I watched a little bit of the live coverage of Hurricane Irma as it swept ashore over Ft. Myers, FL. CNBC had a few reporters there, who were outside in the eye.
As the hurricane came closer, Mike Bettes of the Weather Channel was standing out in a road, doing his best to stand erect. At one point, he groaned loudly because a piece of debris hit him in the back. A lot of buildings in Florida have those Spanish-mission style terracotta roofs; when those tiles come off, they are heavy (compared to asphalt shingles) and, because they're most likely broken, rather pointy.
What is fucking wrong with these clowns? I doubt if any of them would stand in the middle of a gunfight or on the doorstep of a building that was burning down. Neither would they stand in the middle of I-5 to report on the traffic.
They could put a camera in a reasonably safe location and comment on the storm from there. They can show the rain, the wind gust, shit blowing down the street and trees bending/snapping. There is no adult-grade reason for any of these fools to stand out in the middle of a fucking hurricane.
One of these folks is going to be struck down and seriously hurt or killed one of these days. When that happens, you can bet that the weather reporters will go into mourning about the tragic loss and so forth and so on. They'll completely ignore the point that what they are doing is playing Russian Roulette with Nature.
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There was a short lived sitcom called "The Class." One of the characters was a pompous TV anchorwoman, who had humorously bad luck. In one episode, she was doing the talking in a tropical storm shtick, when a flying stop sign winged in from off camera, striking her in the head. At first, her friends are horrified, but they Tivoed it, and kept watching it over and over with sadistic glee. I think of that every time I see one of these people on the news.
Yeah, the suits must think it helps the ratings to stand them out in the hurricane. I would hope that they are wrong, but I fear that they may be right.
-Doug in Oakland
Ratings, yes.
They will reconsider when enough telecom equipment is damaged.
Two words : Darwin award.
And thus the quality of journalism will improve ;-)
In that horrible volcano movie with Tommy Lee Jones, when a volcano erupts in LA, there was a scene where a TV reporter doing a standup was creamed by some very large piece of flying debris.
And here's TWC's Mike Bettes nearly getting swept away as a tornado swoops behind him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuMAHqiDE0g
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