Stay calm, but watch what you watch

STAFF REPORTER

Be careful what TV news you consume and “save yourself being as angry as I was today!” writes Ant Katz in a new blog published today.

In any media organisation, writes Katz, the real separator between the boys and the men comes over the last week in December and the first week of January. Each and every year, 24-hour news purveyors are challenged to their limits. Each one is affected by the same factors, albeit in different proportions:

1. Less news happenings – as every facet of life, globally, shuts down;
2. Fewer consumers – they’re on holiday, overworked or nothing is happening;
3. Lower-grade staffing – better staff get first dibs on holidays and in a time of less, many media houses insist that senior staffers take off while consumption is down;
4. Less staff available – because the taking of leave peaks at this time; and
5. This leaves one reliant on a small, under-skilled workforce should an unexpected major news event occur.

Katz explains that many news providers simply close for the period. “Time and Newsweek and many other news magazines, for example, have a bumper double-issue full of old news packaged into lists – the Top-Ten of this and the Top-20 of that – which is produced and updated through the year. This allows them to literally close down for two or three weeks,” he explains. 

“So what was it that made me so cross today?” asks Katz rhetorically. “An Aljazeera presenter whom I had never seen before, last week, after interviewing a Palestinian politician on the charging of the Israeli Jews under terrorism laws for the murder of three Palestinians in a Duma, West Bank, firebombing recently,” he writes.

SEE ALL OF ANT’S BLOGS