CHORE knows for a fact that power is out in communities all over Oahu. We had to call Hawaiian Electric at 4:20 to report our own outage and heard the list of outages in all sectors.
But Oahu’s primary emergency broadcaster doesn’t mention any of them individually or all of them collectively in their first newscast of the day. Here’s what’s making news this morning at KSSK in the following order:
The Hollywood writers strike • Oprah in South Africa • Nebraska runaways caught in Mexico • Troubles in Pakistan • (moving to local news) Boulders fall into homes • Problems with waste water discharge into ocean • Superferry could change islands’ lifestyle • No whale watchers for Superferry • State to build homeless shelters • Weather – high surf advisory, temperatures….and that’s all, folks.
You really have to wonder what they’re thinking. Better yet, you really have to believe they’re not thinking. Not only are they locked into a “news elsewhere first” format, no matter the local trauma, they don’t even mention the local trauma.
Then again, KSSK is the station that thought the John Tesh music show was what we citizens needed to hear when half of Oahu was still without electricity on Earthquake Sunday 2006.
Media Council, it’s time to hold another meeting on the media’s response to local emergencies.
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5:40 a.m. Update: KSSK's next newscast at 5:30 had essentially the same lineup of stories, and again the closest Perry & Price came to mentioning power outages and massive rain storms was to read the sewage spill story again and add a new one about overflowing manholes. Here's a tip to these two emergency communicators: People using candles to get ready for work and listening to them on portable radios might be interested in hearing what HECO says about the restoration of their power. Just a thought here at CHORE.
***************6:10 a.m. Update: Still no mention of power outages in the 6 o'clock newscast.
Hey, I remember you, showing up live at KGU fully prepared in your official capacity as Hawaiian Electric information spokesman on the ghastly blackout night of Hurricane Iwa, 25 years ago this month.
ReplyDeleteI was helping field the undying KGU business lines for the almost 4 hour duration of that 99% blackout of Oahu that night in 1982, a Black Swan situation that only a rapid response from a living radio entity can provide.
Hey Doug, instead of sitting in your darkened house bitching and moaning, did you bother to call up KSSK and actually TELL THEM about what was going on in your neighborhood?
ReplyDeleteWhen are the folks at HECO and the state emergency preparednes office . . . .and KSSK. . . . going to realize that these relatively benign "emergency" situations are an opportunity to hone their skills so that they will be able to capably handle a catastrophic incident when ---not if--- it occurs in our island state.
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