Friday, March 11, 2011

Bay Area Media and the "Tsunami Event'; Overblown coverage didn't warrant the attention; But haven't we been down that road before?; Friday PM Pulse

In the end, the massive coverage--the deluge of satellite trucks, radio cars, chopper reports, didn't warrant the enormous attention.

The Bay Area largely survived the tsunami/11 coming out of Japan, (where the real story develops,) and I'm not the only one who feels this way.

This story really is about 7000 miles away.

The local connection, (and isn't there always a local connection?) was indeed potentially big at the start. But didn't we all get a clue when nothing of significance took place in Hawaii? Hello!

And don't get me started with boats playing bumper cars in Santa Cruz or evacuations in Crescent City. Please. Valid sidebar? Yes. But the relentless nonstop "team coverage" shit, (which will continue on the evening news) is not worthy of the blasts. When you have to resort to talking about some guy wandering out to the ocean to "see the tsunami" up north, you're, pardon the pun, searchin'.

I'm going to give high marks to a frequent target: KGO Radio, (not the news dept.) but to hosts Ronn Owens and Gil Gross who made the right call and went about their shows without any mention of the local tsunami charade. KGO News? We'll, that's another story. Ditto KCBS. Way, way too much time boys and girls.

And TV was just plain out of hand. Coverage of a "might-be happening" is rather ridiculous--sort of like the 30 minutes of seeing unmanned boats meandering about Santa Cruz harbor. (But hey, nice shot of the Boardwalk.)

Tell you what, stations and outlets--for the amount of money you spent with all that equipment and manpower via the live shots, do this: take half of that money, get reporter A and producer B with Skype on a direct flight into Tokyo where there's a real story.

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5 comments:

  1. Rich you give kudos to Ronn for talking about Mel Gibson today?

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  2. Quake-Tsunami = San Franciso Snow Day :^)

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  3. Once again, you show a total lack of sachel (Yiddish for "common sense"). The KGO News approach was overboard, acknowledged, but KCBS (and KQED, which you don't mention) reported news and potential news in an informative and non-sensationalistic way. Should the stations have ignored the potential for destruction and loss of life? Downplayed it? What if the tsunami wave had been more intense than predicted, and thousands were killed and injured due to not realizing how dangerous the scenario was sizing up to be?

    You don't know what you don't know until you find it out. Better to overdo the coverage and then apologize later, rather than playing it down and having to live with the ramifications of that.

    I'm sure a journalist understands their responsibility to warn as well as inform. Seemingly, a blogger doesn't.

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  4. Rich: Did Gene Burns make an appearance on KGO last night? Will you provide a brief?

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  5. what did you expect? the media loves big drama...only thing they like even better is to spin some story with their leftist slant...

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