The Onion News: 'Some Bullshit Happening Somewhere' (Video)

"Some Bullshit Happening Somewhere": The Onion News Network

The Onion is featuring an item titled Some Bullshit Happening Somewhere, which breaks down the anatomy of a time-filler newscast.  This video makes the perfect companion for Charlie Brooker's earlier video:

• Charlie Brooker's "How to Report the News"

The parody video features actual news footage of a baby bear running through a residential neighborhood, pointing out:

• The use of news-media resources to cover a fairly commonplace occurrence
• The treatment of that occurrence as hard news
• Interviewing pretty people for their reactions
• Cutting away to a spurious "expert"
• Uniformed personnel standing around with their backs to the camera
• Redundant Powerpoint-style charts and graphics
• Emails from viewers that add nothing of value to the topic at hand

Unlike the web, whose pages can stay static-- and side by side-- forever, news shows must keep moving, even when there's nothing on hand to talk about. 

24-hour networks have a much tougher job, and often simply repeat their stories; you will notice that the "breaking news" logo seems stuck to each item as well: when all stories are breaking, then no stories are breaking. 

You can try this by keeping a 24-hour news channel on in the background: keep an ear out for repetition, and for stories on subjects that were covered online a few days ago.

It isn't that TV networks are bad while Web sources are good, but that creating TV content takes more people and more resources: if you only have the resources to cover, say, 15 stories in a news cycle, then you will inevitably end up with dead air, so you have to fill the space with either a repetition or something that is quick and easy to produce.

Breaking News: Some Bullshit Happening Somewhere