Manufacturing Dissent

Michelle Malkin exposes the legacy media’s dirty laundry–how news can be faked–with several clips from over the years, in her latest Hot Air video. She kicks off with the video from this story about, as Michelle calls her, Australia’s answer to Katie Couric:

THE bitterness between ratings rivals Channel 7 and Channel 9 escalated after Nine’s Today program yesterday was accused of setting up a shot to make a situation in East Timor look more dangerous than it was.

Channel 7 spokesman Simon Francis later sent to the media a clip of the segment, which aired yesterday morning.
It shows host Jessica Rowe interviewing East Timor taskforce commanding officer Brigadier Michael Slater.

“I’m wondering how you feel about your safety given that you’ve got armed guards there standing behind you, armed soldiers,” Rowe says.

“Jessica, I feel quite safe, yes,” Brigadier Slater says. “But not because I’ve got these armed soldiers behind me that were put there by your stage manager here to make it look good.”

Good for him.

And speaking of Katie herself, she predicts that “the ‘pretentious era’ of the evening-news anchor is going to be a thing of the past”. As Tim Graham writes:

The dictionary says one definition of “pretentious” is “Making or marked by an extravagant outward show.” Didn’t this woman just sit at the center of a wildly extravagant three-hour tribute to her greatness on Wednesday morning? And to get up the next day, and say this? This, from the woman who tries to do the tough interviews in the ridiculously serious cat’s-eye glasses?

Even as their number of viewers both declines and ages, the pretentions of the big three TV networks and their cocooned newspeople will remain for quite some time. Personally, I’d rather fast-forward to how this story ends, and happily take as much of the 2015 model of news that’s currently available.

Update: The “ridiculously serious cat’s-eye glasses” play a big role in Ian Schwartz’s own unique video tribute to Katie’s last day on The Today Show.