Man killed by Red Line train at Porter Square
Channel 4 reports, and tweets the man is dead.
Riders are being put on buses between Harvard and Alewife.
Carol O., at Porter at the time, tweets:
Was waiting for the subway when there was a commotion & the train stopped short. It seems like someone jumped/fell in front.
She adds:
Upset but impressed w/the response. Mass ave partially blocked, 6 fire trucks, 7 ambulances, a helicopter & tons of police in 10min
Helicopters? For this?
TV news copters uselessly burning fuel
If it bleeds, it leads
Even if it's all happening a couple hundred feet underground.
If there really was that
If there really was that much fire, EMS, and police response, then not surprising that media tagged along.
Via helicopter?
I don't believe the problem is that the media showed up so much as how it showed up for a few of the stations. A helicopter at a subway station for a medical emergency is pretty useless.
Monkey see, Monkey do
Having (and using) helicopters (and other needless equipment - do you REALLY need to report the weather in "high-def"?) to cover news events has become the media equivalent of "keeping up with the Joneses"
high-def
Aren't all over-the-air broadcasts high-def (16x9 format) these days, or required to be after mid-June?
All broadcasts will be digital after mid-June
As I understand it, "high definition" is a version of digital broadcast, but not all digital broadcasts will be in "high-def".
And to clarify, my comment was in reference to a certain TV station that consistently advertises that they provide "Weather in High-Def".
If I saw that much emergency
If I saw that much emergency response being deployed to a T station, even if the initial word was that someone was struck by a train, I'd decide this might be one of the best times to use the helicopter, just in case.
In case what?
In case....you could let Superman get a bird's eye view of the accident?
Not the most gripping of video
But exciting use of the zoom lens, and some nice solar flaring/reflecting toward the end:
In case...
...it were something big.
When big thing happens, initial word is often wrong.
It's common sense: if they're sending all those first-responders, something big is likely happening. Get over there.
The media does silly things
The media does silly things like reporting the weather in high-def because they think it impresses viewers and its a hell of a lot cheaper than real reporting.
A weather story is cheap as hell. Send a camera and a reporter, and the story is done. Investigative reporting, the kind that breaks the stories that matter, is expensive because it takes time and doesn't always result in a story. They might dig around and find nothing. That's why you see wall to wall coverage of hurricanes and the other weather events.
At the deepest station no
At the deepest station no less.
Indeed. That much police and
Indeed. That much police and fire response ensures some media attention.
Latest news -
Red Line operations north of Harvard have just been resumed.
Too much media
It's gotten to the point where it is silly. News agencies have so many reporters now that they'll cover anything just to fill empty airtime. "Now let's go out to Bill who's live on the lawn doing a report on how much the grass has grown in the last hour..."