I'm all the way across the state in the St. Louis area.
Last night we were all under tornado warnings and the media was in PANIC MODE, talking about how we all need to stay on our toes and be careful and take shelter and all of that. It's quite obvious they were "milking" the whole tornado thing for ratings. How do I know? In the middle of this "inescapable disaster" they had no qualms take breaks for several minutes at a time to show commercials! When they got news that the Joplin tornado had hit, all of a sudden they completely forgot about the storms that were hitting us at the time and spend the next 20 minutes showing Joplin footage!!!
Anyway, I am in no way undermining the importance of taking shelter and being cautious when tornadoes are involved, but it really made me sick to my stomach to see the the media milking the whole deal like they were. If they really, TRULY were concerned for our safety they would have put commercials on hold and would not have left showing local reports to show the Joplin devastation. There's always time for that later.
By the way it was VERY OBVIOUS that the main storms were going well north of the St. Louis area. I'm not going to lie, it was some nasty storms and the people who did live in the less populated areas to the north definitely needed to take shelter but it was simply disgusting to watch.
Funny thing is that right now we're getting hammered with storms and aside from showing the warnings in the corner of the screen, for the TV it's "business as usual" with the "Wendy Williams Show" on in the background. I guess the shock value of reporting the possibility of deadly tornadoes is not as great when there aren't nearly as many viewers...
This was in no way meant to devalue the Joplin catastrophe... Those who have suffered loss have nothing but my deepest sympathies..
