Everyone But Reporters Can Leave
Pity the poor television reporter who always seems to be smack in the middle of a hurricane or other major storm. I can understand why it’s important to have a reporter on scene in, say, a war zone, where you want contemporary news and the only way to gather it is live. But why expose a reporter to extreme weather conditions when everyone else is told to get out of dodge?
I personally don’t gain anything by seeing a reporter blown about by the wind and dumped on by the rain simply to report, “Well, Jack, as you can tell it’s really windy out here and there’s a lot of rain.” What I care about is what the storm is likely to do over the next day or so, which gives me and others a chance to prepare, and not what it’s doing at that moment. Not to mention someone in a studio can tell me what it’s doing as well as someone on scene. For crying out loud, Mr. and Ms. news producer, let them in out of the rain and snow!