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CBC weather coverage raises hackles

I often feel bewildered as I sift through the news on my computer ....

I often feel bewildered as I sift through the news on my computer or pass a couple of hours in the morning watching  TV as the CBC and CTV present me with all the “news” they think “I need to know.”

Every once in a while I get a bit irritated and indignant – like this morning watching a pair of too highly exciting (apparently) and thus, endlessly repeatable weather stories from CBC Saturday morning. Hopefully, it was just a slow news day...

That morning, St. John’s, Newfoundland had just seen daylight after its fourth blizzard in eight days and teams of CBC photographers and reporters were around asking people digging out the 10cm of overnight blowing snow how they were coping.

Come on! Really??

Since I currently can’t see my neighbour’s house for the snowbanks outside on my front lawn, you can guess how I was reacting by the fourth time I’d heard the same young lady sighing that it was the fifth time she’d had to dig out her driveway that week.

Then I real the “Northwest Connector” and saw last week’s Stewart snow picture, and realized, while we may be en route to a record lousy, snowy winter – we’re in the piker league compared to Stewart.

I have seen similar “walled” pathways - even the odd tunnel to the house - in places like Moncton, N.B. and London, Ont. areas – but that sunny Saturday morning in St. John’s just didn’t rate.

The second weather story that raised my hackles emerged from the cold snap in Europe.

The CBC images accompanying reports on the “snow burying Rome in Europe’s fatal cold snap”  just had me freaking: the roads were barely wet, some patchy snow was sticking to a couple of umbrellas of passers by, and there was a little on the ground.

The Coliseum was “closed” to prevent tourists from hurting themselves. I don’t think they closed the retractable roof, oh wait, yeah, it retracted itself generations ago.

How the CBC (even at its most desperate) could have the hutzpah to broadcast these petty anaemic images in Canada is just mind-boggling. I can just hear them in Toronto and Vancouver now - wow, keeping ‘em honest, telling us the way it is – wonderful!

You all know I’m generally a fan of the Mother Ship, but this pair of reports just curled my toes. Has a photo team ventured north of Hope? Why bother when there are electric Priuses banging into Accuras and BMW’s on about two inches of wet snow on Burrard Street!

Bah, humbug!

Now I acknowledge that things are seriously C-O-L-D in many parts of Europe and, tragically, people are dying. But they were not dying in Rome last Saturday – so all I really ask is from the video editors in Toronto is do not to show us ridiculous footage of wet roads, a few snowflakes and a touristy shot of the Coliseum.

While I’m bleating about the CBC, I just hate to come back, as I did, same day, from a noon Saturday shopping outing to find that four NHL games, including a Montreal-Washington tilt are already over.

Warn us westerners when stuff is coming on early, especially at breakfast time mid-morning,  our time, if it’s just to accommodate the Super Bowl in the USA. It’s the least they can do for fans.

Just one more bleat about a trend in TV news ... this is not exclusive to Canadian broadcasters ... and that is the increasing dependence on filling space with You Tube videos.

No newscast passes without them. But I’d at least like them to remember this is “the news” and thus I expect to see new You Tube releases “going viral,” as Global News broadcasters so often trumpet.