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I am starting a very low key Twitter campaign. Perhaps a low key nagging campaign would be a better description.
I am concerned about the habit of the television media of sending reporter out into extreme weather conditions to report on those weather conditions. As the winter closes in and the weather worsens I’ve seen a number of reporters sent out into storms. More storms and more reports from the eye of the hurricane are to be expected. That is my forecast. I don’t think this dangerous practise improves my understanding of what’s going on. I would like it to stop.
I think it’s a health and safety issue. I mean a health and safety issue beyond the idea that people shouldn’t be made to work in cold, wet, windy places. They shouldn’t but I know that argument doesn’t resonate with many people. I’m thinking about the “Hey, we could really kill this guy” type of health and safety. When I was a teenager I lived in Tropical North Queensland. The area is prone to cyclones. The roofs are made of tin. One year a couple were caught out in the storm. A piece of tin roof, blown off by the wind, hit them as they ran for safety and rather savagely decapitated them both.
Sending reporters out into extreme storms or very cold conditions is dangerous. People get killed in those kind of environments.
I don’t think we should ask or expect people to work in an unsafe way. I might allow a proviso that we shouldn’t ask or expect people to work in an unsafe way unless there were significant, vital, life-saving reasons to do so and they had made an informed decision. We call people who do that work heroes. Do I need or want my weather reporters to be heroic?
Is there any reason for reporters to be out in extreme weather? Does it improve the quality of the news they are delivering? Am I helped to make better decisions or kept generally informed of the state of my community? I don’t think so.
Firstly, the quality of the data from an on the spot reporter is less good than from a studio based reporter. I want my weather reports and forecasts from someone who has recently spoken to the Met Office, preferable on a landline with a good connection. The Met Office have access the thousands of data points and the huge super-computers and the skills and experience to forecast the weather. One guy in a field in Kincardineshire tells me nothing, expect that in the middle of a storm, it’s windy in Kincardineshire. Frankly, as I don’t live in Kincardineshire I’m not that bothered if it is windy in one of their fields or lay-byes. I’m more interested in whether it’s going to be too windy to leave my flat in Edinburgh to go to some other building in Edinburgh. For this information the on-spot-reporter in Kincardineshire has little to say to me from his own experience. In fact, what efficacy the on-the-spot reporter has comes from his recent communications with the news room or the Met Office. I don’t need to see some poor bastard being wuthered by a storm to believe Judith Ralston when she says she’s just spoken to the Met Office and they say it’s going to be windy.
Secondly, when comparing the quality of the communication of the on-the-spot reporter with Ms Ralston the on-the-spot chap comes a poor second. His voice is muffled by the hood of his parka and the howling of the wind in the microphone, held unsteadily in the hand of cold, wet sound engineer. The camera is splattered with water and shakes from the violence of the storm. The mumbled delivery of the reporter is badly conveyed to me by technology stretched to the limit of its powers by the awesome power of the weather.
He will then cross live to the studio so the weather presenter can tell me what the weather will be doing in the 99.999% of the country that our on-the-spot correspondent can’t see.
In contrast Ms Ralston, a trained singer and weather reporter, presenting in the best possible environment and supported by a host of audio visual aids and skilled technicians can convey to me clearly and concisely the information that I require. What is happening everywhere and what is happening where I am and what will be the case tomorrow.
When I watch the on-the-spot report what I am judderingly presented with is a cone of light showing a cold, wet man with uncertain voice surrounded by pitch black and I am asked to take his word for it that outside this cone of light a fierce and violent storm buffets those closest and dearest to my heart. I cannot see the storm. He is standing in the dark. If I am to take his word for it, might I not place my trust in the modulated tones of Ms Ralston, backed as she is by millions of pounds and hundreds of years of weather forecasting skill?
The on-the-spot reporter does not offer me any more useful information than Ms Ralston. Nor does he convey it better. On both counts he is bested by his safer, studio bound colleague.
I am not suggesting that all on-the-spot reporters in dangerous situations add nothing to the news they report. A reporter at a violent civil disturbance is able to sample the mood of the crowd, talk to activists on both sides, give me some insight into the causes and rights and wrongs of the situation. A war correspondent is able to give me something that I don’t, and hope never to have, the feeling of being at war. But the weather has no opinions on austerity Britain, it has no agenda to be understood and I’ve been out in the wind.
Why then are these poor lads and lasses dragged from the comfort of their office or four by four to tell me badly, what is happening in a very small part of the country? I think it has something to do with the blurring of the line between News and Entertainment. The weather is an awesome spectacle when it is at its full power. I well remember the fear, excitement and awe I experienced when I saw lampposts in Townsville swaying through 90 degrees in the wind. There is also a great deal of pleasure to be derived from watching someone struggle in unpleasant conditions whilst we are safe and warm and well fed.
So I think out motives are not pure. We’re not seeking the best information. We really want an opportunity to ooh and ahh over the natural wonder of the weather and say “look at that poor bugger in the kagool”
If you want to know what the weather is going to do listen to the weather report from the Met Office.
If you want to know what a storm feels like, in the words of Roosevelt E Roosevelt: You got a window? Open it.
I am concerned about the habit of the television media of sending reporter out into extreme weather conditions to report on those weather conditions. As the winter closes in and the weather worsens I’ve seen a number of reporters sent out into storms. More storms and more reports from the eye of the hurricane are to be expected. That is my forecast. I don’t think this dangerous practise improves my understanding of what’s going on. I would like it to stop.
I think it’s a health and safety issue. I mean a health and safety issue beyond the idea that people shouldn’t be made to work in cold, wet, windy places. They shouldn’t but I know that argument doesn’t resonate with many people. I’m thinking about the “Hey, we could really kill this guy” type of health and safety. When I was a teenager I lived in Tropical North Queensland. The area is prone to cyclones. The roofs are made of tin. One year a couple were caught out in the storm. A piece of tin roof, blown off by the wind, hit them as they ran for safety and rather savagely decapitated them both.
Sending reporters out into extreme storms or very cold conditions is dangerous. People get killed in those kind of environments.
I don’t think we should ask or expect people to work in an unsafe way. I might allow a proviso that we shouldn’t ask or expect people to work in an unsafe way unless there were significant, vital, life-saving reasons to do so and they had made an informed decision. We call people who do that work heroes. Do I need or want my weather reporters to be heroic?
Is there any reason for reporters to be out in extreme weather? Does it improve the quality of the news they are delivering? Am I helped to make better decisions or kept generally informed of the state of my community? I don’t think so.
Firstly, the quality of the data from an on the spot reporter is less good than from a studio based reporter. I want my weather reports and forecasts from someone who has recently spoken to the Met Office, preferable on a landline with a good connection. The Met Office have access the thousands of data points and the huge super-computers and the skills and experience to forecast the weather. One guy in a field in Kincardineshire tells me nothing, expect that in the middle of a storm, it’s windy in Kincardineshire. Frankly, as I don’t live in Kincardineshire I’m not that bothered if it is windy in one of their fields or lay-byes. I’m more interested in whether it’s going to be too windy to leave my flat in Edinburgh to go to some other building in Edinburgh. For this information the on-spot-reporter in Kincardineshire has little to say to me from his own experience. In fact, what efficacy the on-the-spot reporter has comes from his recent communications with the news room or the Met Office. I don’t need to see some poor bastard being wuthered by a storm to believe Judith Ralston when she says she’s just spoken to the Met Office and they say it’s going to be windy.
Secondly, when comparing the quality of the communication of the on-the-spot reporter with Ms Ralston the on-the-spot chap comes a poor second. His voice is muffled by the hood of his parka and the howling of the wind in the microphone, held unsteadily in the hand of cold, wet sound engineer. The camera is splattered with water and shakes from the violence of the storm. The mumbled delivery of the reporter is badly conveyed to me by technology stretched to the limit of its powers by the awesome power of the weather.
He will then cross live to the studio so the weather presenter can tell me what the weather will be doing in the 99.999% of the country that our on-the-spot correspondent can’t see.
In contrast Ms Ralston, a trained singer and weather reporter, presenting in the best possible environment and supported by a host of audio visual aids and skilled technicians can convey to me clearly and concisely the information that I require. What is happening everywhere and what is happening where I am and what will be the case tomorrow.
When I watch the on-the-spot report what I am judderingly presented with is a cone of light showing a cold, wet man with uncertain voice surrounded by pitch black and I am asked to take his word for it that outside this cone of light a fierce and violent storm buffets those closest and dearest to my heart. I cannot see the storm. He is standing in the dark. If I am to take his word for it, might I not place my trust in the modulated tones of Ms Ralston, backed as she is by millions of pounds and hundreds of years of weather forecasting skill?
The on-the-spot reporter does not offer me any more useful information than Ms Ralston. Nor does he convey it better. On both counts he is bested by his safer, studio bound colleague.
I am not suggesting that all on-the-spot reporters in dangerous situations add nothing to the news they report. A reporter at a violent civil disturbance is able to sample the mood of the crowd, talk to activists on both sides, give me some insight into the causes and rights and wrongs of the situation. A war correspondent is able to give me something that I don’t, and hope never to have, the feeling of being at war. But the weather has no opinions on austerity Britain, it has no agenda to be understood and I’ve been out in the wind.
Why then are these poor lads and lasses dragged from the comfort of their office or four by four to tell me badly, what is happening in a very small part of the country? I think it has something to do with the blurring of the line between News and Entertainment. The weather is an awesome spectacle when it is at its full power. I well remember the fear, excitement and awe I experienced when I saw lampposts in Townsville swaying through 90 degrees in the wind. There is also a great deal of pleasure to be derived from watching someone struggle in unpleasant conditions whilst we are safe and warm and well fed.
So I think out motives are not pure. We’re not seeking the best information. We really want an opportunity to ooh and ahh over the natural wonder of the weather and say “look at that poor bugger in the kagool”
If you want to know what the weather is going to do listen to the weather report from the Met Office.
If you want to know what a storm feels like, in the words of Roosevelt E Roosevelt: You got a window? Open it.
