With another hurricane season almost behind us, it's time to write about the inundation of reporters, newscasters, and other pundits that dominated our tv screens while the wicked weather wailed in the background. I'm talking about reporters standing in the middle of the hurricanes (of course this could apply to earthquakes, tornadoes, and also tsunamis) talking about how the wind is blowing rooftops off the houses and the rain is drowning everything in sight; everything except for the reporter and the cameraman. These reporters, or hurricane whores as they are called, are determined to bring the public the story not from the safety of their studio but in the trenches. This raises the question: Why can't they focus on the family stuck in their home, forced to wait out the storm because they don't have a car to get out of town? Why can't they do a piece on people caught in the storm, the human interest piece of it? Just because the reporter stands "in the middle of the storm" does not mean it's newsworthy; it means it's stupid. That's not news, that's just poor judgment. Although I did enjoy a Today show piece that aired earlier this year. The reporter was doing her post-storm piece from a canoe and in the middle of the segment two men walked into the view of the camera. Yes, they actually walked which made the reporters canoe seem unnecessary. Turns out the water was not feet deep but only ankle deep. As the season winds to a close we can look back on this season as the one in which mother nature said to us, "I may decide to take a nap from time to time but I can wake up any time I want."

paul