Steve Jobs as Darth Vader. Al Gore as a sex-crazed poodle. Rupert Murdoch as a West Side Story gang member. These are among the baffling (though extremely entertaining) animations produced by Next Media, an animation company that has begun distributing its syndicated animations of twisted news stories to legitimate news sources for nearly a year now. (You may recall a brief media-flurry over terrorist-trained monkeys, fueled by a Next Media animation.)
The animations, which began with a salacious interpretation of the Tiger Woods car crash, fill in the gaps of stories lacking video footage. Or, you know, facts. The looseness of the reporting has understandably caused a hubbub among traditional journalists. Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz has publicly declared that if this is the future of journalism, he wants no part of it.
I get what he’s saying. But as a Salon article points out, “When Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show” can be counted on to represent reality… more than most network or cable news shows, then why shouldn’t Taiwanese animators be more trusted to capture the essence of Steve Jobs’ will to power than the Washington Post?”
What do you think? Is this kind of reporting okay with you?