The TV news struggled to find pictures of anything actually happening other than a few trees down and reporters breathlessly doing pieces to camera in the wind.
In Auckland where I live most shops were closed and they didn’t need to be.
There is a risk of the boy who cried wolf.
But I also don’t think need to have an existential national conversation about whether this was over-hyped.
The forecasters do their thing. They tell you what is coming. Or their best guess of what's coming. Then it’s up to us to make our own decisions based on the information, our own experience and personal judgement.
The businesses who decided to close yesterday before anything had actually happened lost a day's trade. The one's who didn't, didn't.
Maybe next time they’ll make a different call. After all, Auckland was only under an orange watch.
The media coverage was over the top. It always is. Remember they make money off events like this. Eyeballs on screens. I noticed before every video on the stuff site yesterday showing ocean lapping at sand dune, there was an ad for Tower Insurance playing.
They do what they do.
But you can’t tell MetService to not to report the weather.
They’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t.
We’re all responsible for our own lives. Ultimately we can decide if we’re safe enough to stay home or go to get a flat white from the local Robert Harris.
And if you want to go out kite-surfing or surfin in their storm, all power to ya. You might die, or you might have an awesome Sunday, wither way it'll be your informed choice to do so.
Ryan Bridge is a New Zealand broadcaster who has worked on many current affairs television and radio shows. He currently hosts Newstalk ZB's Early Edition - where this article was sourced.
6 comments:
To be fair the swells did look very ominous driving between Clive and Napier late Saturday afternoon about the same time as the civil defense warning was sent.
If I had a beach front property in the areas that were evacuated, I would have likely not argued about the imminent threat.
If we consider that the cyclone changed path very late and hit Bay of Plenty instead.
And because many Aucklanders consider themselves the center of the universe, I can understand why they think it was hype.
I mean really - how important are places like Te Awanga, Haumoana and Waimarama?
Thanks for the analysis Ryan, which I entirely agree with. I often wonder whether New Zealand is made up of two tribes. There's the one that spawned the first man to scale Mt Everest. And there's the one that spawned the mainstream media and the civil defence brigade.
Dear Ryan. Oh dear Aucklander's had to suffer an indignity, closing the shop, but this time Jacinda Ardern did "not" issue the order.
Cyclone Gabrielle (?) -
- the NZ weather office, did not take what they saw seriously
- people were told, but no one took it seriously
- when it arrived, it caused destruction that 'stunned' people
- lives were lost
- infrastructure damaged or lost (my example is 2 bridges in HB, that should of been replaced yonks ago and re-build costs beyond the "pail"
- those affected then had to start that 'recovery" journey.
In HB they held a Coroner's Enquiry - fingers pointed, interestingly no Report from Coroner.
Now, NZ Emergency Services (all stripes) took the "assertive step" - we saw what that entailed.
And also we had the normal "stupidios" who went surfing - if they had lost their lives, I wonder who would of -
- gone to their rescue
- pointed fingers
- and at whom?
At least we were spared the TV footage of those who own UTE's driving thru flood waters.
So my final thoughts - "does anyone know when the next storm is due"?
It has to be before the 7th November 2026.
Sorry Ryan. Take a look at yourself and your own profession with more objectivity and less defensiveness. You invited me on your show last year to discuss KiwiSaver reform, which is an issue of great national importance. You personally cancelled me a few hours before the show because you wanted to report on some rain and bad weather in the South Island. Consequently its misleading of you to write what you have in this article. Your profession largely sucks in New Zealand. Its shallow and boring. Get over yourself.
If all metservice did was tell us what is coming I would be fine with it. But they don't just tell us what is coming - they constantly tell us how to behave. The metservice app and it's full of do this, do that, don't do this, don't do that. And then the media picks up the same nonsense. RED WARNING!!!! they bellow. But then they are caught out when there is little evidence of anything happening. So they pivot and then start to blame the people who noticed that it was a damp squib. Out comes the 'climate denier' label once again for anyone who dares to say out loud what we all saw. RNZ, NZHerald and Stuff have ALL run basically the same article able the Hawkes Bay mayor who decided against announcing a state of emergency, as if he had committed a mortal sin against the gods of correct thinking. If that isn't a coordinated effort to demonise a perfectly valid decision, I don't know what is. The media has whipped up the hysteria that saw supermarket shelves stripped bare this weekend by the gullible masses. Of course the media cries wolf - they always do. But metservice creates this sense of non-stop nervousness by treating every drop of rain and puff of wind as an existential threat. Safetyism is a cancer that needs to be cut out of these organisations. Their job is to accurately forecast. My job is to decide how to act on the forecast.
Yet the media has continued to provide updates on the cyclone that never was
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