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In reply to the discussion: '60 Minutes' admits error in dubbing noises over quiet Tesla electric car [View all]Xithras
(16,191 posts)Have you ever actually watched the show? It's investigative infotainment, and it regularly uses reenactments, simulations, and other heavily produced bits. More importantly, the show presents its reports as investigative stories, not as "unbiased news reports". This particular story wasn't even technically a "news" bit, but was an interview and examination of Elon Musk (and an overwhelmingly positive one at that). It is not a hard news show. It's "news" the way National Geographic is "news" (hint: those pretty photos are "enhanced" too).
The RTDNA guidelines are intended for journalists disseminating hard news stories to CNN, evening news joints, and other actual "news" outlets. They don't apply to scripted and produced shows like 60 Minutes. It's nice when they live by them anyway, but there is nothing unethical about audio engineering a show like this.
And what "lengths" are you talking about? You seem to be the only one having a cow over this.
Here's a bit of info for you: Back in the late 90's I briefly worked for NBCi when they were based in San Francisco and NBC was trying to cash in on the DotCom craze with a portal site. While I worked with Internet services, working for NBC gave me lots of access to the company and I regularly worked in Burbank and New York as we tried to integrate them (and their shows) with the content portal. One thing I learned was that EVERYTHING they put on television (and prepped for web use), with the sole exception of hard news delivered during nightly news segments, went through post-production before it ever saw a screen. That included "investigative" scripted pieces that ran during news broadcasts, but weren't considered "news reporting". I know this because we got our hand smacked once when they learned that we had an in-house web content guy reformatting their video broadcasts for online use, which was apparently a violation of NBC's union contract (which said that ALL post-production video work had to go through their post-production offices). After that, we became quite familiar with their "post guys" when we needed to have video content reworked. Today everything is automated, but back in those early days the post guys had to generate the online versions by hand.
EVERYTHING on that network went through post-production except hard news. I know that 60 Minutes is on CBS, but this is the way the entire business works.
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