Charlie Brooker debunks and decodes the evening news
British journalist and satirist Charlie Brooker has long enjoyed fame in his own country for his wry observations and comic exposés, but the man’s take on “How to report the news” will surely catapult him to mega web fame. His funny, frank lampooning of the standard formula that news organisations use, cleverly uncovers the Pavlovian conditioning of content. The piece is rapidly grabbing global attention, with views screaming up at Youtube as it makes appearance on The Huffington Post and scores of other intelligent news sources and blogs. Brooker – who calls himself a “miserable writerist” – is a Guardian columnist, and presents Screenwipe and Newswipe for the BBC, which expose the guts and other inner workings of the television and news media.
Thanks to Rob Beschizza (BoingBoing), John Biggs, and Sally Hunt for bringing this little beauty to light. And smart commentary from Beschizza on coverage of SA during the apartheid regime: “It’s remarkable how it differs in small but insignificant ways from the U.S.’s own ‘model.’ It also gave me weird flashbacks of 1980s’ BBC news reports concerning South Africa, every single one of which concluded with stock footage of dancing Zulus, to illustrate whatever Mangosuthu Buthelezi of the Inkatha Freedom Party thought about the matter at hand.”