Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for December 12, 2019

Did the reporter do the back and forth swaying as people nearby walked without any problem?

boy, is that helpful info!

Rat, did you know that reporters who stand in a thunderstorm, the reporter is apt to get very wet – and there is a chance the reporter might get hit by lightning.

Did they show the part where a woman on a bicycle turns into a witch on a broom?

And if there is thunder during a snowstorm, he’ll dance around like an idiot.

That’s why they use the young reporter who doesn’t wear a toupee.

Sorry, I truly enjoyed watching Al Roker get blown over by gale force winds!

Australian viewers of A Certain Age would* remember Ray Martin, back when he was a journalist, reporting from a beach somewhere in high winds (cows flying, a house had just landed on some elderly lady, that sort of thing) but not a hair moved – it looked like the top of a Lego person.

*except if they’re that old they’ve probably forgotten or died by now.

What’s even better is when that reporter talks about how bad the snowstorm is, but there’s very little snow on the ground.

I never knew what was more appalling: stations sending reporters out in the middle of hurricanes, or all of the reporters willing to take that assignment!

I like seeing them standing in two feet of water when there is pavement nearby above water.

I’d rather stand in a hurricane than stand in the president’s blast of hot air.

I saw a report where they were trying to show how bad the flooding was. The reporter was in a canoe. As they were doing their report, a couple of people walked by past the shot…. it was about ankle deep.

Why don’t they have their news anchors standing out there? Wouldn’t they be more, well, anchored?

“It’s not THAT the wind is blowing; it’s WHAT the wind is blowing…..”

Green screen! Rick Sanchez really shot that in a studio in Palatka.

And yet, we sit glued to our TVs watching them, which in turn sells lots of commercials, which in turn encourages their producers to make them do it even more.

We should not forget not only is the reporter standing out in the storm but also the camera crew who likely receive much less pay.

The standard question heard in newsrooms around the world, during bad weather is: " You want me to go out in that and do what?? "

I have seen the reporters in our area go out to measure the temperature on the road surface to tell you whether or not it may freeze. Never mind that the current air temp is 15 degrees and dropping.

..how about when they are reporting about flooding and go stand in knee deep water when all they have to do is move over 3 feet to be on solid land. As if we need the visual to know what flooding is.

It’s hard to be sarcastic when you’re writing a letter.

OMG! PIG is clueless…will someone please help him?

Seriously! Why do they make the reporters deal with that crap? Or is that their own choice to be out there in inclement weather?

I still remember when a young Anderson Cooper was the “hurricane guy” for CNN and they would send him to be the on-the-ground guy wherever the ’cane made landfall. Anderson would be sheltering behind some building and the anchor back in the studio would continually goad him to step out into the storm “to give the viewers at home a sense of what is going on”. Good times.

E.B. White had an essay about this type of thing even back in radio days before TV. And trying to make news when a hurricane wasn’t as big as expected, the anchor asks “Would you say the spray from puddles is splashing up around the mudguards?”

Out here in the Midwest, all we ever seem to get are the remains of hurricanes. When I lived on the East Coast, we got the real thing every so often.

Jim Cantore is my hero.

My personal favorite moment of stupid TV reporter coverage was when a local reporter went to our coast to report on a hurricane. He was blown into the water on a live feed. He was okay, but his hair do was tragically ruined. Snicker.

We also learn that, when people’s homes are destroyed, they are often sad.

I’m waiting for the video with the reporter standing in the hurricane reporting on the intensity of the storm… then suddenly NOT standing there reporting on the intensity of the storm. ; )

It’s all Jim Cantore’s fault.

I remember watching hurricane coverage in TV where the reporter was supposedly being blown by the wind only to have a couple of locals walking past him in the background and laughing at his bad acting job!

I always liked when a NBC reporter was in a canoe while reporting on flooding in New Jersey when two men just walk right past her because the water was shallow. https://youtu.be/cgm3_jzcNm4

It’s a rule in Western Washington that when there is a flood story, you have to show footage of salmon swimming across the surface of a road.

Rat, you sure that wasn’t a “Newsy Brief” you were watching. You know, those are so great. Why, without their wonderful news reports I wouldn’t know that Abraham Lincoln was killed at Ford’s Theater April 15, 1865 by John Wilkes Booth. Or that Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, killing 57 people. Or that that guy who made cameo appearances in the Marvel movies was named Stan Lee and he was one of the folks responsible for so many of the main characters of the movies. Where ever would we be without “Newsy Briefs” bringing us the news.

Yes, like Rat in the final panel, I hope folks get that’s sarcasm. Pluto’s “Newsy Briefs” should be renamed what they vastly are, Trivia Briefs. At best only ten percent of them are actual news, and more like four or five percent are news.

Obviously Rat has never met Poe’s law.

Pig has another moment of revelation!

Yeah, the wind blows, Pig.

(I hope PIg recognizes sarcasm….)

This weather report BLOWS!

By the way, if he had REAL newscaster hair, it wouldn’t even move in gale force winds! Newscaster hair is like Lego hair.

Did Poo-poo girl hit the FAN? Or did someone just crack the lid on the throne of Grace again?

Well……………..my mental health has died

The reporters should get away ere the hurricane gets them.