Why does the media avoid negative stories about chasing / chasers?

[Warren Faidley]

There has been a lot of discussions about bad / dangerous behavior by chasers, including a lot of physical evidence seen in video feeds. There is zero question such behavior is occurring, now more than ever. It's a slam dunk, page one story.

The hit list includes reckless driving, endangering the public, destroying private property (rental cars), encouraging idiotic behavior and misleading the public about the reasons behind such behavior.

As someone who has worked in the journalism business for over 35 years, I'm completely flabbergasted why no major media source has produced a story about the shenanigans. I'm not the caliber of writer, nor do I have the national outlet power to produce such an article or I would do it myself. Some of you know that I have turned down past media opportunities in protest of journalists and producers who refused to expose the truth, e.g., the Discovery Channel. It seems like every time a journalist sets out to break this story, they get hoodwinked or enchanted by the offenders into believing some concocted reasoning or fuzzy logic to explain their behavior. "I'm doing it for science," or to "save lives." Bull shit. Of the very few negative storm chasing articles, they are so homogenized, the main offenders becomes everyone who chases instead of focusing on the individual(s).

If the journalists are afraid of libel, I remind them that truth and opinions are not "libel" and there is enough truth now days to make a good story.

 

[JamesCaruso]

Of the very few negative storm chasing articles, they are so homogenized, the main offenders becomes everyone who chases instead of focusing on the individual(s).

This is the exact reason why I hope the story is never written. While I abhor the bad behavior as much as you do, the fact is the general public has no capacity for nuance. Even if the story is written only about specific individuals, the rest of us will be lumped in with them, in the eyes of law enforcement and the general public. It would be a net negative to us and the hobby we love. Writing such a story would only spite ourselves.

 

[William Monfredo]

You bring up some generally good points, Warren. Where's the investigative curiosity? Many journalists follow the same soccer ball to the same corner, so to speak. I've had budding journalists at universities tell me that they're supposed to create an arc to a story even before the interview(s) take place. What was the word they used? Oh yeh,...spin. And if they've got that preconceived notion in their mind, it stands to reason that they can cherry pick information to fit it. The "in the name of science" and "saving lives" bit rings tired in this Dual-Pol-radar era.

 

[Warren Faidley]

This is the exact reason why I hope the story is never written. While I abhor the bad behavior as much as you do, the fact is the general public has no capacity for nuance. Even if the story is written only about specific individuals, the rest of us will be lumped in with them, in the eyes of law enforcement and the general public. It would be a net negative to us and the hobby we love. Writing such a story would only spite ourselves.

I have to kindly disagree. By discussing exactly who the individual(s) are, creating such issues, it will help the public and others understand that not all chasers are like this. For example, if a player on a sports team is cheating, then a sports writer has the responsibility to name the player(s) and not suggest the entire team is corrupt. The story is about an individual's behavior, not a group.

When you write a story that says, for example, "Chasers continue to endanger the public with total disregard for highway safety," then it's a broad-brush story accusing many chasers of misbehaving. It's poor journalism. On the other hand, if the story is about a specific individual, it goes like this: "Warren Faidley" is a very well known cow tipper who has made a living out of driving 100 miles per hour and terrorizing local farmers by tipping cows at night," the story has merit and accuracy (if true). The problem becomes when a weak-minded journalist interviews me and I say, "Yes, I'm tipping cows because I'm conducting research on cows and trying to discover if tipping them reduces night time stress." The reporter buys my story, not the video of me doing naughty things. This is what happens time and time again when the media writes a story about chasing. They are cowards for completely ignoring facts.

 

[Ben Holcomb]

If they won't release the list of clients from epstein, they aren't going to go after storm chasing. If you believe true journalists or journalism still exists nowadays, I don't know if I can help you.

 

[Sean Ramsey]

I don't see a story like this ever being written. And a lot of the reason why, is that most don't care. We're so close to the chasing world that it seems a lot bigger deal to us than to the 99.7% of everyone else who don't think two seconds about storm chasing.

In addition, maybe 10% of the public is on the "Damn Storm Chasers" train, while the other 90% is on the "Saving Lives" side, right or wrong.

Unless an individual or small subset is causing or has actually caused harm to someone, no one is going to write a hit piece to take them down... that is until they run for political office.

 

[Warren Faidley]

I think the public would be interested, especially with all the publicity involving Twisters. Unfortunately, I'm sure a lot of the offenders will soon be interviewed telling everyone how many lives they have saved in the last three months.

Just imagine if 60 Minutes picked up the story.

 

[Todd Lemery]

If they did, it wouldn’t be flattering. They would probably start with the three members of the Tim Samaras Twistex team, Kelly Williamson’s Weather Channel accident that killed three and the three Oklahoma meteorology students who died while storm chasing. They would then move on, explaining that they wanted to see if chasers were more cautious after all the deaths, to current chasers live streaming themselves greatly exceeding the speed limits and blowing through stop signs. They would interview enough people until they interviewed one yahoo who would explain how they had to get super close, needing to occasionally speed and blow through stops signs to keep up with the storm. They would end it with somber music playing in the background while a video montage played of chasers having close calls with the grim reaper. A loud scream from one of our favorite chasers would end the segment.
It wouldn’t have the national attention, like if they actually released Epstein’s list, but there’s no way I could argue that it wouldn’t affect people’s perceptions of storm chasers negatively. I think we all know that perception nowadays is more powerful than whatever the truth is.

