Newswipe is a tv-program appearing on BBC4. In it Charlie Brooker takes a critical and sarcastic look at the news, looking especially at how entertaining the news appears nowdays. The fifth episode, nicely found through Youtube, is a sort of best-of compilation and a good way to get into the program. The episodes come in three parts:
In part one of the episode Brooker looks at how the public forms a big part of newscoverage. Features a couple of guys who go within 50-meters of an oil-plant on fire and pictures on snow that people sent to BBC.
Part 2 has my favorite part of the series dealing with American news-reporters, especially Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly. Pretty scary footage. Also the death of Jade Goody, a British reality tv-star who got cancer, which was widely talked about in the tabloids and tv.
Finally in the last part there’s more on Jade Goody and a look at a shootout in Germany where a school kid killed 16 fellow students. Especially interesting is what a forensic psychologist has to say on how shooters like him are portrayed in the news.
If you got interested a quick search on Youtube will give you the rest of the Newswipe episodes as well as Brooker’s Screenwipe, which looks at tv on a wider scale.
What I most like about Brooker is the very sarcastic and dark humor. He also doesn’t take himself too seriously. On one episode of Screenwipe he took part in a children’s program as one of the hosts and ended up getting four cream cakes on his head. An ironic reading makes even the worst crap on TV enjoyable.
Nerdrant 