A New Rant Today. Can You Believe It?

And it's the same old story. People can't get their facts straight. And this time I'm going to call them out by name.

If you've read my "stories" on here before, you know how I have ranted against the media when it comes to science and scientific accuracy. And most - if not all - of my rants have been focused on one television station: WOOD TV8 here in Grand Rapids. Not only are they the "National Enquirer" and "Weekly World News" of broadcasting, their weather department is a joke as well.

(In fact today they made an intern do the weather in the morning and noon, because the actual paid people probably whined about working today. So let's let someone who isn't even a meteorologist do the forecast. Oh wait... they do that all the time. Not all of their paid weather staff are meteorologists.)

But instead of being nameless (and leaving it up to the reader to dig for the info) today I'm calling one of them out.

Bill Steffen. You Are On Notice

Tonight on their 5pm news, he said three times that there will be a big full moon in the sky tonight,

That's WRONG!!!!

You hear that Bill? YOU ARE WRONG!!!

The full moon was last night, December 23rd. At 8.15pm EST exactly. There are numerous places to get this information, but apparently this fool can't be bothered. You can find it online, in books, and there are computer programs that will tell you (I use a great program called "Moonrise.")

Their tagline on their station for the weather is "accurate forecasting." Well, it isn't very accurate when they can't even get established information correct, let alone the weather (they are 3rd in accuracy locally behind the other two stations).

I can't write about this on my astronomy club's blog, because there I have to be the "voice of reason" and can't have personal vendettas. But here I can.

I urge everyone to boycott WOOD TV8, and send them emails, letters, even call them and tell them they are doing a disservice to the public, and they should be ashamed.