Out in the storm again (rant comma whimsical)

[scooterbird]

I don't watch local TV news for the most part. This is because while it has never been a bastion of journalism at any point in its existence, I have seen it during my lifetime go from "at least somewhat informative some of the time" to "I think I may know less now than when I first tuned in" to "a blow-dried Barbie freak show with as much basis in

Comments

[blushing_grace]

Speaking of the last part - that's how the news always handles things. Occassionaly the 'top story' is a severe thunderstorm warning. Because, unlike other topics that may have depth, the weather effects everyone.

[grail76]

My, "how does the news cover this" example started to come up in Viet Nam. Now as the populace shifted from support to hostility to the war, the news had a series of problems. One of their reactions was the comparison.

"There were 8 dead last week which is the highest total in 2 weeks." It hyped whatever happened and gave the vague appearance of context. That was one of my first experiences of, "I understand the individual words you're saying but I have no idea what that means."

[scooterbird]

Sounds like the birth of "factoids".

To blushing_grace's point: reporting on the weather makes a certain amount of sense. It's not that I have problems with their choice of subjects (most of the time), but with their "angles". Ernesto turned out to be as well covered as the flooding we had in April. I think there's a cart-before-horse problem - "News happens where we show up", rather than the other way around.

[madbodger]

So your assertion is that we were all conceived during power outages and such?

[jchance]

Re "idiocy of building a city in a soap dish"--I have to defend the Crescent City, as Crystal is originally from there. It wasn't sunken originally; that was a result of the city being there, both the weight of buildings and pumping. And by the time it happened, it was home to a lot of people.

[efbq]

True, and it's even understandable that they didn't realize that the way they were running the city was turning it into a soapdish.

However, it's been obvious for a long time that that's what was happening, and I haven't heard that anyone seriously suggested changing things to reverse the process.

[debboamerik]

My parents, who had a news-addicted anxiety-prone nine-year-old on their hands, limited my news exposure to the following:
PBS
NPR
Newspapers

This was after I started having nightmares about what I saw on the news. My father, a television producer, had to explain to me that most TV and radio news is not about news, but about viewership/ listenership. I haven't paid the least bit of attention to those slicker-wearing idiots since.

[scooterbird]

Now that is a wise dad.

[little_carrot]

What I hate is the news covering the news. For instance, is anyone unaware that Katie Couric anchored the news this week? Is it important? No, not really. So why is NPR covering this story? She is, of course, the first woman to have such a position - but she's also been made captain of a sinking ship - noone is watching network news anymore - probably because of the above.

[kimberlyknits]

Now enter, as of this past weekend, "Hurricane" Ernesto. I say "hurricane" - and please do make the air quotes - because it did in fact become such for about thirty minutes while it was somewhere outside of a Motel 6 in Santee, South Carolina, or wherever. The point was that Ernesto was like Katrina in the same way that the Taj Mahal is like a buffalo on a go-kart...that is to say, not at all. Ernesto, after a fairly uneventful tour through Florida, blundered onto the shores of the Outer Banks about as organized as the Democratic Party, with winds of about 50 klicks or so if you leaned into it a bit. Panic-stricken residents of the coast, who may have in fact seen storms like this in the past, ran at full mosey into their houses, where they mixed drinks, argued about what football teams made the best draft picks this year, and waited for the power to come back on.
"as organized as the Democratic party..." You give Ernesto way too much credit here, because nothing is as "organized" as today's Dems