Antonio García Ferreras's adrenaline-fueled special
Saturday morning, the attack by the United States and Israel against Iran activated the morning specials. Antonio García Ferreras did not delay, and turned the breaking news into a minute-by-minute, adrenaline-fueled report that added even more anxiety to the events: “¡Good morning! The United States and Israel are attacking Iran! And Iran is responding with missiles against Israel and several countries in the region! Regionalization of the conflict! According to the US war department, what they call... Operation Epic Fury! is already underway.”. But for epic fury it was the presenter's, who deployed his emergency manual to generate a sense of impatience and countdown, to create the expectation that anything catastrophic could happen at any moment before the eyes of the viewers.
The underlying music to the narrative is decisive. It is an instrumental piece to emphasize the audiovisual productions. The title betrays the emotional state it wants to inject: Dark obsessions, that is, dark obsessions, taken from the album Deep drama, deep drama. It creates a climate of tension and drama ideal for adding emotion to a warlike escalation. The music accentuates the gravity and the warning of threat, and increases the audience's unease. The journalistic information, enlivened by music, turns the news into a heroic experience that is deposited in the figure of the viewer. García Ferreras announces the time every minute, enthusiastically introduces collaborators, and provokes alarm about the images we are seeing. The soundtrack turns him into an all-powerful media artificer who seems to control the world from that table. The aggressiveness with which he raises his finger to the camera and waves his forearm up and down with an open hand is a sensationalist and outdated strategy of authority, but effective for the spectacle.
The language is key. There are two words that are repeated at the beginning of each sentence: “Look” and “Attention”. “Look at these explosions!”, “Attention, because we have the images!”, “Look at the sound of the sirens!”, “Attention, because it's not just Iran's missiles...”, “Attention, because the United States is striking Iran along with Israel!”, “Attention, Revolutionary Guard commanders who may have died!”. He also uses forceful calls that generate alarm: “Let's hear those missiles!”, “In Iran they call it the Roar of the Lion!”, “American Tomahawks heading to Iran!”, “Attack right now against Kurdistan!”.
The images of Jerusalem, Tehran, or any other attacked or endangered city are shown in a loop. Most are recorded with a mobile phone: everything recorded with a phone always seems more unusual and clandestine for television. Keeping a small box on screen with theskyline of Jerusalem creates the false sensation of waiting for a tragedy. The anguish that warlike conflicts provoke in us is not only related to global chaos, but also to the way in which the narrative is manufactured for us.