Network News: Getting Closer To Reality TV Every Day

By: Charles Atkeison

 

I’m sitting in the Boston airport watching CNN when Wolf Blitzer tells viewers that a reporter will soon be interviewing an actual ISIS fighter. Here we go again, it’s time for a network to prove how brave and daring they are. Remember the last one, the Heart-Of-Darkness II episode? Network news reporters went to interview people at the source of Ebola in West Africa. Back home they got voluntarily quarantined until one reporter skipped out because she didn’t want to miss a pedicure appointment or something.

The reporter steps into a dank, poorly-lit Kurdish prison. He’s got salt-and-pepper hair and looks like he’s dressed straight out of the Adventure Travel section of the J. Peterman catalog — suede leather coat lightly scuffed and cracked, a blue dress-shirt unbuttoned too far, revealing a clump of grey chest hair (Make way everyone! It’s the Silver Fox!). The guards bring out a blindfolded guy who might be ISIS but more likely is an undergrad from Cairo looking to raise money for tuition.

I’m tempted to elbow the guy next to me and shout “Holy shit! He’s talking to an actual ISIS fighter! You can get Ebola just by being near those guys!”

The interview concludes with the reporter asking the prisoner what would happen if he (the reporter) got captured by ISIS. It’s a tense, super-dramatic moment. The ISIS guy grins and says, “First, we’d laugh at your clothes. Then we’d make you deliver a monologue on YouTube about how much better ABC is than CNN. And then we’d do the American public a favor by cutting out your tongue.”

Okay, this last part didn’t happen. But one can still dream.

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