Well, The Onion has done it again. I'll admit, I'm completely gullible and have fallen for an Onion article on a few occasions. When I started watching the Haiti report, I’m not ashamed to admit, I thought it was real. Ok, it became obvious it was a spoof pretty quickly, but to format of the broadcast was so annoyingly similar an actual news story, who could blame me for falling for the trick?
The Onion mocked real television news by drawing on their flighty broadcasting style and lack of ever reporting real news, at times. Because it was “live”, the report jumped back and forth until finally just settling on “Something Happening in Haiti”. Am I the only one who wouldn’t be completely surprised to see a similar broadcast on CNN or MSNBC? I’ve read or seen several news stories that seemed to be reporting just to report; no conclusion was ever really reached on why it matters (as all good news stories should).
The SNL clip was much more obvious, but still effective, in parodying a news broadcast. The scroll at the bottom of the news often draws my attention away from the story they are reporting on- and often for some trivial detail. Story that somewhat relates: When I was watching something on E! the other day (ok, it’s not real news, or news at all, but go with me here) they had “Breaking News” about Brittany Spears loosing custody of her children. It was like another war had broken out, they covered it so seriously. Then, for the next several hours after the news broke, the bottom scroll bar told the viewer over and over and over again that she had lost custody. Same in the SNL skit- the viewer is given other information via the scroll bar, whether it’s relevant or not. I do with CNN was that witty in their bottom scroll bars though- I’d watch it more.
Posted by VanessaKolberg at October 12, 2007 11:51 AM | TrackBackI agree, I thought CNN broadcast was real at first, until I noticed the owrds running at the bottom of the screen. I'd have to say the spoofs were much like real news boradcasts.
Posted by: Carrie at October 12, 2007 12:25 PMI completely agree with you! When I first started watching The Haiti spoof, I thought that it was a reall broadcast. I don't have a habit of watching the news but what I'd seen seems pretty close to what was going in Haiti, at least at first. I can also say that I'm easily distracted by the words running along the bottom of the screen beneath broadcasts. It's not unusual for me ot start watching the running words and forget to listen to the reports!
Posted by: Maddie Gillespie at October 15, 2007 2:13 PM