Next time there's an imminent disaster, I'll watch the network that uses all the already in place webcams to show what's happening rather than allowing/encouraging reporters to agrandize and endanger themselves with the events.
I admit it. I have a ghoulish curiosity about storms. So do lots of people. Storm chasers are a good example. So are all the people who watch the all-news channels during storms and boost those ratings. But I tire of reporters leaning into the wind and rain, wading in the water, and shouting the obvious extreme cliches.
I'm with this guy.
Then the Hurricane Sandy devastation in New Jersey and New York. Footage of flooded subways, as if massive waves of water finding an outlet in large holes in the ground was a surprise. In Toronto’s east end, a tree fell. Power went out. CP24 savoured it all, at last some real, honest-to-God disaster effects.
For all the raw footage and dramatic scenes of flooding, fires, rescue workers waist-deep in water and darkened buildings lashed by wind, television struggles to convey the authenticity of disaster-inducing storms. The fallback position is disaster-movie cliché and panicked voices in a studio commanding viewers to look (just look!) at this footage of flooding! The term “weather porn” doesn’t do it justice.