“Is it professional for a news channel to have melodramatic background music during reports as Fox is now doing?,” an e-mailer asked tonight. I noticed the somber music in and out of commercial breaks on FNC today, although I didn’t notice it during reports. “It sounds like a funeral,” a friend quipped. I felt the background music was appropriate, but that doesn’t make it professional.
> But Slate’s Jack Shafer disagrees. “I hate it when the news networks pair music with montages of newsworthy footage. The broadcasters usually avail themselves of this gimmick when they’re wrapping up a day or half-day’s worth of coverage. If I want emotional cues that music provides, I’ll hire a therapist to coach me on when to sniffle and cry.”
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