News and other media coverage of the catastrophe in Japan over the weekend was, apparently (and rightfully so) legion. It's easy to surmise there has probably never been another cataclysmic event of this magnitude (there are few of this magnitude in human history period, for one thing!) to have been filmed so intensively.
While - having no television - I watched none of the news coverage of the events, comparisons of clips like the ones presented here from internet coverage (a combo of news program clips and video taken by amateur cameramen who were eyewitnesses.) provide reason to deem the term "newsworthy", as in big enough and dramatic enough to "deserve" coverage by professional journalists and news programs, all but insulting.
To illustrate my point, compare the two clips in this post. First, there's the awe-inspiring, yet non-narrated video above of the tsunami's arrival in Miyako, Japan. Second, there's the following clip of ABC News' coverage of the earthquake/tsunami which includes footage from the above video. In the ABC News coverage, you have a smug-looking, almost smirking (to me, at least) journalist speaking as though to idiots, describing the circumstances of the visuals we're about to see. Interestingly, the footage from the video above included in their clip seems sped up in comparison to the original video, which isn't that unlikely considering the attenuated attention span of the greater television audience, even for such a unique, visually and mentally arresting sight, due to - and because the segment must cut very soon to - commercials. In other words, even catastrophes of historic proportions aren't enough of a spectacle to hold a nationwide audience.
Pathetic.
More than that, though is the question: what do the reporter and the narrator add to our viewing experience? How do they enrich our understanding of the events unfolding before our eyes in the video? To my mind, they don't. In any way.
"This new video shows a tidal wave is hardly just an oversized beach wave."
OOohhhhh!
