Thursday, February 01, 2007

Politics and the Weather!


Politics and the Weather!
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The home base for INSIGHT on Freedom is located in Hurricane Ally. Therefore, we have depended, for many years, upon the Weather Channel for our information on the storms and their possible paths, etc. The rest of the year we watch the weather channel for news of ice storms, tornadoes, and thunderstorms and, well, you get the picture.

But a few days ago, the Weather Channel did itself incalculable harm by making it clear they support the theory of "Man Made Global Warming".

If you are a regular to this site you know we, here at IoF, do not buy into (what we believe is) the hoax of man made global warming. We never have. So, we have a very real problem when those in whom we have invested a tremendous amount of trust suddenly make it plain they HAVE bought into it. That invisible line of trust between the purveyor of information and the consumer of information, in our opinion, has been breached.

It is unacceptable. If one cannot trust the weatherman, then whom can one trust?

The Weather Channel’s icon is now off my desktop and their URL is gone from my “favorites” list. Henceforth, I will seek the information I need from the National Weather Service and my own rudimentary weather station.

As a former career broadcaster it didn’t take long for me to figure out that broadcasters who see their work as a “calling” rather than as an “occupation”, soon come to bitter ends. Over the 30 years, or so, I did the “golden tonsils” thing, I met many freshly minted “would be broadcasters”, fresh out of Broadcasting School, with shiny degrees in Broadcast Journalism, etc, who felt they had a “calling” to make the world a “better place”. Most of them soon found themselves bitterly disappointed to learn their chosen profession was WORK. (As in LABOR!) “Making the world a better Place” was purely accidental… if it happened at all! Those who made it in the broadcasting field came to understand that, like any other profession, you got out of it what you put in.

I have nothing but good wishes for the folks at the Weather Channel as broadcasters. But their success, or failure, will certainly not depend upon whether I watch or not. Public trust is a must for a meteorologist to be accepted by the public.

If I had my “druthers”… I’d rather the Weather Channel stayed away from politics… of any kind. But the Rubicon has now been crossed. Can they “about face” and re-cross it? I doubt it.

Longstreet



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