Phony Newscast: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
The Phony Newscast has two particular uses. One is when a fictional program wants to appear to be an actual [[News Broadcast]]. The other is when a commercial for something is pretending to run a newscast related to the product.
Some works use this a form of narration. If the bogus newscast is just a short segment intended to convey some piece of plot information, it's the broadcast news counterpart to a stack of [[Spinning Paper|Spinning Newspapers]] displaying similar headlines.
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* The 2004 ''[[Thunderbirds]]'' somehow manages to shoehorn a reporter into every scene in which the Thunderbirds appear in the outside world. No idea how anyone could consider this remotely plausible, since she'd have to have advance warning. Maybe the Hood tipped her off?
* The Baz Luhrmann ''[[William Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet|Romeo + Juliet]]'' reinterprets the original play's prologue as a newscast.
* [[Airplane 2 The Sequel]] depicts various fake newscasts reporting the shuttle disaster, preceded by a throw-away local headline about a four-alarm fire. Most are the same report, just substituting a different international city for the local blaze, but state television for both [[Cold War]] powers is [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]]. [[PBS]] airs a lengthy debate with [[Devil's Advocate|one side arguing]] "they knew the risks, they knew what they were getting into, let them die" while a Russian announcer (reading at gunpoint) declares "A four alarm fire in Downtown Moscow clears way for glorious new tractor factory. And, on the lighter side of the news, hundreds of capitalists are doomed to die in airline shuttle disaster..."
* ''Oil Storm'', a 2005 mocumentary that aired on FX and Discovery, depicting a fictional oil crisis and what would happen as the result of the highly oil dependent United States facing a severe shortage. In the movie, a major hurricane destroys key oil infrastructure at Port Fourchon, Louisiana, percipitating a Murphy's Law series of events that snowball—including a tanker collision in the narrow Port of Houston and terrorist attacks over the oil trade (including the destruction of the huge Ras Tanura oil refinery in Saudi Arabia). These events drive the price of oil to above $200 per barrel and gasoline to near $9 per gallon. The mockumentary follows several people, including the owners of a mom-and-pop convenience store, a paramedic, stock market and oil analysts, government officials and others, and includes a substantial amount of human drama from the first events to the resolution—through diplomatic skill, the United States winning a $16 billion/year oil deal with Russia, which helps replace the oil lost in the earlier events.
* One of the extras in the campaign mode of ''[[StarCraft]] II: Wings of Liberty'' is the Dominion's own news network, whose hilariously incompetent attempts to be a propaganda machine for Emperor Mengsk provide comic relief between missions.
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