10.11.2024

If it''s live you can at least believe it's live

And about CBS's interview of VP Harris…

Trump’s complaints about ’60 Minutes’ put a spotlight on editing at the nation’s top newsmagazine

CBS said the need to make the “60 Minutes” interview segment concise prompted the editing. The full interview with Harris took 45 minutes, and it was fit into a 20-minute slot on the broadcast.

OK so far, if "concise" means "short." But neither of Harris's two answers presented by CBS was especially concise if concise means, well, concise, in my redoubtable opinion. They kinda blew this one.

But.

We all know that newspaper stories are edited, right? Edited for clarity, edited for available space, blah blah. TV news stores are edited too, for much the same reasons. I've participated in doing that myself from both sides of the camera.

There's something about TV and actually seeing people talking that makes a story seem more real than the same story in print. But it's not. Unless it's live. And live means televised directly as it happens. (And there's still some wizardry to contend with, but it's managable.)

If it's live, it's real. If it's not, it's Memorex.*

*Apologies to the kiddies.

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