(by Bernard Lumpkin)
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but how much is a chyron worth? Apparently, for Fox News, a whole lot. During an interview Wednesday with conservative columnist Michelle Malkin about attacks against Michelle Obama, Fox News ran a graphic on the lower third of the screen that read, "Outraged Liberals: Stop Picking on Obama's Baby Mama!"
The comment — both crass and, for those who know anything about 21st-century slang, just plain wrong! — has set the political blogs abuzz. To those of us here in the Newsroom accustomed to using chyrons day in and day out in our on-air reporting, we thought we'd take this opportunity to draw your attention to the use (and abuse?) of this television tool.
News producers generally consider chyrons our friends. That informative text on the lower part of your screen allows us to feed you even more info — from sports scores to AP wire reports to upcoming programs — than what you're seeing and hearing on the upper two-thirds of the screen. Chyrons summarize, condense and crystallize. And in these times of short-attention spans, the quicker you can absorb the news the better. In other words, chyrons are meant to complement the story, not comment on it. Right?
Maybe. After all, this isn't the first instance of chyron "error" at the hands of Rupert Murdoch's news network. A quick search uncovered two other instances of subversive subtitling. Fox News covered a speech John McCain gave to a conservative group in February 2008 when Mike Huckabee was still the candidate of choice for many conservatives. At one point, McCain was booed, but the ultimate put-down came when Fox News chyroned the Arizona senator a Democrat.
Ouch! A similar case of chyron commentary came during Fox News coverage of Florida Congressman Mark Foley's resignation in September 2006 over sexy text messages he sent to a congressional aide. Foley is a Republican, but the chyron told you otherwise.
When we contacted Fox News about this latest case of Baby Mama Drama, they gave us a contrite-enough apology. "A producer on the program exercised poor judgment in using this chyron during the segment," said Bill Shine, senior VP of programming.
Maybe this should put our concerns to rest, but with the general election just beginning, we're betting on more chyron drama.
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