Lights, Camera, Oops
NBC News anchor Brian Williams led his "Nightly News" broadcast last Thursday night by discussing the "staged" discussion between President Bush and soldiers in Iraq. Here's how Williams opened the show:
"It was billed as a chance for the president to hear directly from the troops in Iraq. The White House called it a 'back and forth,' a 'give and take,' and so, reporters who cover the White House were summoned this morning to witness a live video link between the Commander-In-Chief and the U.S. soldiers in the field as the elections approach in Iraq. The problem was, before the event was broadcast live on cable TV, satellite picture from Iraq was being beamed back to television news rooms here in the U.S. It showed a full-blown rehearsal of the president's questions, in advance, along with the soldiers' answers and coaching from the administration. While we should quickly point out this was hardly the first staged political event we have covered, and we've seen a lot of them in the past, today's encounter was billed as spontaneous. Instead, it appeared to follow a script."With all the emphasis on staged events, it was surprising to turn on NBC's "Today" show this morning and see something that looked suspiciously like, well, staging. Introducing her story on the flooding in New Jersey, correspondent Michelle Kosinski was shown paddling in a canoe, shifting her oar from one side to the other, giving the impression she was in some pretty deep and treacherous water (as noted in some comments below).
Only problem is, just as she was explaining how the street was "essentially" part of the flooded river, two men wearing waders and carrying grocery bags walked right in front of her live shot. The depth of the water? Just above their ankles.
Co-host Matt Lauer made light of it coming out of the piece, asking Kosinski if those were "holy men" who could "walk on water" and a lot of laughs were shared. They probably weren't chuckling too much at the White House. NBC explained that Kosinski had been in deeper water prior to the live shot but there were concerns about the strength of the current. A spokesperson for the network said, "it's not like we were trying to pass it off as something it wasn't."
I'll let you be the judge of that. The incident made the rounds in the blogosphere over the weekend and a lot of laughs were had at NBC's expense. In the media, as in politics, a certain amount of stagecraft takes place. Trust is an issue in both instances. The difference, of course, is that one is a president dealing with soldiers at war, the other a reporter floating in a couple inches of water.