Customer Reviews

If It Bleeds, It Leads: An Anatomy Of Television News

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The night before I read this hilarious book the lead story on my local news was a "this just in" double murder with on the spot reactions that could have come right out of the book. The thesis of the book is that TV news, both local and network, is dominated by formulae almost identical to those that govern talk shows like Springer. Kerbel substantiates his thesis via a running, and very funny, commentary on real news broadcasts from around the country. He also shows how the actual content of the news - the fearful, the bizarre, the outrageous and, of course, sex - stays the same while the putative actual subjects change from day to day. Is this depressing? Beats me, I just watch for the weather and sports(and he has some funny things to say about that too). If you want a good send up of the media this is for you.

Matthew Kerbal gets it right every step of the way. By merely stating the obvious Kerbal makes us all aware of the dementia running through telelvision's need to please and worse, to fill too much air time. Staying out of the way, Kerbal brilliantly illuminates the uselessnes of TV News and with a great sense of humor he brings out the stranger-than-fiction aspects of American society. Bravo. A truly excellent read.

I can't figure out what the critics hated about this book. Kerbel makes a fascinating connection between popular TV (talk shows) and the news and follows up with incisive, often hilarious line-by-line dissection of the formulaic venality of editorial decisions governing what we see on TV news. Perhaps it is Kerbel's implied message that we viewers, and our baffling craving to be scared and misled, are to blame for the grotesque caricature that news-at-5 and -11 has become. TV, and its interrelated fact and fiction programming, is nothing more than the sum of we the viewers' flawed values, and this is Kerbel's unsettling message behind the humor. Buy it.

The author makes an interesting point, that is, that there is hardly a shade of difference between the manner in which the talk shows and the news programs market their product, that they both manipulate their audiences, and that their subjects are presented for impact, rather than content.

However, he makes this point in the first 15 to 20 pages, and he then makes it again, and again, and again, and again. I never thought such a short book could become so redundant and so boring. Good idea, bad delivery.

The best thing about this book was it's title. The rest is not worth the bother. It was redundant and, basically, just sarcastic drivel.