One of the things I learned in nearly thirty years of covering news is that the general viewing and listening public is sometimes slow to react in the face of threatening weather, sometimes with tragic results.
That's not so much the case in "tornado alley" where weather warnings are commonplace and residents realize the value of staying alert to changing conditions. But I found it true regularly when I came to Chicago.
We had some bad weather in the Chicago area the other night. Three tornado funnels. Straight-line winds in excess of seventy-miles-per-hour. And an end result of more than a quarter of a million people without power.
The local television stations, one of which touts its multi-million dollar weather studio and committment to weather education, shamefully failed in their responsibility to warn the viewing public of the dangers of the approaching storm.
While The Weather Channel focused its coverage on Chicago for the time period the storm was approaching, the local stations dashed off a couple of quick messages. One station, I am told, offered visuals in the form of screen-crawls and radar but no more than minutes of advice or warnings from their meteorologists.
More than 100 people died in Joplin where, as I understand, they had very little advance warning of a terrifying storm.
In Chicago Tuesday night, by my estimate, the television stations had thirty-to-forty minutes to alert their viewers.
I recognize these stations have contractual agreements with advertisers and their networks. I also realize the stations must be sensitive to viewers in outlying areas who are not affected by storms approaching Chicago. There is also the argument that social media, smart-phones and computers all provide weather coverage.
But consider this, too.
If people had died in our storms, which excuse for television's shameful lack of coverage would have most comforted their family and friends?
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