Friday, October 07, 2016

And now, a few words from WSVN's Craig Stevens on yesterday's coverage of Hurricane Matthew

Comment posted on the WPLG-Local 10's Facebook page
accusing the station of making up the Hurricane Matthew
loop model to boost ratings.
____________


Like every South Florida TV news anchor, Craig Stevens was on the air a lot yesterday.

Stevens, in his 26 years as a broadcast journalist in Florida, has covered quite a few hurricanes. Stevens tells me that he never paid much attention to hurricanes. But all that changed after Andrew, he says.

Stevens has two Facebook pages: one he calls his "work" page, and the other is personal...for friends only. His "work" page is for work, and his personal page is for fun...like keeping his friends updated on his never-ending quest to brew the perfect cup of coffee.

But like most TV news people, Stevens keeps his personal feelings and opinions to himself.

But last night was different. After spending all day anchoring coverage of Hurricane Matthew, Stevens posted this (below) after hearing from friends and colleagues that some viewers were complaining about the amount of coverage being given to Matthew.
99.9% of my posts on this my personal page are "fun"... BUT...tonight i have to acknowledge those who believe we (those of us in local media) covered #Matthew too much... as if b/c it wasn't a direct hit in Miami-Dade/Broward... we wasted your time.. or we made too much of it. Try telling that to the families of the 200+ the storm killed in Haiti (to say nothing of what we may find in the Bahamas & Cuba) ...or the countless lives about to be disrupted in Florida counties just to our north. For the most part the Natl Hurricane Center has been on point in their forecasts as have South Florida's meteorologists ALL of them (Channels 7, 6, 4, 10, 23 & 51) offering their best effort with the data they had to work with. As someone else here said, be grateful we largely avoided it, rather than complain you paid attention & took time to prepare. #publicservice
In a note to me Stevens wrote: "I NEVER soap box as you know.. but i feel strongly all of the stations are performing a public service ...spending hours - often without airing commercials.. to keep the community informed.."



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