Chicago Anchor: Breaking News is Broken
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WLS Anchor Ron Magers is leaving the throne and stepping down as the Anchor of Chicago's No. 1 newscast.
But before he goes, he talked about TV's obsession with "Breaking News".
‘Breaking news’ is a great idea,” he declared. “But if you label everything ‘breaking news,’ you’ve now become that fanatic who clings to the idea until the idea is no good anymore.”
Magers made the comments to his former co-anchor Carol Marin on WTTW's “Chicago Tonight.”
Robert Feder writes that when Marin asked Magers about cliches he tries to avoid as an anchor, Magers said: “There are some things that will come up that I won’t read or I’ll try to change just to simply make them more ‘me.’ We all have some little pet peeves along the way.
“My current pet peeve is ‘breaking news.’ It seems to me that ‘breaking news’ has become . . . a guy named Tom Robbins wrote a book some time ago, and in it he had a wonderful quote about how good ideas get perverted, how they get seized by fanatics, and they cling to them until their last fingernail breaks, and they get twisted and turned. The wonderful line of his is ‘how the loving teachings of Jesus became the starving cliches of Christianity.’ ”
“I feel that way about ‘breaking news.’ ‘Breaking news’ is a great idea. If there’s breaking news, you should do it. And people are interested in breaking news. But if you label everything ‘breaking news,’ you’ve now become that fanatic who clings to the idea until the idea is no good anymore.
“So I struggle with ‘breaking news’ and some of those kinds of things. Television news, because it’s trying to ring a bell with the audience, wants to brand things.”
Keep preaching brother!
