Sorry for the delayed post today. Hectic office day, not much I can do to prevent it. Anyway, as a public service, I always present the problems the media causes by disseminating destructive negativity. For example:The weather reports. Here is Houston, they always make the weather more negative than it needs to be. It’s not the Weather Center; it’s the Severe Weather Center.
And its not Sunshine Central, its Storm Central.
They also like to scare us and make it sound worse than it is. When hurricane Rita came they were on 24hrs a day for 3 days in advance. They created animations showing how the potential flood surge would wipe out the entire east side of Houston as well as Galveston. You can see how excited the weatherman is talking about it. And as the hurricane slowly turned away, you could see the disappointment in their faces.
“It’s…it’s not coming. In fact, it’s heading to the Sabine River area, one of the…least…populated areas. So it looks like this is the (gulp) best case scenario.”
I spoke to a meteorologist after Rita and he said, “You have to forgive us. Hurricanes are like our Super Bowl.” I’ve seen the Super Bowl. At the end of the game they don’t kill all the spectators and blow up the stadium.
All the channels created a panic that caused a lot of trouble on the freeways. And they do it for days in advance. Remember in the old days, if a storm got close to Cuba they would tell us about it. Now, if a pygmy burps off the coast of Africa, we’re watching clouds for three weeks.
One time, I was an Astros game and the weather alert came scrawling across the bottom. “Hurricane Ernesto….1900 miles from Galveston.” 1900 miles!! My parents live in Concord, NH. It’s roughly 1600 miles from Houston. At the moment, they were more a direct threat to me than the hurricane.
And if the weather isn’t bad enough, they make it worse. They invent heat indexs and wind chills.
“It’ll be 98 degrees today, but the heat index will be 104!”
“Today’s low is 13 degrees but the wind chill will be -30!”
Like 13 degrees isn’t bad enough!
I understand the importance of knowing the weather and being prepared. But do they need to scare us into watching, when they would do a greater service by telling us the information. As the panicked evacuation showed us here in Houston during Rita, scaring us into action sometime is less effective than simply telling us.
But, I leave you with my favorite weather report of all time:
http://utterlyboring.com/archives/videos/DogWeather1.wmv
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Sadly, I’ve had the unfortunate experience of being involved in more than 2,000 media interviews… which means I have all the proof I need that the old adage ‘if it bleeds it leads’ isn’t dead. It’s alive and well and living in every media office.
Anyone who denies this, just isn’t paying enough attention or is about to try and convince you to do an interview. Be afraid. Be very afraid. Zip your lip, and then run for the hills.
Enjoy the day
Journalists and Reports like to think they are above it, yet the evidence proves otherwise. - Craig