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Weather Event Reporting
- Thread starter landtuna
- Start date
And it clearly doesn't matter to me either. The off button seems to work just fine.
I've heard newfangled TVs have off buttons.
Or you can unplug it!
Going back to my KRUX and ASU days, I remember that summer rain would bring folks out of the station, study hall or the community I lived in. We'd jump around in the rain, taking pleasure out of getting wet.
Rain in the desert is almost always fun, except, perhaps when it's a heavy monsoon rain or one tagged with a haboob.
Anything that is unusual is news. A city with 8 inches of annual precipitation is a city where rain is rare. A weathercaster who does not take advantage of this fact, while having fun with it, is dull and boring.
Better yet, switch over to "Video 2" and watch the ancient technology of DVD's. I have a nice collection and it is always "go to" material. I think this old timey tech will probably be around for many years. ...and yes...wait for it... GET OFF MY LAWN !
Bingo! You've hit upon something here. In this day and age of fake news, the nets, the sats and the locals don't care if what they're doing is unethical or flat out wrong or misleading. They know you'll watch anyway, and go online to complain. I mean, what are YOU gonna do about it..start a competing weather network?
Except that what they're doing is NOT unethical, wrong, or misleading. What I was saying is they don't program to an audience of one.
Just because one guy doesn't like their style of reporting doesn't mean they should change for him. It's about style and taste, not facts or information. They're not creating the weather.
That's exactly what I was wondering...what constitutes unethical, misleading, etc., about sending people to stand in a hurricane, or whatever the complaint du jour is. Individually, any individual might be fairly tagged as doing something questionable, but that doesn't taint a whole profession any more than any "misdeed" by certain individuals taints another entire profession.
If it's not actually raining. If it's all being done on a Hollywood set with fire hoses to purposely mislead the viewers. But if it's actually raining, and you send a reporter outside to demonstrate that it is in fact raining, there's nothing unethical or misleading about it, and that's not what the complaint is. The complaint is it's stating the obvious. But that's what weather reporting is.
I grew up in the desert and enjoyed the occasional rainy day like most other desert dwellers. But I am not talking about the attempts of the weather guessers to be humorous in their reporting. These people are dead serious and treat a heavy mist similar to the recent reports from North Carolina. I'm calling that ridiculous. A good parallel would be for a reporter to go stand in one of our notorious flash floods. They don't do that...and for very good reason.
How about to have them lean into "fake wind" when clearly there is no wind that's lean-worthy at the time?
G
Maybe that's a fake flood in Carolina.
Overall reporting of weather events has become way too sensationalized.
It is sad and unfortunate when there is flooding and property damage and deaths.
But it happens on a more or less regular basis, and is predictable. If you live in coastal
areas of the southeast it is a question of WHEN, not IF you will eventually be affected by a hurricane.
Hurricanes today aren't any more or less severe than they were 50 or 100 years ago.
They just weren't being hyped in the same manner.
It is sad and unfortunate when there is flooding and property damage and deaths.
But it happens on a more or less regular basis, and is predictable. If you live in coastal
areas of the southeast it is a question of WHEN, not IF you will eventually be affected by a hurricane.
Hurricanes today aren't any more or less severe than they were 50 or 100 years ago.
They just weren't being hyped in the same manner.
That's the nature of the 24 hour news cycle. It's not going back. In fact it's likely to get worse.
We have technology that pipes it into our consciousness around the clock. Comparisons to decades earlier are inherently flawed when accounting for that.
Also, warmer oceans create stronger storms. Higher sea levels exacerbate already dangerous situations. Weaker atmospheric steering currents can cause more situations of storms stalling (a la Harvey and Florence) over an area. So...yeah...things are measurably different than in the past.
Weather is a big deal to a lot of people. That means coverage of such catastrophic events is going to be substantial.
Also, warmer oceans create stronger storms. Higher sea levels exacerbate already dangerous situations. Weaker atmospheric steering currents can cause more situations of storms stalling (a la Harvey and Florence) over an area. So...yeah...things are measurably different than in the past.
Weather is a big deal to a lot of people. That means coverage of such catastrophic events is going to be substantial.
"Substantial" does not mean "ridiculous".
"Ridiculous" is a value judgment largely not shared by millennials and others who have been watching TV news and/or depending largely on the internet for news over the past 20 or so years. Since their numbers are growing while yours (and mine) are declining, one doesn't need to be a genius to figure out which way TV is going to go.
Not to belabor the point but I think the two sides have both illustrated their directives.
For those in the industry they sell what will sell without much regard for its quality. We are seeing the same type of thing in the movie business with endless repeats of previously successful films at the expense of producing anything new (although the source material is still almost endless). The "dumbing down of America" is a popular phrase these days and IMHO millennials are a huge part of "how". I would not quote that generation as a reputable source for anything approaching fine art or relevant information.
Those outside the industry tend to be much more critical of its offerings and rightly so. Needless theatrics make the presenter look foolish and do nothing to enhance the story.
Once again, there's a place you can go where they take the high road all the time, and they never fall for the overly dramatic.
But you don't seem to like that approach either. Kind of like Goldilocks.
I don't have a problem with PBS which is why they are not mentioned in my criticism.
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