Stations are sometimes too quick to pull the plug
Censorship, political correctness, and insistence on philosophical purity are dangerous in and of themselves and should be avoided if possible and approached with care when they raise their ugly heads.
Correctness and purity are especially suspicious when they are determined by a self-appointed arbitrator that claims to speak for legions that, more often than not, are fewer in number than stated and far fewer than those who won’t challenge the censoring entity for fear of making a tactical mistake or appearing to challenge the arbitrator’s claimed moral high ground.
So much is at stake, it is unseemly to let some make decisions that affect so many others.
Whether the sacrificed is the classic 1939 movie, “Gone With the Wind,” the movies of Woody Allen, or reruns featuring Bill Cosby or Roseanne Barr, a choice has to be given to the wider audience, especially an audience that enjoys such works and wants to see them. People who want to eschew material or personalities they disdain can do so. I worry when books, movies, images, or statues can be dismissed because someone harrumphs while the majority doesn’t care and shouldn’t have to.
This is tantamount to bookburning, popular with people trying to control a variety of thought throughout history, whether in the middle ages, the Fascist 1940s, or today.
My problem is with censorship and the speed with which companies such as HBO, ABC, NBC, ESPN, and others are willing to appease some who may be demanding the unreasonable.
Or, more to the point, to be asking for something that serves them and their agenda but does not serve history, culture, perspective, or society in general.
Readers over the years might recognize that I often cite perspective and proportion as my guides. I understand when action needs to be taken, but I get nervous when it goes too far, becomes a trend, or is done from fear that precludes standing up to the limiters.
Other themes that will seem familiar are my frequent reminder that stories and images come in the thousands, maybe the millions.
Each of us, at least each of us who watches several hours of television a week, is bombarded with a new idea or image every five seconds, sometimes even faster.
As thinking humans, we can process these images. When one supersedes all the others, and become influential in an un-ordinary way, we have to question why this picture, thought, or concept sticks with us.
A case in point would be the sight of Derek Chauvin’s knee on George Floyd’s neck. It can also be the launching of a rocket, the joy of someone winning a contest, or the tears shed by a character, and the people watching said character when television drama triggers emotion.
Any information presented needs to be put into perspective. The next thing we hear has to be placed in context with the trillions of data that came before it and the plethora yet to come. In watching television, it is important to cultivate a strong sense of the difference between fantasy and reality, of the romantic vs. the realistic, of the thoughts presented in juxtaposition with the thoughts that have been inculcated during a lifetime of reading, watching, talking, and learning things.
Few stories tell a whole truth. That’s why history is published in volumes, and shows come in episodes. It’s the wealth of images, the preponderance of information, the confrontation with myriad ideas that give us our intellectual foundation, that allow us to determine what we believe, who we believe, and why. It also helps us know when something’s a satire or a joke, both of which are on the verge of being declared verboten.
Today, when newscasters cannot be counted on to be objective or accurate, we need to know history and a full panoply of information and opinion to know with whom we agree and why.
As mature adults, we should be able to look at anything and put it in its place within our mindsets, mindsets that are not going to be identical. You’ve heard, I’m sure, of the reason why there’s pistachio and strawberry.
Information and images are no more absolute than ice cream flavors. A fact, the basic element of information, can be looked at in various ways by various people. It’s hard to say anyone is right.
No one wants a mass of people to be offended when they watch a television show.
Nevertheless, that’s a risk we take and that’s always been taken.
Who knows these days what will set off someone’s personal trigger? The current penchant is to control, declare right and wrong, dictate the seeable and unseeable, and decide what’s acceptable by political leaning rather than by genuine perspective and proportion.
History is not absolute. Again, the same fact can be taken by one person in a totally different way from another. The fact will be concrete, but reaction to it varies.
A viewing public is entitled to see and hear the variation. Excluding one or more points of view because they don’t fit the desired narrative of a few is the worst use of censorship.
Returning to stories and images, we need a library of stories to chronicle human history and human behavior. It’s too vast and complex for a single bite.
There will always be objections. Some Italians were not happy that “The Sopranos” emphasized the mob life. There are Jewish people who, based on their own level of religiosity, may have diametrically different attitudes about the recent series, “Unorthodox.” There are those who bristle at the depiction of slavery in “Gone With the Wind.”
History happens, and not in neat little sets. A fictional view of one segment of that history is not an entire story. So, take what exists and go from there to tell another side of the story. But leave the original story alone to be judged by audiences, including those who never think of “Gone with the Wind” as history but as a romance set in the American South and told from a Southern point of view.
Millions of cases can be cited in which an entertainment medium, or the theater, told the romantic or convenient part of a story. That’s OK. Moviemakers are not documentarians. It’s up to us to know our history and create our own perspective.
Perspective is looking at 100 percent of a picture and not the part on which someone is focusing and wants you to focus.
I don’t dismiss the feelings and emotions of others. I don’t denigrate their scars. But I don’t need anyone to tell me what I can see, what I can like, and what I think. That medicine is worse than the disease and should be avoided.
50 years in the making
Nostalgia, more than history, set the tone of Channel 6’s program marking the 50th anniversary of its ever-popular “Action News.”
As I watched, I kept thinking how fitting that is.
For several reasons.
Channel 6 is the only station in the market that can claim remarkable, almost unwavering consistency over half a century.
I wrote about the 50th Anniversary without seeing it. My story wasn’t so much about the content of the show as its reason. I wrote my own reflections and history.
Seeing the program, I noticed things that didn’t escape me but that I put aside.
One is the congeniality of the Channel 6 personality.
Rick Williams may look especially sharp, and Lisa Thomas Laury and Cecily Tynan have distinctive looks, but in general, no one, particularly Jim Gardner, pointed to him- or herself as being special.
Gardner is amazing in how well he displayed his intellect but always spoke directly to his viewer and kept stories light and clear. He could kid around with Jim O’Brien, Dave Roberts, or Cecily, but he always kept an edge of authority that never went off course too academic or know-it-all.
The direct, uncomplicated approach affected “Action News” in other ways. In the ‘80s, when Channels 3 and 10 were competitive about breaking news stories, doing investigations, and being top-notch news organizations, Channel 6 kept up with them while going about it business in a more relaxed, less intense way. It didn’t compete in the classic sense. It didn’t have to. As an exec told me at that time, “Let the other stations have the awards; we have the audience.”
Friendly smoothness has been the watchwords. Simple, easy storytelling has been the Channel 6 rule from Day One in April 1970, and it is the approach the station took last week in relating its own remarkable history, one of which it can proud, for its own sake and because it is unmatched in this market and anywhere else I can think of in this country, even in D.C., Chicago, or Minneapolis, where newscasts still try for some edge.