Idiot-ing the Box

"You know the first and greatest sin of the deception of television is that it simplifies; it diminishes great, complex ideas, trenches of time; whole careers become reduced to a single snapshot."

Those are the words of the character James Reston Jr from Ron Howard's Frost/Nixon...and one of the many moments in this engrossing film, that made me really feel the interlacing of politics, media and power.

When I saw All the President's Men, it spoke to me not just a story of a momentous turning in the history of American politics, but it made me feel the power of print journalism. Frost/Nixon however, reveals the inherent dichotomy of television journalism for me. An anchor who is more of a performer, backed by serious researchers buying his way into an interview of a lifetime.....botching it, due to the nature of his subject, trying to save it....and only succeeding because of the nature of his subject.

It's a challenge to simplify complex issues in television journalism. And a bigger challenge not to oversimplify complexity, and remove it altogether. Love it or hate it - the tele won't go even if Werner Herzog says....."Our grandchildren will blame us for not having tossing hand-grenades into TV stations because of commercials."