're supposed to at least make a minimal effort to help people make educated decissions on elections. Instead, blood.

Romania's reporters, know this: I don't judge you because you fail to be real hot shots at informing people -- as it happens, most of the news media does not to live up to my expectations anyway. That's ok. Instead, I judge you because you're a bunch of completely hypocritic, shameless, disgusting, soul-selling, intelligence-insulting, reasoning-repelling, idiotic morons, sabbering for quotes like a jackass for the carrot at the end of a stick! And you to that to such an extent, that you don't even bother to pretend to be making good journalism...

There.

2009-01-24 02:02 | www-datarootshell.ro | [/digest/media] | permanent link