Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Leprechaun in Mobile?
I'll update this more later, but I just wanted to get this up now. Watch the clip, and think about your initial reactions. Feel free to post them as a comment. I'll explain more later.
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Annnnd now I have more time.
I'm honestly a little confused about whether this "news story" is real. It appears on the news program for an NBC affiliate (although I'm not sure where), so I'd like to think it's an accurate report.
So assuming it's true, it still seems ridiculous. The most ridiculous part, I feel, is how this black community is portrayed. Every negative stereotype of black individuals that still exists in this country is projected in this report.
The whole reason why this news story became part of the news program, I imagine, is because of its comic factor. Of course no one watching the report believes that there is actually a leprechaun in this neighborhood, and the reporter doesn't try to convince anyone that there is (although if they had footage of the leprechaun, that would be real news). The basis of this news story is that there is an entire community that believes they've seen a leprechaun.
Maybe the community is in on this joke. I find it hard to believe that an entire community actually believes that they are seeing a leprechaun. But the reporter never makes an effort to say that the whole situation is a big joke. Using only the information provided to us in the report, we are led to believe that this community actually believes that they are seeing a leprechaun.
And furthermore, the negative stereotypes portrayed in this report seem to be accentuated for effect. The more ridiculous the interviewees seem, the more hilarious the report is. While that statement is true, it is not the proper way to think about news. A story, if it's being reported for its inherent hilarity, should not need embellishment to make it newsworthy.
This is a poor, poor attempt at a quirky news story by this station's reporter and its editors. A community is negatively portrayed, a story is embellished and the line between reality and a collective joke is never clearly drawn.
This story needs some work, if it's even a story at all.
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At first I thought the clip was real and then after certain commetary I perceived it to be a joke. Is the news media allowed to joke in this way, portraying something to be real when it is not? I am a little confused as to whether these people were serious or if it was completely staged.
ReplyDeleteI also didn't know how to react to all of the "black" voices in the clip. Are they trying to portray blacks as ignorant and silly people who will "show out" for some attention? I could see where people might think this.
I suppose it reflects how certain people act and talk but are there any negative ramifications of showing them as they are in this particular setting? It would have been more fair, I think, to include people who are not black. That's something we should strive to do anyway, to represent the whole community. And if it is only this certain group "seeing leprechauns," I'm a little concerned about how others may perceive and continue to make distinctions between one race or another. I think the same would be true if this was done with any other group.
Either way, this clip blurs the lines between reality and fantasy. I'm still wondering, is that black guy's great grandfather really Irish? It could very well be, but because of the nature of the clip, it could also be a joke.
I completely agree with both responses to this ridiculous "news" story. While I understand that it's important for the media to display a balance of hard and soft news, this is really just a big joke that pokes fun at the black community. I would also think that 99.9 percent of the viewers who saw or heard of a leprechaun living in a tree would never believe it, and the fact that this news station pursued such an outlandish story without any hint of it being a joke shows a lack of respect for the audience and the black community where this "supposedly" occurred.
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