I am sad to admit that I get most of my US news from the Today Show. I was going to stop watching when Ann Curry became a host because I'm not a fan of hers, but out of habit, I still tend to have it on in the morning as I'm reading blogs, getting dressed for work, eating breakfast, etc. And that's about it for news for me. In the evenings we'll sometimes watch BBC news or, more often, RAI news, but there isn't much US news on either of those.
There are regular breaks in the Today Show where they go to local weather and traffic. So I'm on top of the Dallas temperature streak. I'm well aware that we've had 40 days in a row at 100 or higher. Today will make 41 when/if it happens. Tomorrow will be day 42 if it happens, and that will tie the record. They're actually saying it might not happen tomorrow -- we might actually just have a high of 99. I actually think I'm rooting to break the record. 1 degree doesn't really matter, so we might as well have this go down as the longest streak ever.
But my point is that I'm shocked and appalled at the misinformation (or is it just lack of fact-checking?) on the Today Show. They have mentioned the Dallas heat streak twice erroneously in the last week or two.
First, they once reported our total number of days this year over 100 (about 5-10 more than our streak) as being what the streak of 100 or more is. WRONG.
Second, they once reported that today will be X days at 100 or higher, but the actual fact was that the day before had marked X days at 100 or higher.
Minor points and it certainly doesn't really matter, but it makes me think that I'm not doing myself any favors by having the Today Show be my primary source of US news. If they have that many errors about something so easily confirmed, how reliable is it? Do they not bother trying to confirm what they report?
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