I was just watching Michael Moore, who lives in New York City and who makes documentaries, interviewed on CNN by Piers. Moore criticized the reporters in the field for holding fixed positions while they missed some parts of stories like a neighbourhood burning on Manhatten.
He’s a twit, a silly twit. During the height of the storm it would have been almost impossible to move the CNN vans around the region. In a brilliant move, CNN dispatched the reporters and crews before the height of the storm so they could be mobile and locate where they had enough shelter to do the job while giving the folks back home a global picture of the storm. Talking heads usually seen in the studio were out in the boonies ducking flying debris and showing folks who might have had an impulse to go out some reality. Instead of them being the news, CNN covered the storm very well. The fact that CNN did not have an infinite number of reporters does not take away from the success of the strategy. CNN did get a reporter to the burning neighbourhood while the fire still raged…
So, Michael Moore, go back to making documentaries. You do that well. Let CNN report on current events. They do that well. Compliment each other on what you do well.
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He is not a complete twit. The fixed positions one is valid question. The answer is a little different.
In the Iraq war media was embedded with the forces. Australia with the Floods media ends up embedded with the assessors.
I would question the CNN vans all over the place. They are just extra items to be possible problems if they are not embedded with the rescue and support people.
Good question is exactly how did CNN choose their locations. Where they were the emergency people wanted them. Fixed positions to watch like key substations and other key items is valuable.
If they were just positioned to get shots I have a issue with that. Site seeing a disaster causes problems.
Really reporter being in flying debris to show how much of a risk it is without good reason is very stupid. We need the store equal to buster from the mythbusters. If you are thinking of going out side this is how much it going to hurt don’t.
That one of the desk people being out is to increase their cred by doing something stupid.
A woman was killed in the New York area by a piece of a sign carried by the wind. There was no word on why she was out in the storm. People have no idea how dangerous it is.
kozmcrae wrote, “People have no idea how dangerous it is.”
Yes. I have walked around in “mild” storms with 50m/h winds and had to lean. It was a nightmare with low visibility and slippery footing. No fun at all, let alone the ultimate problem of even being able to get to some place. People panic, make poor decisions and are reluctant to reverse a decision all leading to avoidable disasters.
CNN probably could have used helmets and Kevlar vests for a bit more safety. Anderson seems to be the only one that ended up in real difficulty doing the job. His truck kept losing satellite link because it was rocking even though they got into the lea of a building. They might have been better off with jacking the vehicle to put it on posts. Still, hunkering down in fixed locations with known hazards was a much better idea than trying to drive around in that mess. I think CNN’s coverage was brilliant even though it was fairly localized to a small area near the eye of the storm. It conveyed valuable messages to all who had TV or Internet access.
Something good that might come out of this is a renewed understanding of the essential nature of cellular and wifi services. I think more governments will decide to make those part of the infrastructure just like roads and utility lines. Instead of multiple networks with incompatible standards we may move to a single network with common standards and redundancy. Imagine a system with solar-powered access points on every utility pole and tall building. As long as the storm doesn’t get them all the network is still sound. Meshing software may become standard on smart thingies as well. While a mesh may be slow, it is resilient and should work well for broadcasts of announcements and such. I would bet that OEMs and consumers will both be interested in battery-life and charging systems in a big way from now on.