Some Say Network News, Entertainment Bad Mix
The dinosaurs in “The Lost World: Jurassic Park” are fake, but the journalist is real: At the film’s climax, a report on the rampaging beasts is delivered by CNN anchorman Bernard Shaw.
“Lost World” represents just one of the screen credits Cable News Network is acquiring as it breaks with broadcast TV’s habit of separating network news from Hollywood movie make-believe.
Besides Shaw’s cameo, CNN is featured in the upcoming “Air Force One,” starring Harrison Ford as a U.S. president taken hostage in midair. Mock CNN reports also are part of the nuclear drama “Peacemaker,” out this fall.
Some observers condemn the crossover as a worrisome blurring of entertainment and news. At CNN itself, insiders say, there is discord over whether Shaw’s movie gig trades credibility for visibility.
Others, however, say CNN parent Time-Warner Inc. has scored a sensible and acceptable product-placement coup.
“CNN’s approach has always been to be ubiquitous, to convey the impression they’re the first on the scene, especially from disaster locations,” said TV industry analyst Larry Gerbrandt.
“This certainly fits with their image,” Gerbrandt said. “I think they’ve been judicious about what they associate themselves with.”
The network is cautious in allowing use of the CNN name or personnel, weighing such issues as whether CNN’s involvement would be realistic, said CNN spokesman Steve Haworth.
The company also considers if a film represents “the kind of standards Ted (Turner, CNN founder) wants to stand for in the motion picture entertainment business, or is it sexy, violent, sleazy,” Haworth said.
The cable channel does have company at the movies: in “Independence Day,” news of the alien invasion is delivered by Sky Broadcasting (a touch of corporate synergy, as both the Fox movie and the international TV service fall within Rupert Murdoch’s empire).
There are many instances, too, of local broadcast news reporters playing themselves in movies such as “Volcano,” which featured a small army of Los Angeles reporters, or “Primal Fear,” with its Chicago press corps.
And network sportscasters haven’t been shy about big-screen exposure: In the 1971 Woody Allen comedy “Bananas,” Howard Cosell did a play-by-play of a bedroom scene. Last year, CBS sportscaster Jim Nantz played himself in the golf movie “Tin Cup.”
But CBS, NBC and ABC say they draw the line at allowing anchors or news reporters to appear in movies or at lending their network name to fictional newscasts.
(Not so with TV fiction, however. Broadcast news figures such as Katie Couric, Joan Lunden and others have played themselves on programs like “Murphy Brown.”)
“We want to make sure our viewers can distinguish between newsgathering and fictional accounts in a movie,” said ABC spokeswoman Eileen Murphy. “If reporters play a part in a movie, it suggests they’re an actor or actress playing a role. … We want to make sure there’s nothing to complicate the relationship with viewers.”
Such network rules tend to be informal, which one network executive suggested was good enough: “It’s like expecting anchors to wear clean clothes. It’s not written as policy, but it’s understood.”
(A call to Shaw seeking comment on his “Lost World” role was not returned.)
One journalism expert said news and Hollywood represent a bad mix, especially given the current media environment.
“It’s dangerous because I think that society as a whole is having a hard time distinguishing between reality and entertainment,” said Rose Ann Robertson, an assistant professor at American University’s School of Communication.
Ava Thompson Greenwell, an assistant professor of broadcast journalism at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, is more comfortable with reporter-actors.
“As long as they are playing the role of the journalist and they are playing it as accurately as possible, then I think they can help educate the public as to what journalists in the field really do,” Greenwell said.
One element of “Air Force One” seems to fall short of that, however: a scene in which CNN erroneously reports that the president’s plane has crashed based on “unconfirmed reports.”
Journalists scoffed at the notion that any news organization would report an event of such magnitude based on less than absolute confirmation.
Whether CNN is showing itself in the best possible light might be questioned. But to ask whether it has the right to market itself is naive, CNN insiders argue.
What else, they ask, are the networks doing when Tom Brokaw trades quips with Jay Leno on his latenight show or Dan Rather does the same with David Letterman?
John Culliton, the vice president and general manager of the CBS-owned station in Los Angeles, KCBS, believes audiences are unsurprised that CNN would promote itself through movies.
“I think the public already believes that the news is something that is about personalities and is about marketing. It seems there’s no shock to anyone that news is a business.”