As you might have heard, there were deadly tornadoes across the South on Sunday. At least two people in Alabama were killed. As always, the tragedy could have been much more costly, despite the devastation of property. There were, experts now say, at least six twisters in Alabama. The fatalities were low because of the excellent and hard work of the National Weather Service and the local meteorologists.
Only ABC did not get that memo:
ABC 33/40 meteorologist James Spann — the best in the business and there’s no discussion on this — took his national network to task. He suggested Diane Sawyer “get a clue” and challenged her to a debate on the issue. His audience were also indignant, writing first on the local site and then at the ABC homesite, where the chastising grew even louder. Those comments are worth a read.
We live in a dangerous area when it comes to spring weather. December and January are dangerous here too. Storms fall out of the sky. Tornadoes flare up and destroy property and sometimes take lives, but the technology and science now allow meteorologists to give days worth of advance warning. Forecasting that was not available a generation ago saves untold numbers of lives every year.
And so Spann took umbrage. His colleagues at KATV in Arkansas, where other tornadoes touched down, did too.
After today’s social media uproar ABC News decided to interview Spann today. It was scheduled and then canceled and rescheduled. Somewhere in there ABC had to stoop to spinning their own newscast:
“The report that aired Monday was referring to the fact that many families were surprised because they were asleep when the tornado hit in the middle of the night,” an ABC spokesperson says. “‘World News’ will cover the latest on the aftermath of the tornadoes tonight and will clarify the warning and advance forecasts given.”
Not even especially good spin, but there it was all the same.
Their newscast this evening?
Spann wrote on his site that he was grateful for the interview and that the important message about the outdoor sirens was shared, but …
There was no apology, or mention of the botched story yesterday when Diane Sawyer said the pre-dawn tornadoes Monday were a “surprise” with “no warning”. A little odd how you just go from that one day, to a story on how good the warning process was the next day. But, I am not a journalist and maybe that is just the way you do it. Seems strange. I would imagine Diane actually didn’t write that copy, but she will probably think twice about fact checking on lead story intros.
[…]
My frustration with the situation yesterday is shared by ALL of those hard working people involved in the warning process. The National Weather Service, the EM community (emergency managers), and broadcast meteorologists. I felt that these people were devalued and insulted yesterday.
It has been an interesting day in local-national media.
The storms missed us entirely, all going far north. We had some much needed rain and that’s all. We’ll get some more later this week, hopefully without the storms. I’m sure ABC hopes that’s the case.
Beautiful day today. I got in a 26 mile ride at a nice, even 15 mile per hour pace. Now let’s see if I can do that again tomorrow.
Got a lot of work done otherwise, and made a handful of phone calls. More work tomorrow, more emails and reading and some time on the bike. We’re expecting 72-degrees tomorrow for the first time this year. Of course I’ll be riding …
