Today Show Misses the Big Weather Point
I get emails from a guy named "Riff" called Real Media Riffs. Today's post chastised the mainstream media for their blase attitude toward global warming. He begins with a new issue of Yankee Magazine---the cover shows a tot with snow falling around him "Snow Days where to go, why we love them." They should have read their own weather predictions!
"Like most Northeasterners, we've experienced occasional spells of freakishly warm weather, but what we're witnessing now is no Indian summer. It's more like an endless summer.
The media are often criticized for missing the most important stories in any given year. If Al Gore is right, they may be missing the most important story of our species. And that cover line may read: "Inhabitable For Humanity."
Sure, big media covers the story every once in a while, but most of it is either out-there, alarmist stuff, or prosaic pedestrian journalism.
Global warming is the biggest story ever. It should be the lead story every day, and there should be an acute media focus on exactly what our society is doing to address the issue: what the government and industry are doing, and what we as citizens are doing.
If NBC's "Today" show coverage of the phenomenon is any indication, not much.
In a segment entitled "Why the wacky weather this winter?" on this morning's edition of "Today," anchor Meredith Vieira gushes, "Now to what can only be described as wacky winter weather," and asks, "Has the world been turned upside down?"
NBC News correspondent Lisa Daniels goes on to report, "Ice skating without jackets in Central Park. Cherry blossoms in Washington D.C. in January. What's going on here?" The segment then cuts to a woman-on-the-street interview in which a sunny- dispositioned global warming fan admits, "I enjoy it. I think it's great."
"Like most Northeasterners, we've experienced occasional spells of freakishly warm weather, but what we're witnessing now is no Indian summer. It's more like an endless summer.
The media are often criticized for missing the most important stories in any given year. If Al Gore is right, they may be missing the most important story of our species. And that cover line may read: "Inhabitable For Humanity."
Sure, big media covers the story every once in a while, but most of it is either out-there, alarmist stuff, or prosaic pedestrian journalism.
Global warming is the biggest story ever. It should be the lead story every day, and there should be an acute media focus on exactly what our society is doing to address the issue: what the government and industry are doing, and what we as citizens are doing.
If NBC's "Today" show coverage of the phenomenon is any indication, not much.
In a segment entitled "Why the wacky weather this winter?" on this morning's edition of "Today," anchor Meredith Vieira gushes, "Now to what can only be described as wacky winter weather," and asks, "Has the world been turned upside down?"
NBC News correspondent Lisa Daniels goes on to report, "Ice skating without jackets in Central Park. Cherry blossoms in Washington D.C. in January. What's going on here?" The segment then cuts to a woman-on-the-street interview in which a sunny- dispositioned global warming fan admits, "I enjoy it. I think it's great."
posted by Max Hartshorne at 8:28 AM
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