TeeVee for Beginners, Friday Period Two

[chosehumanity]

"Humanity has always tried to keep in contact," Mitchell started. He wasn't going to say anything about last week, mostly because he was very happy to be far away from last week. "At least within the tribe. Sharing stories isn't really about fiction, it's about sharing a world, about finding a connection. And there's very little that connects us more than the events that go on all around us."

He was back in the classroom with the couches, but he'd kept the bigger flatscreen TV for this one. "Newspapers started around the 19th century," he said, "In the early 20th century, radio absorbed that task. And as with most things that happen on the radio, eventually, it winds up on TV, although it loaned elements of film newsreels as well. While all the other formats were still barely a blink in a broadcaster's eye, TV news rose up in the late 1940s and became an essential part of the media as we know it. You saw CNN last week: that's the result of sixty years of broadcast news."

"But let's go back in time a bit," he said, gesturing at the TV. "1953. Queen Elizabeth the Second was coronated. It was broadcast by the BBC and meant a breakthrough for news on television: over twenty million people tuned in to watch her Majesty receive her crown. There had never been that many viewers of one program in the UK before. A record amount of TV sets was sold that month, and now the British, too, longed for a regular newscast. It wouldn't be until 1954 until the British had news, but by then the BBC had already acquired a reputation that would last them for decades."

"It took them a time to tussle about the format. You can essentially break the history of TV news down to a couple of blocks of inventions and changes. It's sufficient to say that there was a lot of experimenting in the early days; today, everything is much more streamlined. News is widespread now - the dangers lie in who's controlling it, in the spin of it. What they don't say can mean more than what they do, the items they decide to run and those they don't."

He smiled at the class. "I want you all to present something newsworthy out of your life," he said, "Like a news broadcast. And then I want the rest of you lot to discuss what their spin is."

[[ and ocd is up! ETA: so I fubar'ed on the first link in the Teevee section; it can actually be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGLN1kREJ2Q Ahem. ]]

Comments

Watch the Teevee

[chosehumanity]

Today, it's a double bill: the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, and a 1997 BBC news item on the death of Lady Diana.

Re: Watch the Teevee

[fratboybitch.livejournal.com]

This wasn't the most exciting thing Alex had ever watched but he managed to stay awake and look mildly interested.

Re: Watch the Teevee

[puppy_fair]

Zack really didn't know who any of those people were, but he couldn't help but find himself entranced in the news item about that princess who had been in the car crash. It wasn't so much about the woman herself, really.

There was just something about the way the one reporter had said that he was disheartened by the lack of any official statement, and then he'd turned out to be right.

Kunsel, Zack's friend at home, would have probably been the first to point that very same thing out to him. He was good at reading between the lines.

Re: Watch the Teevee

[future_sandworm]

The coronation was clearly a political instrument, and broadcasting it in this was must have had quite an impact. The ceremony in itself didn't impress Leto, but then that must reflect the time. And he could see how the death of the princess must have had a similar impact in creating unity around grief.

He wondered if either of these events had been used to cover up other things.

Re: Watch the Teevee

[bitten_notshy]

Jack leaned forward in interest as he watched. He was far from a fan of the monarchy, but it was still odd to see the woman (or her equivalent in this universe) who would be queen when he was a very old man, if the timelines stayed parallel. The princess' death, too, was sad in an abstract way to him; he mostly wondered if cars crashed too terribly often.

Re: Watch the Teevee

[blondecanary.livejournal.com]

Dinah remembered the death of Princess Diana from when she'd been five. Her mother hadn't let her see the news item, but it was all anyone talked about for weeks, and it had stuck in her head both because of the similarity to her own name, because princesses weren't supposed to die, and because she had a little boy who hadn't been too much older than Dinah. Possibly it was the first news item to really stick with her, and make an impact.

She wasn't any fonder of the stalkerazzi now, than she'd been when she'd been old enough to understand how they contributed to her death.

Re: Watch the Teevee

[thatsamilkshake]

The coronation was pretty, but the second clip depressed Francine as much now as it had when there'd been nothing else on her family's tv for a week. Only old people were supposed to die, and she frankly wasn't all that approving of that either, as a kid or now.

So she found herself burying her nose in her notebook and trying to tune the tv out, after the coronation was over.