 

[Dan Robinson]

I agree with Ben. The current goal of “journalism” isn’t to report facts and inform, it’s to rile up people’s anger at each other. Unfortunately that’s the only thing that gets clicks and advertising revenue, an outfit reporting to inform the reader would not survive. Any story about chasers would exist only to maximize the outrage at us collectively.

There are a few good writers and reporters still out there thankfully, but what happens in terms of what gets published is not in their control. There isn’t any outlet right now that I would trust 100% to get something fair published.

 

[Bill Eckrich]

As with most things of this ilk, it will take a reckless chaser killing someone, an entire family, etc. Then the story will blow up in all chasers' faces and Katie-bar-the-door. That will be along the lines of what Warren is talking about, but will be borne out of a tragedy instead of, say, preemptive. So far as I know the chaser wrecks and other fatalities have not involved "innocent folks" relative to fatalities, so perhaps that's why those events did not take much flight. (Of course I may be ignorant of some wreck that did involve non-chasers. If so, kindly/gently correct me.) Overall, however, I agree with Warren. Then again, many stories worthy of ink or video these days are often snubbed.

 

[John Farley]

As with most things of this ilk, it will take a reckless chaser killing someone, an entire family, etc. Then the story will blow up in all chasers' faces and Katie-bar-the-door. That will be along the lines of what Warren is talking about, but will be borne out of a tragedy instead of, say, preemptive. So far as I know the chaser wrecks and other fatalities have not involved "innocent folks" relative to fatalities, so perhaps that's why those events did not take much flight. (Of course I may be ignorant of some wreck that did involve non-chasers. If so, kindly/gently correct me.) Overall, however, I agree with Warren. Then again, many stories worthy of ink or video these days are often snubbed.

It has happened at least twice, both involving chasers that ran stop signs on rural roads and crashed into others, resulting in fatalities. In one case, in Minnesota, it was local residents. In the other case, not remembering exactly where now, it was two chasers who ran a stop sign and killed another chaser on the road that had the right of way. The two in the car that ran the stop sign were also killed. There was some negative media in both cases, but nothing on a level to blow up in the faces of all chasers. So I think Warren has a point - at least in these two awful cases, the media blowback was less than many of us would have expected.

 

[Jamie H]

As a sometime journalist I am going to push back a bit on the narrative that there aren't journalists any more or journalists only exist to annoy people.

Those problems are because the 'news' especially in the US, is optinion dressed up as news (Fox is always the easiest example of this.) Add on companies like Sinclair buying up local stations, firing reporters, and sending nation-wide packages of stories with clear political bias, and you have a complete mess.

Finally, stick on top political figures and TV hosts telling people up is down, down is up, and no one can be believed, and well, you have today's society.

I sound like an angry old man!

 

[Jamie H]

There has been a lot of discussions about bad / dangerous behavior by chasers, including a lot of physical evidence seen in video feeds. There is zero question such behavior is occurring, now more than ever. It's a slam dunk, page one story.

The hit list includes reckless driving, endangering the public, destroying private property (rental cars), encouraging idiotic behavior and misleading the public about the reasons behind such behavior.

As someone who has worked in the journalism business for over 35 years, I'm completely flabbergasted why no major media source has produced a story about the shenanigans. I'm not the caliber of writer, nor do I have the national outlet power to produce such an article or I would do it myself. Some of you know that I have turned down past media opportunities in protest of journalists and producers who refused to expose the truth, e.g., the Discovery Channel. It seems like every time a journalist sets out to break this story, they get hoodwinked or enchanted by the offenders into believing some concocted reasoning or fuzzy logic to explain their behavior. "I'm doing it for science," or to "save lives." Bull shit. Of the very few negative storm chasing articles, they are so homogenized, the main offenders becomes everyone who chases instead of focusing on the individual(s).

If the journalists are afraid of libel, I remind them that truth and opinions are not "libel" and there is enough truth now days to make a good story.

Is it not as simple as it isn't that interesting a story? People wreck private property every day, drive badly every day, and act like an idiot every day, so one person doing so while storm chasing just won't excite anyone?

 

[Ben Holcomb]

There are definitely real journalists out there. The problem is, the DOJ is weaponized against them in various ways. James OKeefe, Gonzalo Lira, Julian Assange, etc. Most news that people read is curated either through google or a TV station group or 24 hour news channel or some other way and they will not see real journalism going on.

With that said, people do dangerous stuff skydiving a lot. Also mountain climbing. You only hear about either of those when someone is killed. I think we may be over-valuing how much people would actually care about storm chasers. The fact nobody hardly remembers the Minnesota incident where a chaser ran a stop sign and killed people really makes me believe that no mainstream news will ever pick up negative stories about storm chasing unless they really need to distract from something. Usually Aliens or a political scandal or something else is good enough to do that.

 

[Brett Roberts]

This is the exact reason why I hope the story is never written. While I abhor the bad behavior as much as you do, the fact is the general public has no capacity for nuance. Even if the story is written only about specific individuals, the rest of us will be lumped in with them, in the eyes of law enforcement and the general public. It would be a net negative to us and the hobby we love. Writing such a story would only spite ourselves.

Agreed. I feel like this is all pretty easy to cosign for anyone who values their own ability to continue chasing without undue negative attention from LEOs/media more than longstanding grudges. Realistically, we all know there's no world in which a specific chaser or team whom we happen to despise gets bludgeoned into hiding while the rest of us continue chasing without concern.