A trailer teasing the newest Star Wars film has fans of the franchise very excited. But they’re not the only ones; the Disney-owned nightly newscast ABC World News has also found the upcoming Disney film to be an important news story too.
ABC “reported” on the trailer on its Friday nightly news program (11/28/14), with anchor Amy Robach explaining that “theatergoers have been rushing the box office just to see the preview of the much anticipated Star Wars movie.”
If you find it a little odd that a news broadcast would devote much–or any–time to a preview for a movie, reporter Nick Watt was there to break the bad news: “The movie doesn’t open until December next year. This is only gonna intensify.”
Which it did–a few days later, again on ABC‘s nightly newscast. On the December 1 edition, Watt was on hand again to go over some of the “secrets” the trailer reveals about the new movie. He closed with these thoughts:
Are we all overthinking this? Yes. And that’s OK. We’re supposed to.
That’s especially true for a media outlet promoting a most certainly overhyped movie produced by its parent company.
NBC screen grab: TVNewser
This isn’t the first time ABC News has done something like this (FAIR Blog, 5/6/14). And, to be fair, they’re not the only ones in on this game.
As noted by TVNewser (11/26/14), NBC News aired a “special” called “The Making of Peter Pan Live!,” which promoted an upcoming NBC TV broadcast of a Peter Pan musical. The title role is played by Allison Williams, who happens to be the daughter of Nightly News anchor Brian Williams, who reported her casting on his newscast back in July (7/30/14).
I thought I heard this corporate boosterism while speedily bypassing this channel the other day.
It is shameful. Great find, Peter.
The shamelessness of it is what really gets you.
There’s no business like show business.
Well I can why they would find it newsworthy, they don’t have any real journalists. Like the Faux Snooze Nitwork, all the anchors are about as bright as a one, for the boat that is. If you told them that them eating road apples were found to be healthy and delicious, they would eat a dozen on camera, as long as the Corporate Lords and Masters tell them to.
Pretty soon they’ll be “reporting” on their family showing photos of their family vacations and reporting on their holidays. Indeed to a large degree this is already done where the newsreaders, always photogenic, are featured in promos on TV, on buses and kiosks, as the most important component of the news entity known a wxyz. You can trust our news because of these photogenic news reader. And of course the sleight of hand comes when, with miniscule exceptions, the newsreading is design to mislead and set the acceptable terms of debate.