{"id":721,"date":"2017-03-30T15:37:06","date_gmt":"2017-03-30T20:37:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/staging2.butchrenfroe.com\/?p=721"},"modified":"2017-03-30T15:37:06","modified_gmt":"2017-03-30T20:37:06","slug":"weather-coverage-responses-on-facebook-or-why-i-am-becoming-a-curmudgeon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/butchrenfroe.com\/index.php\/2017\/03\/30\/weather-coverage-responses-on-facebook-or-why-i-am-becoming-a-curmudgeon\/","title":{"rendered":"Weather Coverage Responses On Facebook. Or Why I Am Becoming A Curmudgeon."},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Pretty much me. Sometimes. When I am exposed to a certain amount of stupid.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I am turning into a grouchy old man. I know this. I accept this. Please note, there is a rant to follow.<\/p>\n

It makes me feel better, okay?<\/p>\n

The evening of March 29, 2017 saw a round of severe weather come through Arkansas. Nothing unusual about that at all. It ’tis the season for that here in this part of the country.<\/p>\n

We had\u00a0active tornado warnings.<\/p>\n

I looked at the Facebook Live feeds from a couple of the local stations. \u00a0This is a good thing, by the way. \u00a0A way to get live broadcast information if your power goes out streaming to \u00a0your mobile device. \u00a0I am all for the use of social media and streaming in the case of active warnings. I believe it is a tool that that the potential to save lives.<\/p>\n

Let me stop here to say that it has been a few years since I worked in broadcasting, so maybe I forgot how dumb some people are. \u00a0I mean, I have talked to my fair share of people via telephone and email during my time in radio and TV that sometimes they could and did say things so stupid that it gave me\u00a0Forest Whitaker eye:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Then I made the mistake of reading the comments as they scrolled in during the THV Facebook Live stream.<\/p>\n

The majority of folks posting to the live weather coverage video were complimentary and thankful for the information being given to them. \u00a0But, see they had to break in during\u00a0Survivor. \u00a0A reality TV show was interrupted\u00a0to tell someone about an active tornado warning.<\/p>\n

Now, most sane, rational people with any modicum of brain processing ability would understand that this was the correct thing to do. \u00a0Nevermind the FCC mandate that specifies broadcasting in the public interest, lives could be at stake. \u00a0But no. \u00a0Seeing which person who can\u00a0eat the most bugs or worms and run an obstacle\u00a0course is obviously more important to some people than, oh I dunno, A TORNADO WARNING!<\/p>\n

Here are actual screen captures of some comments:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

First, it was a warning. See unlike you Miss Commentator – who by the way if you don’t\u00a0live in the world of unicorns and fairy tale dreams full-time, you at least spend most of your summers there – the rest of us realize that:<\/p>\n

1 – Severe weather situations are a fluid thing and they change. Often very quickly.
\n2 – People will tune into the coverage at different times, so they have to repeat information.<\/p>\n

Yeah. See? \u00a0No. Probably not.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

Sure. We will just forget about the warnings. Who cares about those folks anyway. I have covered this.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I mean sure, a lot of us WILL go outside and look during an active warning.<\/p>\n

I didn’t say it was smart, just that we will do it.<\/p>\n

Ok. Rant done.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am turning into a grouchy old man. I know this. I accept this. Please note, there is a rant to follow. It makes me feel better, okay? The evening of March 29, 2017 saw a round of severe weather come through Arkansas. Nothing unusual about that at all. It ’tis the season for that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/butchrenfroe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/butchrenfroe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/butchrenfroe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/butchrenfroe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/butchrenfroe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/butchrenfroe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/butchrenfroe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/butchrenfroe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/butchrenfroe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}