Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Self-imposed blindness
I don't think any sane human still believes the old Yes, Virginia stuff... "If you read it in the newspaper it's so." The web wiped out that idea long ago.
Yet every now and then a surprising example of self-imposed blindness pops up.
This month the National Weather Service radar for Spokane is being upgraded, so the NWS website doesn't show you a radar image. Several other online sources depend solely on NWS, and they also show "Radar Unavailable" in one way or another.
Some of the local radio and TV weathercasters are going along with this lack, saying things like "Well, we can't really tell what's going on."
No excuse for that.
Originally journalists were supposed to find the information for us. That was their occupation. That was the reason we paid them. They've long since abandoned that goal, serving instead as a useless conduit for mostly false info from a single locked-in source.
We know that we can always find the information better than they can.
In this case it doesn't take a lot of work. You can still get a perfectly functional radar image at Weather.com. I don't know how they do it; maybe they have their own private radar; but it's just as accurate as always. When Weather.com shows green here, it's raining here. When Weather.com shows no green here, it's not raining here. Works every time. ¶ 4:58 AM
Yet every now and then a surprising example of self-imposed blindness pops up.
This month the National Weather Service radar for Spokane is being upgraded, so the NWS website doesn't show you a radar image. Several other online sources depend solely on NWS, and they also show "Radar Unavailable" in one way or another.
Some of the local radio and TV weathercasters are going along with this lack, saying things like "Well, we can't really tell what's going on."
No excuse for that.
Originally journalists were supposed to find the information for us. That was their occupation. That was the reason we paid them. They've long since abandoned that goal, serving instead as a useless conduit for mostly false info from a single locked-in source.
We know that we can always find the information better than they can.
In this case it doesn't take a lot of work. You can still get a perfectly functional radar image at Weather.com. I don't know how they do it; maybe they have their own private radar; but it's just as accurate as always. When Weather.com shows green here, it's raining here. When Weather.com shows no green here, it's not raining here. Works every time. ¶ 4:58 AM
