Fetish for fluffing up their own feathers

One of our pet peeves on the local broadcast news and public affairs scene is some on-cam talents’ penchant for talking about their work and putative achievements in the most glowing terms, instead of waiting for the viewing public to do the complimentary honors!

They do this by way of self-promotional blurbs, in which they self-consciously pose, arms “authoritatively” akimbo, and sum up their “achievements” like they were delivering acceptance speeches for expected awards—in advance!

One broadcast newsperson confidently declares that she’s happiest when she’s able to expose VIP wrongdoers and cut them down to size.

That sounds great—until we hark back to her generally lightweight topics in the recent past and wonder what she could possibly be boasting about.

Another talent just as proudly insists that his “perfect” program fields a “great” mix of cohosts. In truth, the show’s hosts are uniformly bland, and keep agreeing with one another, so the program is not the exciting viewing treat its hosts smilingly imagine it to be.

In light of these generally underwhelming “achievements,” TV news and public affairs people are earnestly enjoined to stop giving their own work rave reviews, and just let it speak for itself.

That way, even if they fall short, they won’t look and sound like self-deluded underachievers who smugly think that merely saying it makes it so. Uh, it doesn’t.

Expanding the context of our observations, it’s instructive for us to realize that some broadcast people’s fetish for fluffing up their own feathers is by no means limited to local shows.

Recently, on the take-no-prisoners interview show, “Hard Talk” on BBC, host Stephen Sackur went on his own self-promotional high horse and ticked off the enviable elements that he felt made his show unique: The usual safe and obvious responses were not allowed.

The truth was more important—so, if “official” toes were stepped on, so be it.

As we listened to Sackur confidently holding forth on his show’s strengths, we couldn’t help recalling its early days, when the even more purposefully abrasive Tim Sebastian was asking the blunt questions.

Despite Sackur’s declarations, Sebastian was the superior interviewer, refusing to take prevarications and official pronouncements at face value.

Once, he got an Asian diplomat so fed up with his insistent refusal to take “maybe” for an answer that the diplomat looked like he was about to have an undiplomatic and apoplectic fit! Those were the days for the combustively confrontational show!