Storm reporters get goofier with every calamity

Maybe you're like me. Maybe you also wonder why TV weather reporters feel compelled to tell you that you really must, in order to save your life, obey a mandatory-evacuation order when a huge hurricane is approaching, but do this while standing knee-deep in floodwater with wind gusts over 100 miles per hour and while, obviously, disobeying that all-important mandatory-evacuation order.

Maybe you think this is, well, stupid. Maybe not.

As Florida was being battered over the weekend, the New York Times had a story in which several individuals, ordinary folks like you and me, were quoted as saying they thought the weather-reporter-standing-in-a-hurricane shtick was wearing a mite bare.

The Times article laid this goofy show-biz presentation of weather news at the feet -- are your ready for this? -- of Dan Rather, former CBS news anchor. According to the story, Rather was a reporter for a TV station in Houston in his early career and decided to stand out in the wind and rain to report on a looming hurricane. Weather reporters ever since have tried to outdo the silly gimmick.

And we, the consumers of news, have become more and more like the fans who go to auto races thinking this might be the day one of the cars hurtles out of control and kills half a dozen drivers and who-knows-how-many spectators.

Be honest now. When we watch a reporter barely able to stand up in the wind and rain, isn't the thought lurking in the back of our brains that a stop sign could -- just might -- be ripped off its pole and go careening like a Frisbee toward the reporter, lopping off his head?

Have you noticed that, by and large, the reporters who risk bodily harm are men? Is this because they are stronger and can withstand more devastation than women? Not at all. It is simply another demonstration that most women who report on the weather still have intact brains.

We could be at a bullfight, you know. At least in a bullfight you can anticipate blood and gore, for sure. Watching the weather news surge, just like hurricane-driven tides, teases us with the possibility of unexpected mayhem, but the trees always seem to fall away from the camera crew. Go figure.

I know news outlets around the world are in a fierce competition to lock in viewers and readers. Which make you wonder -- well, it makes ME wonder -- how far this model of participating in the news can go.

I mean, instead of just gathering the pertinent facts after a 40-vehicle pileup on the interstate during the worst ice storm of the century, shouldn't a gonzo reporter slam his car, company-owned, of course, into the pile in order to give a completely accurate first-hand account?

Or what about those TV reports from the middle of protest marches that turn ugly? Instead of risking being battered by sign-waving hoodlums or police in riot gear, shouldn't a gonzo reporter kick someone -- anyone -- just to see what happens?

I don't know how far all of this can go. We watch reporters embedded on the front lines of real wars. Such coverage always leads viewers to the same conclusion: War is hell.

Thanks to reporters wearing bulletproof helmets and vests, we are constantly reminded that wars are deadly. Does it take a reporter in the line of fire for us to believe that war is hell? No. Just like we don't have to see a reporter drown to be convinced that flash floods are killers.

Joe Sullivan is the retired editor of the Southeast Missourian.