Volume 12, Number 9
15 November 2005





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This Week



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"LIFE ETC."

Let's look at four catastrophic events: the riots in France, Belgium and Germany, the recent earthquake in Pakistan, Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf Wars. We've all watched the news about them and many of us were saddened by the scenes. To repeat the sentence: We've all WATCHED the news about them. Horrific scenes repeating the "best" parts over and
over, sad music in the background, a sad expression on the anchorman's face

- these features were common to all of them.


Paris: A scene showing a van on fire at night, and (probably) a shopping center surrounded by huge flames climbing up to the sky…

Pakistan: Views of destroyed buildings supported by Lux Aeterna (the soundtrack of "A Requiem for a Dream") or some unknown aria…

New Orleans: Aerial shots from a helicopter, showing people trying to survive on the roofs of flooded buildings, African-Americans shouting at bureaucrats and civil servants…

Kuwait: A helpless bird trying to fly despite its wings being caught in the oil slick covering the waters of the Persian Gulf… Iraqis demolishing a monument of Saddam Hussein… Rockets flying in the dark sky and buildings exploding in the heart of Baghdad…

All of these shocked the many people who watched them on TV. Everything seems all right until someone whispers a "spoiler" in your ear: the bird struggling in the slick had never seen the Persian Gulf. It had never touched its waters. That scene, so closely identified with the first Gulf War, was actually shot in France, after a cargo ship crash. Thus, the most famous scene of the first Gulf War is unreal, related to the war in the same way Jamie Foxx is related to Ray Charles, Mel Gibson to William Wallace, or Russell Crowe to Jim Braddock.

Today, a news broadcast is hardly different from a music video or a movie. It's primary purpose is not to bring you the truth (of course, it can also be questioned if this is even possible or not), but to attract your attention through dramatization and sensationalism. Even the arrangement of the news stories can influence the feeling they give to the viewer.

The technique of scattering older shots in a news story is not used only by large media companies. I did it myself while working as a montage trainee at a local TV station. Believe me, no one can detect the difference. The only purpose of this technique is to change an ordinary event into something people will talk about.

If the news, our primary source for knowledge about current events, is a professional creation--a combination of theatrical expressions on an anchorman's face, suitable music and selected scenes--what makes them more real than a movie "based on a true story"? The title? Moreover, what makes you believe the things I said about that famous bird scene?

 

Ýsmail O. Postalcýoðlu (POLS/III)
ismail_orhan@yahoo.com

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