If you’ve watched any of the news coverage of Hurricane Irene, you will have noticed that the new law has taken effect which mandates all reporters to update us while standing out in the rain, preferably while being put in mortal danger. But from taking a glance at Geraldo over at Fox News during a commercial from CNN, I noticed that you don’t have to be in a precarious position, so long as you’re being rained on. There must be a law about it or something, or else you’d think somebody would use some common sense and report from inside, where the wind and rain don’t ruin the audio, and where the camera lens doesn’t get all fogged up and covered in rain drops, etc. They could just show video behind them, and we could still see the fury of the storm, but we’d also get to hear the report, and they would demonstrate the importance of behaving properly and seeking shelter during a hurricane. (Seriously: How are we supposed to be able to trust these guys when they don't even have enough sense to come in out of the rain? I mean, really!)
If it was me reporting on the storm, I would set up a green screen indoors with a shower head spraying warm water on my head while a green screen showed the hurricane footage from outside. Or is that cheating? I guess it’s not fair to be able to hear or see what people are saying. And it’s definitely not permissible for reporters to exhibit sanity or sensibility by safeguarding their persons, especially when it would be easy to do so, and even more effective to report the story. (That’s for pansies!)
If it was me reporting on the storm, I would set up a green screen indoors with a shower head spraying warm water on my head while a green screen showed the hurricane footage from outside. Or is that cheating? I guess it’s not fair to be able to hear or see what people are saying. And it’s definitely not permissible for reporters to exhibit sanity or sensibility by safeguarding their persons, especially when it would be easy to do so, and even more effective to report the story. (That’s for pansies!)
Yeah, I guess if the reporters aren’t getting rained on and blown around, there might as well not even bother being a storm out.
But Geraldo was just standing out on the sidewalk right outside their headquarters getting rained on with a crew of guys wearing raincoats. How ridiculous is that? What, would his wife not let him go out in the dangerous part of the storm, and so the best he could do was to stand out on the sidewalk and get drizzled on? How silly can you get? (Maybe that was his punishment from his wife for all that sex bragging he did in his stupid, egomaniacal book. Probably not, but I can dream, can’t I?) I was hoping Geraldo would have the cojones to tell them he wasn’t going to stand outside like an idiot just because every other idiot in the news biz does it. It’s really stupid, and it just makes it hard to hear them, and they set a really bad example for other people by making it look safe enough for anyone to be able to do. What jerks!
But if everyone else is doing it anyway, I think they ought to drag the anchor’s desk out into the rising water and let them anchor the news from there until the water rises above their heads. In fact, maybe they could sit in the desk wearing scuba gear and get filmed with underwater cameras. I mean, if they’re going to try to show the power of a hurricane’s storm surge, the least they could do is make the anchor broadcast from the shoreline and let us see them get submerged and churned around in the raging torrents of water. And if the reporters are going to be out in the storm, it makes the anchors look like a bunch of wimps and losers to be safely ensconced in a dry, warm studio. Push them out in the storm with the rest of them, that’s what I say! How about tying one of them to a pier piling with an oxygen tank and a diving helmet and some camera chained to them, and let them report from the disaster zone! Hey, maybe they’ll get blown into a building and find themselves back in a studio-like setting anyway! It’s the least they owe us for gritty realism in news reporting! That is, unless they’re too pampered and cowardly to take on a real news story.
Oh, CNN just asked some guy about what he would do if he got the National Guard troops to help with the storm. I would have them shoot at the hurricane. Maybe they could scare it away. If that didn’t work, maybe they could shoot some missiles at it. That ought to do the trick! At the very least, maybe they could put those silly waterlogged reporters out of their misery. I hope they have cold medicine provided for them with their healthcare plan! (Ah-Choo!)
