NBC's Bonehead Editors

The amount of stock footage we see on a daily basis would probably boggle your mind.

I've edited tons of video, and in a pinch, I sometime have to reach for the stock footage. Let's say a guy is talking about an auto accident, or an emergency room, but I need footage to cover. No problem. I reach for the stock DVDs, flip to the medical chapter, and select one of three dozen clips showing an ambulance on the move, or a gurney being rushed through the hospital doors, or a paramedic taking someone's pulse.

When you watch Iraq war stories on the evening news, I can virtually guarantee that you're seeing a lot of stock. When a reporter talks about how many soldiers have died in the last week, the footage you see over top of her voice was almost assuredly not taped in the past couple of days. It's an impossibility. The reporter probably never sees with her own eyes half of the images that you see on your television. It's old footage, gathered together, labeled, and put on the shelf for another day. And they never tell you that.

This is especially true of live broadcasts from the field. While the reporter is talking, all kinds of images are placed before you. If she's talking about soldiers, you'll see soldiers, and if she's talking about civilian deaths, you'll see crying children. When was the footage shot? Good question. Maybe last week, or maybe last year. If the producers are feeling a bit guilty, and the footage is very old, you'll see "file" written in the corner of the screen.

In a nutshell, this is why editors don't trust the evening news. They know that a certain amount of grey obscures every news story that has stock footage in it. The stock footage, in fact, is probably the most important factor in determining how an audience will react to a news piece. Trouble is, there's no way of knowing when the footage was captured, or even where it was shot, unless they tell you.

Stock footage allows you to add some visual aids to what's being said. It adds impact. Unfortunately, it also gives you the chance to lie, or be exposed as an idiot.

Who Knew?
Take this recent news piece from NBC, about a girl marching across the North Pole. Of course she's doing it for global warming, and NBC's peacock logo in the corner of the screen is green to prove it. The stock footage in the piece shows ice collapsing into the sea. One problem: I've been to Alaska, and I know glacial ice when I see it. I've filmed it more than a few times. Glaciers have been "calving" for eternity, pushing ice into the sea, where it crashes and bubbles with great dramatic effect. It was obvious that the editor was using blue glacial ice for coverage. But in this NBC news piece, no mention is made of glaciers and, added to the global warming sound bite, we're led to believe that this is ice is falling off the North Pole because...?

Problem two: the news piece is about a girl crossing the North Pole. So why in hell are there two shots of penguins standing around on ice floes? The story shouldn't have been about global warming, it should have been about this girl's miraculous discovery that penguins have migrated thousands of miles north, and NBC was on the scene to record it.

The editor of this piece needs to have his head examined. If you're going to use stock footage to make a point, at least make sure it's from the right end of the earth. Moron.