Chris Higgins
How To Report the News
by Chris Higgins - February 1, 2010 - 3:14 PM

This is brilliant: British journalist/humorist Charlie Brooker presents a recipe for reporting the news in the two-minute clip below. From the video: “It starts here, with a lackluster establishing shot of a significant location. Next, a walky-talky preamble from the auteur, pacing steadily towards the lens, punctuating every other sentence with a hand gesture, and ignoring all the prigs milling around him like he’s gliding through the [censored] Matrix, before coming to a halt and posing a question: what comes next?”

Warning: one f-bomb is dropped, and one comically decapitating laserbeam is depicted. As much as I love 60 Minutes and shows of its kind, Brooker has a point — this is exactly how TV news is presented these days.

Watch Brooker’s Newswipe program for more.

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Comments (9)

  1. Absolutely perfect.

    Reporters all follow that exact same ‘stopped, start slow walk with gesturing, slow down, stop for end comment,’ even down to the local news hack level.

    The annunciation and vocal tone they use has always amused me as well. I never realized it until I had a friend who became an anchor/reporter at a local station. I remember thinking “WTF is she talking like that? Man she sounds annoying!”

    posted by EV on 2-1-2010 at 3:36 pm

  2. Me and my old classmate of our TV Production school shared this video with one another and agreed that we can’t believe we paid $60,000+ to learn how to do this.

    posted by goodwilldrums on 2-1-2010 at 3:37 pm

  3. glad to see a Charlie Brooker link on the floss! His weekly Guardian column is absolutely hilarious as an outpouring of anger, sarcasm and unique criticism…
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/01/ipad-therefore-iwant-why-idunno

    posted by nick on 2-1-2010 at 4:05 pm

  4. For anyone who gets a kick out of this sort of circular humor, Davinci’s Notebook has a song called “Title of the Song” that’s pretty popular with collegiate male a capella groups. (It’s catchy at that!) Here’s a link to one:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY9qHRick8A

    posted by catherine ann on 2-1-2010 at 4:55 pm

  5. I have never heard of this guy before today, but I officially love him.

    posted by Brooke on 2-1-2010 at 9:42 pm

  6. I’m not quite sure if I choked or drowned in the sarcasm, but I loved every second of it.

    posted by S. Colbert on 2-1-2010 at 9:57 pm

  7. This is soooo funny. I love the BBC. Other British channels don’t get that kind of British humor that I wanted…

    posted by Karl on 2-2-2010 at 4:57 am

  8. @catherine ann…Oh man, I had almost forgotten about “Title of the Song”! My friends and I used listen to that song constantly.

    posted by pt on 2-2-2010 at 8:32 am

  9. @catherine ann – How have I never heard of this group??? I’ve spent all afternoon now on iTunes checking them out. They’re hilarious! :-D So, apparently somebody needs to do a list article of _floss-y musical acts. TMBG, Tom Lehrer, these guys…

    posted by Roger on 2-2-2010 at 4:57 pm

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