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by tiznow 614 days ago
I think you might need a chill pill, I've never met a single journalist or editor who would let "you won't believe how hot it is" pass in more than a tweet.
1 comments

As a counterexample, I have deep respect for weather forecasters because they are professionally and legally bound to state nothing but the scientific journal at hand.

"Typhoon 14 located 500km south of Tokyo, Japan with a pressure of 960hPa and moving north-northeast at a speed of 30km/h is expected to traverse so-and-so estimated course of travel at 6pm tomorrow."

"Let's go over to Arizona. It's currently 105F in Tuscon, 102F in Yuma, ..."

Brutally to the point, the readers are left to process that information as appropriate.

Journalists do not do this, and they should if they claim to be journalists.

>they are professionally and legally bound to state nothing but the scientific journal at hand

In America, just about every meteorologist editorializes the weather to a degree. There's nothing scientific about telling me "it's a great night for baseball" (great for the fans? Pitchers? Hitters?) or "don't wash your car just yet" but I will never stop hearing those. I don't, and the public doesn't seem to think that infringes on journalistic standards, because the information is still presented. Maybe this is different than what you mean -- if you're talking about a situation where journalists intentionally created the full context and pushed the information to the side, obviously that is undesirable.

I will add that weather as a "news product" actually gains quite a fair bit from presenter opinion, and news is a product above all.