Do Our Local Newsreaders THINK While Reporting?

On Monday, one of our local news radio hosts was rattlling off the news when she reported that this is heading up to be one of Canada's driest ever years on record.

I wonder if she was actually 'thinking' while reading that. Why? Because we have houses literally torn in half in this region from the floods in June and there are still fundraisers going on. A few weeks earlier, the same program was calling for people to help out with school supplies and clothing for those who were devastated by the flooding. Other hosts on the same channel were recently posting on their facebook Fan Page about how they cannot believe how WET our summer was, how we hardly had any summer to speak of at all, and now the leaves are already yellow on the trees and it's still raining every other day.

So why no comment such as 'well apart from the southern prairies apparently' or something to that effect? They seem to comment on many other news stories and give their opinions but not this one? Not one that has affected families in our region so deeply? Why no comment such as 'I wonder what they used to tabulate that information because the prairies have been soaking wet with snow and rain this whole entire year?'. But nope - nothing. No comment. Just a statement of newsy words that make absolutely NO sense for what has been going on here.

We went out in our backyard pool a grand total of THREE times this summer. We went in 3 times a WEEK last year. We watered our front grass only 5 times from May to now and our back about 3 times. It was 3-4 times a week last summer. Most people I know with underground sprinkler systems turned them OFF this year because it was pointless to keep watering and wasting it, because it rained enough to keep most of the grass happy anyway. There are even rotten lawns in my housing area due to such high levels of rain, it's like a rusty bronze colour in big patches. It was so chilly (the wind was COLD), we only took my daycare kids out for sprinkler fun three times, and didnt even ask for swimsuits until August, when we normally get the kids' suits in the first week of July. It just didnt occur to us because it was so wet and chilly most of the time.

But yeah, it's going to be Canada's driest year on record - once the soaking wet prairie provinces are removed from the totals. I know other areas saw terrible dry conditions - such as British Columbia. It was crazy dry there! But the whole of Canada was not dry! It's such a big country we can't expect to have similar weather from coast to coast, but is it too much to ask that valid honest reporting be done by stations that our tax dollars support?? Instead I have seen tv news, newspapers, and heard terrestrial radio all reporting these severe dry conditions while we are recovering from devastating floods. I bet people across Canada have no idea just how bad it truly was and still is. The damage was devastating, and it was from the high amount of snow that melted and soaked into the ground all winter, and then when the heavy rains came the ground was too wet to soak up more and the next thing you knew, culverts, dugouts, streams, creeks, etc were bursting their banks and barreling through this region. Houses were literally torn from their foundations and pushed onto other properties, a house on the way to Elkwater is still sitting there torn right in half, cattle were lost, equipment and fields saturated and destroyed, etc etc etc. But we are supposed to sit here and listen to the news that Canada had one of it's driest years ever. Yeah okay - tell that to the farmers and ranchers who have no homes and no outbuildings and no idea what they are going to do for the future.