TV presenters, return to the literature of journalism

I am an audience member of a French channel, Franceinfo, which, to me, surpasses the BBC in visual terms, if not editorial ones. I keep an eye on what they are doing (including that they used, for a vignette, the same soundtrack I used in my undergraduate project).

Here in Paraná, RPC innovated during the pandemic by showing every attempt to reach the source who did not respond: something to use as an international standard of quality. José Wille on Band is a relief. The Paraná Turismo channel is getting better and better at scenes of tourist spots in the interior. What turned out a little bad these days was the narrator saying “própia” instead of “própria” (a mispronunciation of the Portuguese word for “own”).

But something that disturbs me on local channels is the shortage of anchors — save rare and nameable exceptions. I reserve, however, the right to write that those who remain good in journalism belong to more “conservative” schools (lead, reasonable analysis, pertinent commentary).

As a member of the journalists’ community, far from my personal taste, I reaffirm the shortage of anchors.

It is crystal clear that languages change, and that one must speak each year’s fluent idiom. For these reasons, we started presenting the newscast standing up, we started saying “clica lá” (“click there,” colloquial) instead of the correct “clique lá.” And we also started begging to be accepted by the viewer.

For the reporter to mention what he “feels” about a subject should be once every time a pope dies. A natural event, a starving crowd, the state of alert after a bombing. But announcing that one has “sad news” about something inevitable, like a car accident, is a ploy detected by the audience, and one that shames journalism’s historical construction.

Where to go

I presume there are influences from multiple directions. One is the internet’s way of creating new “famous people.” But, dear reporter, you already have the station’s brand. And staging the whole performance of being a “nice guy” has not helped the brand, nor even the audience’s perception of journalism. So, let us return to Ivor Yorke’s recommendation.

For Yorke, the television journalist-presenter must “display a certain haughtiness.” The translation is a tragedy, because the word “soberba” (haughtiness) goes down badly. I venture, however, this paraphrase: “the television journalist cannot ask the audience what it wants to know. It is he who must know what the audience needs to know.”

I will spare the “journalists” of a certain channel from having a live dialogue transcribed in this post that proves by A plus B that television — though it did not need to — is falling short in repertoire, intelligence and behavior.