Tuesday, September 20, 2005
The Heroes Behind the Cameras
The DC Post's Eugene Robinson writes," You wouldn't think that the longest ovation at the Emmy Awards, an annual celebration of trendiness, would go to three such trend-averse men -- Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather, who stood awkwardly on stage, and the late Peter Jennings, whose image appeared behind them on a giant monitor. But the audience rose and clapped in one of the dreary telecast's few moments of genuine electricity, and the tribute made sense coming so soon after the latest reminder of television's power not only to describe the world but to shape it as well.
I'm a print-media guy to the bone, but I have to give props to the way my colleagues in television have covered Hurricane Katrina and the devastation of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. (Note to Tom and Dan: "Props" is a good thing.) Television rose to become a force for good instead of a force for the evil of happy-faced oversimplification, to which the medium so frequently succumbs.
The gold-star heroes were the men and women who operate the cameras, because they vaulted logistical hurdles that stymied hapless federal, state and local officials and found a way to do what only television can: Show us what's happening as it happens. Anchors and correspondents reported with urgency and emotion, abandoning the safe convention of an "on the other hand" qualifier for every declarative statement. They saw that there was no other hand in this story. MORE
I'm a print-media guy to the bone, but I have to give props to the way my colleagues in television have covered Hurricane Katrina and the devastation of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. (Note to Tom and Dan: "Props" is a good thing.) Television rose to become a force for good instead of a force for the evil of happy-faced oversimplification, to which the medium so frequently succumbs.
The gold-star heroes were the men and women who operate the cameras, because they vaulted logistical hurdles that stymied hapless federal, state and local officials and found a way to do what only television can: Show us what's happening as it happens. Anchors and correspondents reported with urgency and emotion, abandoning the safe convention of an "on the other hand" qualifier for every declarative statement. They saw that there was no other hand in this story. MORE
# posted by ATN @ 4:20 PM 
