BBC
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 9 months, 2013–2025
2:03 · 2.5M views · Feb 5, 2010
A short satirical segment from Charlie Brooker's Newswipe that lampoons the formulaic conventions of television news reporting, from stock shots to filler street interviews and news-speak.
HN invokes it as the best spoof of how news is formulaically produced, often when discussing media quality or automated news.
9 comments from Hacker News
Charlie Brooker is fantastic: On how news is reported this video On how mass shooting is reported and about the saturation [LINK]
The Al Jazeera that we get in the UK is apparently run by a lot of ex-BBC people, and uses a lot of the BBC house style, which means and news report will instantly look respectable to a big British market segment. Not that I've ever met anyone in the UK who's ever watched it, of course. This is the best run-down of the BBC house style I've seen: this video
Most mainstream documentaries are full of fluff. You can generally read the transcript of a half hour programme in a couple of minutes. I thought Charlie Brooker might have a useful segment on it, but all I could find were the not-quite-on-point, but nevertheless excellent two related segments below: [LINK] this video
Charlie Brooker did an excellent spoof video of the way news is reported. The video is 8 years old (made in 2010) but it still rings true today: How to report the news: this video Every TV news report on the economy in one: [LINK]
I'm from the UK and I'd go so far as to say the majority of the British press are toxic. They have an incredibly inflated view of themselves and they couldn't care less about what's in the public interest (just look at how they've responded to the recommendations of the Leveson Inquiry which investigated the repulsive ethics and culture of the British press). The UK press empahtically follow their own self-interests and agendas (and that includes broadsheets like The Guardian). There will always be individual reporters who rise above the abysmally low standard of reporting - but they are a tiny minority. TV news is better in my opinion - they at least aspire to some measure of impartiality. These clips from Charlie Brooker (British TV presenter) give a good sense of the formulaic way news is reported (strong language in the videos). this video [LINK]