"CALIFORNIA FIRES BRING A NEW FOCUS TO TV NEWS"

      The visual image of a "FIRE" burning bright has conjured up many different meanings and purposes throughout the history of the world. In literature, fires have stood for varied  symbols, like passion, wisdom and energy. In Greek mythology, Prometheus held an important position as the stealer of fire

     In movies, fires have served as a primary theme, ( like in "The Towering Inferno '') where Hollywood superstares ( Paul Newman and Steve McQueen) used their power and control to prove that men can save the world from unbelievable catasthrophes,

     The recent fires in California also  provide a theme; this time it is TV broadcasting a  real event  that is horrific because the viewers know it's authentic, and because we can't take our eyes away from the images. We are both drawn in and drawn away from the visual explosions.

     But there is another theme accounting for the narrative as well. We watch day - after- day the battle raging  between the firefighters and their nemeses, the fire itself. Which "side" will finally win.

     Building a narrative for the "story" of the L.A. Fires continues, promoting the TV journalists  as characters in the news broadcasts. People like MSNBC's Katy Tur and Lawrence O'Donnell lend their personal reactions to the fires: Tur goes to the scenes of her Pacific Palisades home ( in the 1990s ) and reports on the devastation. Gone are the on-air behavior we usually expect from her reporting. Instead, we see a person trying to cope with the surrounding destruction and her memories of the past. But oddly enough, Tur still brings a professional voice to what she's saying: both an objective and subjective point-of-view.

     Lawrence O'Donnell becomes a charactor as well when he asks about the condition of his home in the L.A. area. Although he is speaking in a TV studio, O'Donnell has a dramatic sense of delivery that he conveys during his normal daily broadcasts no matter what the subject matter is. That emotonal sense gives the audience a feeling they are with him at his California house. It's amazing how realistic some things sound even if we are miles away. 

     Journalists at the L.A. Fires and the viewers' connection with them remind this critic of the TV coverage during the Iraq War in the early 1990s. The correspondants were characters, too, as we watched every step they took: going inside and out of their reporting spaces, driving down the road, and at times disappearing for a few days. We worried about where they were, hoping they were safe.

     Both journalists and audience became one.