I was watching the local, live feed from Hawaii yesterday. They stated that the quake that started the Indian Ocean tsunami was only magnitude 6.9.
Uh, no.
Thanks, constanze. I was getting irritated myself, what with my dad having been a (Canadian) journalist and all.
I had my TV on while I was working, and CNN spent literally HOURS on the tsunami crisis in Hawaii . . . while totally ignoring what was going on in Chile. For a while they were discussing some little reef that was alternately exposed, then submerged, as the water level rose 6 inches, then fell 6 inches . . . while the reporters were commenting on how “amazing” it was. Even after they realized that the tsunami was a big nothing, the coverage continued.
This morning I turned on CNN, and ***they were still talking about the fucking tsunami that never happened. ***
And by the way, if there had been a real tsunami, the place I’d want to hear about, besides Hilo, would be Waipio Valley . . . a magical place that had be totally wiped out by past tsunamis. But in all their coverage, Waipio Valley was never mentioned.
While looking at a map of South America and the eastern Pacific, Rick Sanchez pointed to the Galapagos Islands and thought they were Hawaii.
There’s video of a lot of this nonsense here.
Indeed. I watch BBC, and the quality is superior.
However, Thai reporters are the biggest bunch of Bozos you’d ever hope to see. They seem to know absolutely nothing about anything outside of Thai borders, and even when they are reporting on something in a neighboring country like Malaysia or Cambodia, they make the most godawful fools of themselves.
I was in Philadelphia during the really huge snow storm in early February. All day long, every single local channel was featuring their news and weather teams talking about the fact that it was snowing - a lot. Thirty minutes later they’d have a breathless update - it was still snowing - a lot After an hour you got it - it was snowing. It was snowing all over the viewing area, making all of it white.
My mother was absolutely pissed that Dr. Oz and Oprah were preempted.
The next day the local news person said that the snow coverage got them their highest ratings in decades.
It seems that people enjoy being glued to their TV sets, watching nothing happen, for hours.
True, but that is the sort of place where they have the most “opportunity” to do damage. On the open sea, no problem. In a narrows or at the shore, the water has no where to go, or it all tries to go through all at once. It’s physics.
Even though the government has been forcefeeding us metricisation for years the Imperial (ie English) system of weights and measures is very much alive in England. Miles, yards, feet and inches are still in common use and metric measures still feel foreign to many of us.
In the comments section at the side of the live stream, they were calling it the Trollnami after the 3rd “surge”.
Some people in the US use the metric system, whats your point? I assume the foot-pound system is referred to as Imperial units in England, right?
The point is that Rick Sanchez, the CNN anchor in question, is retarded. And he’s not some third-string newscaster, he is on every weekday on CNN from about 2pm to 5pm, or something like that.
Here is a recent story on the retarded anchor. Choice quote:
Even the people working for CNN hate Rick Sanchez.
They speak Mexican, don’t they?
Cable, encapsulated.
Moron; they’re in Latin America, they speak Latin.
Ego venit ex Latin America quod Ego reputo ut vos es nefas!
I mean, I came from Latin America and I think that you are wrong!
Reputo! 
1 meter = 27 feet
1 centimenter = the length of a hot dog
I know somebody asks this in every news pitting, but really, if it’s so stupid, why the fuck are you watching? Do you expect it to magically change? Get your news somewhere else. Just use the web. You can get the same information at the same pace without as much moronitude. I sometimes catch a few minutes Sanchez at work here and there and I would never subject myself to it by choice. All I can tell you about the guy is that he has a very large head, and for some unfathomable reason, he thinks adding Twitter feeds improves the quality of his newscast. What else do you need to know about this guy? He is clearly a fungus with blow-dried hair. There is no reason anybody should willingly watch this.
Incidentally, just last night Jon Stewart tore into Sanchez for this brainless performance. One mistake that has not been mentioned so far is that Sanchez mistook the Galapagos Islands for Hawaii on a map. I admit I wouldn’t have known from a glance that it was the Galapagos, but I sure as fuck know Hawaii is not in South America.
Post #44.
Because it was Saturday morning and all of the mainstream networks were showing fucking cartoons, which, of course, can’t be interrupted for anything like breaking news. The NYT had a breaking headline and nothing else. Any other suggestions?