It might just be me, but I've found local TV news coverage of the LA fires to be mostly terrible. It's low on information and high on disaster porn/drama, and a fair bit of it has been wildly misleading. They cannot shake their bog standard reporting templates for this critical event.
- On-scene reporters asking people who are literally running around putting out spot fires at their house if they could stop for an interview.
- Picking through the ashes of houses and putting burnt photo albums and other destroyed personal items on camera.
- Certain helicopter reporters yelling mostly low information nonsense for half an hour.
- Obviously wholly unqualified opining on emergency response, and evacuations that has caused massive confusion (no, NBC4, all of LA isn't under a boil-water alert from the DWP).
There's an opportunity here for local TV news to be a useful asset for the community, and they're all too frequently blowing it.
Comments
Displaying 0 of 1 comments
AI6YR Ben
In response to this post@stacey_campbell What LA news needs to do is to hire competent fire analysts to do a play by play. What they do, instead, is they have people who don't know anything about wildfires yammering. I turn off the volume, it's useless info.
I like to think of it as using your Lifestyle/Fashion reporter to call an NFL game. Would you do that? NO! That's what they are doing all the time.
@ai6yr @stacey_campbell
"As I understand it, Keith, water extinguishes fire. And I'm seeing a lot of fire here. So a question I have is, why aren't they putting more water on the fire? Let's go live to Brittany, who is standing in an intersection with a LOT of flashing lights behind her....."
by Coles Street Pothole π ;
@ai6yr @stacey_campbell
the other day they were interviewing some so-called expert whose advice was along the lines of
"I wouldn't evacuate until the last minute, I would stay and keep hosing down my house."
There is so much wrong with that on so many levels.
by MsMerope ;
@ai6yr
"What LA news needs to do is to hire competent fire analysts to do a play by play. What they do, instead, is they have people who don't know anything about wildfires yammering."
And here we are, the United States of America in 2025
"news" is entertainment
Viewer engagement. Capture the eyeballs, don't let go
Information? About what? Who cares about information or would even know it if they heard it
It's all about the legendary dopamine hit, which was the popular buzz-phrase back when I left Twitter and joined Mastodon
Titillation
It's what keeps viewers glued to the "app" on their phone
cc @stacey_campbell
by FinchHaven ;
@ai6yr @stacey_campbell
Sadly, I know a lot of people obsessed with these broadcasts. It is like lifestyle news to them, obsessively checking for the lastest car chase, hoping to see a car they could never afford destroyed. Days of fires destroying other people's expensive property is what they want to see, commentary is irrelevant.
Thankfully, my neighbors have at least stopped shooting off fireworks for the moment (I am hoping permanently, but we will see).
by LA Plant Genetics ;
@ai6yr @stacey_campbell Do the relevant news channels actually *have* any climate change experts on the staff?
by Tim Ward βπͺπΊπΆ #FBPE ;
@ai6yr @stacey_campbell
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_Amnesia_effect
by ππ¦πππͺ ;
Mentions: @stacey_campbell@aus.social @stacey_campbell@aus.social
Likes: 0
Replies: 6
Boosts: 1