[uniqueid]

  Please. Start checking for precedent when you see stories like this. I think you'll find it eye-opening.

The math for a big newspaper is something like 100 years x 365 daily editions a year x 100+ stories per day. It's rather hard to avoid innocent repetition after you've published millions of stories.

[premium-gecko]

I don't think innocent repetition does much harm. What I'm saying is harmful is reporting some current event as if it is new and startling and unprecedented, when in fact it's not that unusual, and has even been reported on before in that very newspaper, which would be uncovered by a search. Obviously they're not even doing that.

But why would they? They don't want to report "thing that happens fairly frequently happened again"... the story being scary translates directly into dollars going into their pockets. In other words, they terrify people by lying, for money.

[uniqueid]

  What I'm saying is harmful is reporting some current event as if it is new and startling and unprecedented, when in fact it's not that unusual

I agree the article is on the sensationalist side, but it's short of being irresponsible or grossly misleading.

A high of 50°C in British Columbia is unusual and has no precedent in recorded history (granted 'recorded history' is a blip in the grand scheme). I don't know how many Canadians it startled; I assume quite a few.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extreme_temperatures_i...