The rise and rise of on air personalities. In the UK we have newsreaders their main job is to read the news, if they have a talent for interviewing they'll do the odd pre-recorded and occasionally live interview. Some present other shows for the BBC. If you go to their webpage it takes a bit of digging to get to say a profile of news reader and presenter Fiona Bruce the bio is simple and there is a picture, no twitter feed, no facebook page.
We have news shows, like Panorama that focus on one topic and they don't always get the balance right and we have British bulldog Jeremy Paxman who presents Newsnight for those who want no-nonsense reporting.
Compare that to Fox News in the US -our local Utah station is Fox 13 - although I prefer KUTV 2. Go to their national webpage and right up front is the list of on-air personalities - it says it up in the top right hand corner. Go to Shannon Bream for instance and up pops a glossy bio, no facebook but you can follow her on twitter and our local stations pound it into us that we can get them on facebook and twitter, you can even win prizes for liking them on facebook.
The reason for this post is the throwaway comment made by one of our local news 'anchors' last night
'if you care'
she threw in after an entertainment story. She obviously didn't give a damn about that story she'd just read but her job is to report not emote and its her job to do that about every story that the people who put the bulletins together include that day. Until news organisations give us the news not opinion, I'll still be sticking to comedy central and bbc america for news with the occasional bout of NPR.
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