yeah, right. How about sports matches like soccer, basketball, American Football... or surfing contests? Even if those games have rules,
Malice at the Palace is an infamous example of things going out of control, spontaneously, on live TV.
Or even live news broadcasting of a storm that causes 5-meter waves to crash and scatter boats all over a harbor?
*sigh*
there always is at least [...] one editor can pick from [...] decides what is actually aired, to prevent airing unwanted things.
OK. Let's have a quick lecture in basic
media literacy. Normally this should be teached in school. *sigh*
I factor out sports. I don't waste my time on watching others doing things I either do myself or don't care about at all. Apart from that, with this year's FIFA world cup (soccer) the Europeans learned what the US Americans already know from baseball, basketball and football: when there is money involved, the rest have to step back.
I hope we have at least the level I don't need to explain that junk like wrestling is a completely chereographed show. For the rest it's like with the news:
Of course, the waves shown on TV news are real pictures. The question is: What do the news show, and why?
"Because I am interested in." Wrong. For the most news you didn't even know it interests you until you see it on the news.
At first, they must pick what they show at all, because it's impossible to present everything. And they don't know, what you are particulary interested in - otherwise you would get some FreeBSD news everyday on BBC news.
A car accident with two casualties in your town is presented in your local news. While a motor cycle crash in a large city on the opposite side of the world is not even presented in the news you have common access to at all. Because you don't care, because too many accidents with casualties happen everyday worldwide that nobody cares but for the ones in the neighbourhood. The more spectacular, the more casualties, the larger the range. A crash of an airplane outdo a train crash outdo a car accident - depening on the number of victims. A truck fell over on an interstate ain't of much interest. A truck fell over loaded with beer is brought nationwide.
Particulary in not-public and not pay TV, which only generates income by showing ads, all what counts is what draws the crowd. And they have no problem to show you ads for some fast food chain between clips showing starving people. This is cynical, but that's the commercial world we are living in: News are just a show to draw the crowd.
So, we learn: News are not picked by what
you are interested in, but from all possibilities those are picked which most were interested in. Sometimes not even that, but what others think you should see. Depending on the news channel or paper it's either more about to inform or to entertain, which means raise emotions. Last ones can be easy identified by bringing lots of sports and celebrities junk directly on the front page. Emotions sell best (above all when it's about sex, because that's the strongest emotion quickly to induce). And since for sale it doesn't matter how people are aroused, if it's good or bad emotions, and good emotions like joy are expensive to produce and cost effort, while bad emotions are very easy and cheap to produce, most of the news worry, scare, piss off, even outrage people. There is a president who did only understand a single thing his whole life: This.
And when people are being stressed by too many bad emotions, they become agressive. Which again can produce additional bad news.
Bad news are good news. And good news are bad news.
But back to the waves:
Second, they decide what time they give each topic. A republican friendly news channel would present only a short clip of some mistake a republican politicians may have made, and bring a longer clip about a winning football team instead, while another news channel would do it otherwise.
In neither case have to be a real lie. Letting things out or put them in a context or even just another order with other news already can change the point of view even also manipulate how a viewer thinks about a topic.
Third, they decide -
very carefully and considered - what pictures and what text is presented.
You may know those grayish blurred videos made from some fighter aircraft's camera showing some bomb hit a building. You were told which building this is, neither you can verify it, nor you get to see the damage it caused, above all not the victims.
This especially the USA learned during the Vietnam war. From this war many pictures made it unfiltered to the public, which produced an anti war mood. Since then, the USA watch very carefully what pictures are make it to the public. (And other countries of course, too.) Watching the news about a war depends very much on which side's news you watch - in both cases it's always the other's fault who started it.
"The first victim in war is the truth."
So, particulary when your nation is currently at war, the news are for sure not really that free and unfiltered.
Any journalist, anybody educated in writing can explain you, that neither news are never completely objective. Because it's simply impossible to present something completely free of personal opinions.
That's why in any case, never trust a single media, but also get other points of view, too.
That's why dictatorships try to either synchronize media, eliminate or block access to ones with other points of view.
Or, to put it otherwise, if all media you have access to, all tell you basically the same point of view, you should become suspicious.
. 
