By Gonzo
The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) held a convention in Las Vegas last week. They invited Academy Award-winning actor Tim Robbins to be the keynote speaker on a topic near and dear to us here at Your New Times: social media.
And then they refused to broadcast Robbins’ speech.
In fact, the organizers went around to the individual journalists in attendance and demanded that they turn their cameras off. Somebody managed to get an audio recording of the speech, which quickly ended up online, in both text and MP3 formats.
The speech was not, and presumably will not ever be broadcast.
Robbins’ remarks were certainly sarcastic, crude — and funny. He apologized to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, saying he would’ve supported the war in Iraq if only he “had seen the festive and appreciative faces on the streets of Baghdad today.” He goes on to suggest, tongue-in-cheek, that the way to save Old Media from the slings and arrows of New Media is to focus on the three pillars of responsible journalism:
- Erase all diversity of opinion
- Obsess over sex scandals
- Be as racially divisive as possible
If this whole brouhaha has you scratching your head you’re not alone. It seems that Old Media wants to have it both ways. They want Mr. Robbins to teach them how to appeal to the social media crowd without giving up any of the control they’ve become so accustomed to. In fact, NAB is so eager to control the field that they decided they didn’t want to allow Tim Robbins to give his speech at all.
Robbins himself noted the contradiction beforehand: “Well, I have prepared a speech, but I don’t believe I’m going to be doing it… I guess you’ll be able to read it at some later date, in another technology. Now, the irony’s not lost on me.”
The NAB relented and allowed the speech, but not before revealing that the irony was indeed lost on them. Robbins’ ended by abandoning sarcasm and making an impassioned plea to his hosts:
“You can lift us up into a more enlightened age. Or you can hide behind that old adage; ‘I’m just a businessman, I provide what the audience wants.’ Well, I’m here to tell you that we don’t need to look at the car crash. We don’t need to live off of the pain and humiliation of the unfortunate. We don’t need to celebrate our pornographic obsession with celebrity culture. We are better than that.”
Unfit to broadcast? You decide.