[Random-bits] Alex Kuczynski: On CBS News, Some of What You See Isn't There

[James Love]

----Original Message-----
From:           "the terminal of Geoff Goodfellow" <geoff@iconia.com>
To:             "Dave E-mail Pamphleteer Farber" <farber@cis.upenn.edu>
Subject:        more "new media": ...What You See Isn't There
Date:           Wednesday, January 12, 2000 3:33 AM

http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/financial/cbs-digital.html

On CBS News, Some of What You See Isn't There

By ALEX KUCZYNSKI
The New York Times

If you were watching the "CBS Evening News" broadcast live from Times Square on
New Year's Eve, you might have seen a billboard advertising CBS News out in the
square behind Dan Rather. You might have looked at the well-placed billboard
and wondered just exactly how it was that CBS was able to place its ad so
fortuitously.

The truth is, it didn't. The billboard and the advertisement for CBS did not
exist. The image was digitally imported onto the live CBS broadcast and used to
obliterate real objects, the NBC jumbotron underneath the New Year's ball and a
Budweiser ad.

Inserting digital images has become increasingly common in sports and
entertainment programming -- usually to insert advertising and corporate logos
and first-down markers in football -- but has generally been considered out of
line on news shows, a type of programming in which the assumption of reality is
considered sacrosanct and not informing viewers is considered a breach of
journalistic guidelines.


-- 
James Love
http://www.cptech.org
mailto:love@cptech.org
voice 1.202.387.8030