The Media...

is becoming the biggest joke of all time.  I don't know about you, but I feel like I can't get any information from the news.  More and more, these days, I am asking myself what is really going on out there?  What is this school of journalism anyway?  And what's the point of a weather man/woman?

I think this last hurricane "Irene" incident was ridiculous.  I was shocked by the number of reporters who were hardly giving us any real picture about what was going on.  I felt like I was wading through pages of debris that said very little about what was happening to the towns and the folks in line of this storm.  There was a lot of trying to prove their was a hurricane with drama along the pier, but no reality of what was actually taking place.  Prior to the storm, lots of folks along the coastline were sitting and looking out across the ocean as though they were at the movies.  Surprisingly, weather.com wasn't there to hand out 3D glasses.  This is what happens because of the media.  Everything becomes entertaining and as a result, we get entertained and less informed.

Weather.com had reporters up and down the east coast during this hurricane and every last one of them was basically reporting about 10 feet from the coastline.  What does that really tell us?  What do we really get from the fact that you're screaming into your microphone, waves are crashing behind you, and you are pinned against a wall from the force of the wind?   Dave and I actually watched a reporter fling himself against a wall while people in the background behind him, who were closer to the shoreline than he was, were walking along normally.  Reporting such as this tells us nothing more than you're dramatic.  It also makes it look like hype.  Those of us not going through it are likely to not take any of it seriously, while folks a mile or two away could be floating on their beds down their driveways and out into the streets.  We're not getting a very raw or honest picture about what this storm is actually producing and what is happening as a result, locally.  To me, it would have made more sense to have reported from someone's backyard.

Which brings me to this:  Most of what I gathered, concerning this storm, came from regular 'ol citizens who were video taping the situation at home and in their neighborhoods.  None of us want to know the obvious:  If you're standing along the shoreline during a hurricane, you're likely to catch a "breeze" from the water.

Lastly, most of what I was hearing concerned New York City.  Everyone was concerned about New York City. Bleh...bleh...bleh.  Afterward, most New Yorkers poo poo'd the exaggeration of the storm and said they slept through it and carried on with their usual weekend activities.  After all, New York City survived 911 -- they can take anything mother nature dishes up.  In all honesty, if you live in New York, you already live in hell every day; what's a hurricane in the bigger picture? 

Hardly any focus was carried to other states like Vermont, for example, who no doubt got word out of conditions there due to local residents and "amateur" video takers.  That's another thing, who is really amateur here? That's what I want to know.  I get more news from the groggy, toothless guy with the cigarette protruding from his mouth on his iphone than I get from the dramatic fools at weather.com.