Since retiring from the news business, I’ve tried to make scholarly assessments of the strengths and weaknesses of working journalists, particularly air talent. Why just the other day I sent an e-mail to several friends, asking whether a certain TV reporter had “the biggest ears of any network correspondent.”
This was after a broadcast where I couldn’t stop looking at the reporter’s ears. I couldn’t recall seeing them before. They’re huge. My obsession with their immensity reflects my long-standing distaste for TV live shots that are frequently more distracting than informative. Putting a TV reporter on the air live from the scene of a spectacular event – a major earthquake, a terrorist attack, significant flooding – makes sense and can add to the viewer’s understanding of what happened and its magnitude. But I think it is done way too often on routine stories. In recent weeks, The CBS Evening News has constantly put political reporters on the air live from the site of campaign rallies, apparently never having heard what playwright Thornton Wilder said: “The less seen, the more heard. The eye is the enemy of the ear in real drama. All the masters knew this.”
These live shots have usually shown a podium in the background where someone was speaking, sometimes one of the Republican presidential candidates. It was too much for this viewer to handle and my eyes strayed to what was happening behind the correspondent and most of what he or she said went right by me. Compounding the problem was the reporter talking in a low voice as though he were covering a golf tournament, ten feet away from Phil Mickelson as he was about to try a make or break putt. The reporter caught in such a situation also seemed to be speaking softly so as not to upset the people who had come to hear the politician speak, not to hear a reporter say “Scott,” as in Pelley, two or three times during the live shot. The commercial networks insistence on having reporters frequently mention the anchor’s first name is silly. We know the name of the anchor we’re watching. It doesn’t have to be repeated over and over. (Let me say I do think The CBS Evening News with its new anchor and new executive producer is much better than the Katie Couric version.)
The next time you watch television news with someone else listen to what the two of you say during the broadcast.
Viewer 1: “Why’s he standing in the rain? It’s pouring. Look at his hair.”
Viewer 2: “Check out that microphone. Why’s it so blue? Reminds me of cotton candy.”
Viewer 1: “God, the guy’s bald. Bald! I’ve been watching him for years and never knew that. I’ve got more hair on my knuckles that he has on his head.”
Viewer 2: “What the hell is that on his face? There. That weird black goo on his left cheek? You don’t see it?”
Viewer 1: “What was that piece about? What did he say? Do you know? I didn’t follow it.”
Viewer 2: “Beats me. What WAS that on his cheek.?’
Many old friends ignore most of my nitpicking e-mails. Other times I get a welcome comment. One response to my most recent e-mail was “those aren’t ears, they’re satellite dishes.” See, I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t paying attention to what the reporter was reporting.
In these days of political correctness, are news executives afraid of being sued if they deliberately keep big-eared people off television? If these folks are talented journalists, have them do TV pieces without on camera standups in them. Or let them do radio where their ears won’t matter. Who hasn’t liked someone he heard on the radio and then seen a picture of him and thought, “Oh, my God! He is so fat and so old.” Isn’t that part of the magic of radio? You have to create your own pictures, and you can go through life not knowing that your hero is in fact a donut with a tie.
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(The quote from Thornton Wilder is from “City Room” by Arthur Gelb, the former managing editor of The New York Times.)
(Posted February 2, 2012)