Tuesday, February 2, 2010

CNN, Why are you yelling at me?

I made the mistake of turning on CNN today – well I didn’t consciously turn it on, it was more of an accident.

After roughly 15 seconds of the verbal barrage I felt pretty bad about myself, my gender, my country, Haiti, missing children and the entire world. I felt bad about everything. Of course I had the misfortune of tuning in right at the point where Nancy Grace was on.

I don’t get how that woman is on TV. I’m not so shallow (anymore) to believe every woman on TV should be gorgeous (though hey, it would be nice) but this woman looks like she posed as a model for the ugly stick. Ironically its not her face, or not just her face; in pictures  on the CNN web site she almost looks like your normal run of the mill type of middle age woman, just not the sort you’d want to get on the wrong side of in a PTA meeting mind you..

But the moment that woman opens her mouth its like a great roaring gush of negativity – the world is a horrible place when that woman speaks.

It’s not just her – its all of them. In the brief period between when I realized I was being sucked into an emotional black hole and the time I could find the remote control to turn the TV off Ms Grace was interviewing 2 reporters who were reporting on some story. Both reporters started off their comments with “Now of course, we don’t know what happened…'”

I say to you, reporter, if you don’t know what happened – why are you on my TV telling me this? I already don’t know what happened, your job is to rectify that situation.

CNN – and I’m assuming Fox news is probably the same way but happily I don’t think I’ve ever seen it – seems to believe that by yelling the story at you, its that much more important. Volume equals importance.  Seriously, hasn’t anyone told Nancy Grace that she doesn’t have to yell at us? She’s on TV, we can’t interrupt her. And its funny because it doesn’t matter what volume level you have the TV at – by that point I had turned it down substantially and it was like she was speaking with her Capslock on.

I get that CNN has to compete for market share in the world of TV and that the only way to make sure that people stay constantly tuned in is to have story after story that is not in fact a story after story; and I know that 24 hours is a lot of time for a news station to be on the air so 23 hours of that broadcast is either filler or repeat story … I just wish they wouldn’t yell.

Technorati Tags: ,,,

No comments: