OP/ED: Thrashing About in the Wind and the Rain

You've seen them, dozens of them at a time, while you channel surf the news networks looking for hurricane information. Don't these people have enough sense to come in out of the rain? Apparently, not. They're reporters and they're putting their lives on the line to bring you the news. Tell them to stop it. We get it, already!




I've been thinking about this for years and I think this is the season that I am going to unload on news reporters for thrashing about in the wind and the rain with a microphone reporting on hurricanes. I saw Steve Harrigan of Fox News a couple of hurricanes ago get nailed in the head by a piece of glass. You could tell it hurt.

This is the same Steve Harrigan who did a stellar job of reporting from Iraq. When Steve was in Iraq, he always appeared with his slightly too small Kevlar helmet and his flak jacket. He's no dummy. He knows that a bullet could pierce his skull or a stray piece of shrapnel could remove his head.

What happens to Steve when a hurricane blows through? Does he become manic and suffer from delusions of grandeur? Doesn't he know that wind and rain are the least of his worries? Doesn't he know that a shingle from a rooftop or piece of sheet metal from a building could relieve him of his brain-housing group just as fast as a piece of shrapnel from an IED? Well, I guess he does now.

But, Harrigan is not alone. No, you can turn on any channel and see them by the dozens, male and female alike, standing there in the rain, faces dripping a combination of sweat and rain, screaming into a microphone, pointing at debris flying by, holding their anemometers in the air. Last year, I sent a heartfelt email to Geraldo Rivera imploring him to take the lead in stopping the madness. It was wasted bandwidth. What else would you expect from Geraldo?

I sent an email to Greta Van Susteran last night when I learned that she was in Houston asking her to be careful and, for God's sake, stay out of the wind and the rain. Fortunately, for everyone who loves Greta, she spent her show standing in a misty, gentle breeze. Greta has the best news program on any channel and she provides a lot of hope to a lot of tragedy-stricken families. We don't need to see her get decapitated on live TV.

I remember about ten years ago watching Dan Rather holding on to a pole in a hurricane practically blown horizontal. Now you know that even ten years ago, Dan was elderly and had been the anchor for CBS for about four decades. Did he need to scream into a microphone during a Cat 3 hurricane for us viewers to get the idea that those things are violent as hell? Well?

I have heard that Rather made his name in the news business in Texas covering tropical cyclonic activity. And now that I think about it, I'd be willing to bet that Dan Rather is responsible, at least in part, for a couple of generations of reporters who every chance they get scramble like cats in a tuna factory to get to where they can stand in a driving rain storm screaming into a microphone.

If you feel as I do, why not send an email to your favorite newscaster and ask that reporter to stop with the cheap theatrics, find a safe place to set up the camera and let us watch the rain and debris blow by while he speaks softly and calmly into the microphone. We get it, already!

Great post! I too am sick of it. They're always standing under the canopy of some hotel front, holding onto something, acting like they're out there where it's really bad. And another thing, they always the words "hunker down" when it's a weather related story. I wish they'd stop that too.

Am I the only one wishing they would get hit on live tv so they would have to cover their own story?

I dunno I rather enjoy seeing these people suffer in the storm. It is entertaining.

Shep Smith got knocked over from the wind last night, it looked like a hard fall...I think eventually one of them is going to get themselves killed or seriously injured.

My personal favorite this hurricane was Geraldo this morning saying the wind was still howling etc and if you looked down the street behind him there was a mild mild breeze going thru the trees. I mean really get your reporting right at least -- he could have said we have intermittent gusts of high winds or something. Kind of took away from the seriousness of the storm damage when someone is reporting something that is obviously false at the time they are saying it.

I think this whole thing is a sign of just how little a reporter can really know during a storm. It is too dangerous to go around looking for damage and there's nothing they can truly report except what they can see. So, to spice things up, they jump out into the wind and rain.

Reporters were saying that New Orleans dodged a bullet when 80% of the city was under water. They were all in the French Quarter where it was high and dry and were absolutely clueless as to the real destruction.

Watching CNN live last night with Anderson standing out in the rain and reporting back every 5 minutes on how it was going it looked like an exercise in masochism.

Not only did he have to invent stuff to say on the spot, but it was obvious that any sane person would get out of the wind and raint, as his camera man did, standing in it didn't make it any more real.

Earlier on one reporter (maybe the same one) talked about how he was standing in a puddle and how it wasn't worth moving out of it. It was so funny, here we are, audience of millions, and this guy is talking about getting his feet wet.

Too little information and too much airtime for them.

Good analogy Grady.

What really bugs me is when they stand out in the rain each and every time they make it sound worse then in actually is. A good example is what someone noted about Geraldo this morning, I saw the same clip, disgusting is all I can say and that goes for all networks not just FOX.

Oh, please leave the reporters alone

They are all entertaining it if wasn't for them we would not be analyzing them in here.

They provide with good live circus performance all the time.

I love them in TV but like somebody said before, sometimes I wonder what will happen if one of them get hit and hurt right in front of the cameras.

When you see these news clowns on TV, I tend to think some of the public may actually consider hurricanes to be not very dangerous. Playing in it like kids sends the wrong message, and let ratings be damned.



Let's make snowmen kiddies, blizzards are fun too!

You want reallity, ratings and accuracy, Have the guy sipping a coffee inside saying, "I'm not going out there, that's how bad it is". I think people would get the point then.

The best example I've seen of how some of these field reporters are dumber than dirt happened during Katrina.

One of the weather channel reporters stopped his truck saying it was too dangerous to be driving around due to all of the debris flying around, then proceeded to get out of his truck to walk around to the other side to show where a something had just smashed through one of his rear windows.

My brother-in-law (who had evacuated to my house in Houston) and I just looked at each other in disbelief and said the same thing. If it weren't safe to be inside a truck would you get out of the truck in the open and proceed to demonstrate to a nationwide audience what an idiot you are??

Lol @ Regenmacher photo.

Caption: Its not looking good folks, these snow flakes are at least 2 cm's wide and growing by the hour. Get near a fireplace ASAP. You may even need a warm drink as it just looks like its not going to let up. This is the worst I have ever seen in the last 2 hours.

It's funny because it's true.

I want to be a meteorologist, but not one on TV, I want to sit in a car, or in a lab somewhere looking at data. People tell me all the time I'd be great on TV. I just sit back and think to myself, I'd never want to be on TV because I get more chances to behave like a fool. Or, making other people believe that what I'm doing is normal, for example running around in a hurricane. Stupid reporters! There they are, out there every year shooting LIVE footage on some ravaging storm, one of these days someone's going to get hit in the face by debris or something. Good point about sitting inside with coffee, that's totally correct, if you want people to get the idea its too dangerious to go out, don't go out yourself. Especially not when you're in your mid-30s sometimes overweight, and certainly not trained for this kind of thing on a permanent basis.

Originally posted by whatsyourpoint
One of the weather channel reporters stopped his truck saying it was too dangerous to be driving around due to all of the debris flying around, then proceeded to get out of his truck to walk around to the other side to show where a something had just smashed through one of his rear windows.

You beat me to it.

My other favorite was from a hurricane here in Florida. They showed a clip of a palm tree crashing down a couple of feet behind a reporter. Later, the same news crews were still standing close to trees.

I think they do it just for the audience factor. They know that if they do some rediculously stupid it will not only retain some viewers, but better yet, it will get them talking about it in the future ! ALA here.

After all it would be quite boring hearing them blab on about it while sitting in a chair etc.

Sadly someone is going to get hurt or killed eventually.

Watching them cover a major storm is entertaining though, and not in this sense of reporter danger, but in the fact that they eventually run out of things to say.

When they were covering the Katrina aftermath at the dome on Fox it was downright hilarious as they basically said everything they could 10 times over.

Then they bring out Geraldo to finish it off. I still think he needs ritalin some times.

Originally posted by Dulcimer
Am I the only one wishing they would get hit on live tv so they would have to cover their own story?

It's not only the moron in front of the camera. What will they all say when some cameraman takes a peice of debris in the back of the skull?

I guess wearing a helmet to cover a shower of rain would look, well, wussy, to say the least.

My favourite is when the hairstyle in the studio asks the reporter what it's like "out there".

IT'S A ----ING HURRICANE, WHAT DO YOU THINK IT'S LIKE?