By which I mean, the liability of listening to hurricane coverage on the news! And the liability they should be found responsible for with their extremely irresponsible hurricane coverage! The nit-picky way they report on the hurricanes’ strength and landfall timetables, as well as how bad of an example news reporters are with their behavior during storms these days can put people in serious danger, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it has cost some people their lives! I’m being quite serious here.
What I mean is this: In reporting on huge, powerful, deadly hurricanes, cable news and National Hurricane Center reporters and meteorologists have taken to acting like the storm hasn’t really hit yet until the eye-wall has made “landfall” (!). So for a storm like Irene, or Katrina, this means there are deadly hurricane-force winds and torrential rains for hours and hours before they act like the storm has “made landfall”. Now, I know that means the eye-wall has finally touched the coastline, but to the casual observer, it sounds like they still have hours and hours before the storm really hits, when in fact it is raging outside! That means some people might think they have time to drive to a safer location, but they could get swept out to sea or otherwise drown in their car! I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who has noticed this, but many others are probably extremely and dangerously misled by this irresponsible reporting!
And how about this for irresponsible: They have reporters standing outside in the hurricane all day and all night long, making it look perfectly safe for anyone to be outside during the storm (!). Then they say that people shouldn’t go outside because it’s dangerous! What a mixed message they’re sending there with that behavior! Kids might see that and say: “Aww, it’s fine: They’re doing it and they’re safe! We’ll be fine too!” And then they go outside and get killed by a falling tree or get their faces sandblasted off trying to go surfing or whatever. Now, while I don’t wish harm to these reporters, it seems to me it would be better for the public interest for one of these dumbass reporters to get their head taken off by flying debris one of these days to finally demonstrate how dangerous it really is out there during a hurricane! I mean, really! If they all turn out okay forever while engaged in this ridiculously risky and dangerous behavior, what kind of message does that send? People bitch about how the Jackass movies encourage kids to kill themselves doing those stupid stunts for YouTube and such, but these reporters who stand outside in the hurricanes are setting just as bad of an example, if not worse! Because look: everybody knows the Jackass guys are irresponsible jerks (fun, awesome ones, but still…), but the news reporters are purported to be respectable, ostensibly responsible people, and are setting examples for young people. So when kids go outside and drown or are smushed by trees doing a YouTube extreme weather report, they will be responsible for these kids’ deaths! And who knows how many people die going outside because of how reasonably safe it looks for the news guys! We’ll probably never know, since they can’t tell us now, because they’re dead!
Another thing that drives me crazy is how these reporters are so hair-splittingly insulting about their reporting of the hurricane scale number. Katrina was a huge Category 5 hurricane, but the way they reported on it, they were only measuring the inside of the eye-wall as it hit the coastline (!!!). So by the time that tiny part of the storm finally reached the coast, after hours and hours of Category 5 storm raging across the Gulf Coast, the wind had slowed down a bit in that one little part, so they said the whole storm was just a Category 3 when it made landfall. What a load of bullshit! What about the storm that had been raging across the coastline for hours up to then? That doesn’t qualify as having made landfall yet? Really? And what a way to demean the victims of the storm! That’s like saying that a guy who got shot and died was really just struck by a piece of flying debris, because by the time the bullet had passed through the air, and his clothes, it really wasn’t traveling all that fast by then, so it doesn’t really qualify as a bullet anymore. Honestly: What jerks! Katrina was a Category 5 hurricane, and the whole thing is a Category 5 hurricane no matter what it reads when the little middle part finally reaches the city! (Or that is how it should be.) To say otherwise is insulting to those who weathered the storm! (I know they like to constantly measure only the speed of the eye-wall at any given time, but this completely disregards, you know, the whole rest of the storm.) Perhaps we should say that they’re not really reporters, but rather, overpaid jerks who read teleprompters, and that meteorologists are just self-important douche-bags who stand in front of fake maps and make lame jokes. I mean, that’s true anyway!
Anyway, here’s hoping everyone stays safe during this storm, regardless of what dangerous misinformation the news is reporting about it!
