I used to have a lot of faith in KBTX. I've done multiple events with several of their anchors through the years and was impressed with their skills and professionalism in person. I expect that media tends to run a little to the left but the past few years seem to have spiraled out of control at KBTX. My morning routine was always to have channel 3 on in the background as I made breakfast and everyone got ready. For a while I would hear "Covid in context", roll my eyes and turn off the tv. No more. It's off now or I watch something entertaining. I'm tired of being frustrated with the overbearing pushing of agendas and skewing of graphs and charts to make things look as scary as possible.
Of course this discussion starts from the excess of Covid fear newscasting but I think an example from one of Shel's recent Facebook posts (August 10th I believe) sums up mine and so many other's frustrations very well. Shel was encouraging a discussion (that's fair) on climate change. He linked to an August 9th KBTX article with the following statement as the second line.
"It's just guaranteed that it's going to get worse," said report co-author Linda Mearns, a senior climate scientist at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research. "Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide."
I think we're all fed up with talking heads on tv feeding us reporting and articles that say "It's just guaranteed" or something similar. It's not guaranteed. There's science that someone can back on both sides of most of these arguments. Please spend more time reporting and less time trying to convince us, scare us, whatever. Give us the reports and we'll make our conclusions. Basic journalism, that's all we ask for. If you want to convince us one way or the other, write an editorial elsewhere, but the regular broadcast isn't the time for that.
Of course this discussion starts from the excess of Covid fear newscasting but I think an example from one of Shel's recent Facebook posts (August 10th I believe) sums up mine and so many other's frustrations very well. Shel was encouraging a discussion (that's fair) on climate change. He linked to an August 9th KBTX article with the following statement as the second line.
"It's just guaranteed that it's going to get worse," said report co-author Linda Mearns, a senior climate scientist at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research. "Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide."
I think we're all fed up with talking heads on tv feeding us reporting and articles that say "It's just guaranteed" or something similar. It's not guaranteed. There's science that someone can back on both sides of most of these arguments. Please spend more time reporting and less time trying to convince us, scare us, whatever. Give us the reports and we'll make our conclusions. Basic journalism, that's all we ask for. If you want to convince us one way or the other, write an editorial elsewhere, but the regular broadcast isn't the time for that.