"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there," British author L. P. Hartley once wrote. That's equally true of the strange world inhabited by network television producers, who sometimes "do things differently" when deciding how to use their limited resources.
When I turned on NBC's TODAY show this morning, for example, one of the program's anchors was based in New York and the other was in Amman, Jordan. Presumably, Lester Holt was in Jordan because of the turmoil in Egypt, even though Amman and Cairo are 307 miles apart, with Israel between them.
That's sort of like covering a breaking news story in New York City from Richmond, Virginia. Amman is closer to Cairo than, say, London is, but once you take that dubious advantage into account, Jordan doesn't offer anything even vaguely resembling a front-row seat to what's going on in Egypt. NBC News has the very able Richard Engel reporting from Cairo, so what did the Jordan-based Holt bring to the table, other than the illusion of proximity to the story?
But hey, the Middle East is the Middle East, right? Arabs are Arabs. Muslims are Muslims. Oppressive heat is oppressive heat. Let's not put too fine a point on things. This is television, after all. Don't set your sights too high.
That's sort of like covering a breaking news story in New York City from Richmond, Virginia. Amman is closer to Cairo than, say, London is, but once you take that dubious advantage into account, Jordan doesn't offer anything even vaguely resembling a front-row seat to what's going on in Egypt. NBC News has the very able Richard Engel reporting from Cairo, so what did the Jordan-based Holt bring to the table, other than the illusion of proximity to the story?
But hey, the Middle East is the Middle East, right? Arabs are Arabs. Muslims are Muslims. Oppressive heat is oppressive heat. Let's not put too fine a point on things. This is television, after all. Don't set your sights too high.
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