What TV Does and Doesn't Do Well

I had initiated this series of posts, yesterday, talking about the superb television coverage of the New Orleans crisis. Nothing conveys the emotional impact of events as well as does the TV screen and it was impossible not to respond on a primal level to the voices and images of distraught victims caught up in a catastrophe far beyond their comprehension. Like millions of viewers across the country I, too, felt the anger, the frustration, the pain of those people whose images were carried into my living room.

But there is another level on which TV coverage is woefully inadequate – that is trying to explain why things are happening. They can show you what is happening, but not why. The best they can do in that regard is to put “commentators” [some expert, others just mouthpieces] on the air to spout, in three minutes, their pet theory or charge. Usually these sound-bite moments obscure rather than clarify the issues involved – they seldom provide useful information. For understanding you have to go elsewhere – to the print media, or increasingly to the blogosphere.

My initial responses – anger, frustration, a desire to lash out at those who failed these poor people – were TV fed. Reconsideration, talking and corresponding with knowledgeable people, and most of all surfing through the blogosphere and reading a wide variety of opinions, brings deeper perspective, a wider range of information, and ultimately a modicum of understanding that one can never get from the TV coverage.

Anyway, my reactions and understandings are beginning to change as I shift away from the immediacy and drama of TV coverage and begin to avail myself of the resources of the print media and the blogosphere. Time for reconsideration also changes things. Readers will note these changes and should take them for what they are -- an honest and non-partisan attempt to make sense of a complex and chaotic series of developments.