Steve_

"Unbelievable!" - it's entirely believable, you just showed us video of it;

"So big you can see it from space!" - can't you see everything from space that isn't under cover, with enough magnification?

"I'm standing about the equivalent of three football fields away..." - so 300 yards then? Or are you including the end zones? Or are you talking about arena football? What international system of weights and measures defines a: "football field"?

"…is a country roughly the size of Texas/Rhode Island." - so apparently we're too dumb to know how far 100 yards is, but we're entirely familiar with the land size of any given State;

"…has the population of…" - I don't think so… it has a population the size of;

"...a national treasure..." - a place that is on fire, flooded or where someone has been murdered or taken by a kidnapper.

Steve_

Although I did catch a few minutes of this: http://america.aljazeera.com/ and I was quite shocked that it contained actual facts and information.

Guindalf

My fave is...

"Huge hurricane due to hit at 10pm tonight. What to do to protect yourself coming up at eleven"!

Sally Redux

'Coming up at eleven' and show a short clip. This is exactly the same clip which is shown at eleven.

Every brutal slaying must be immediately followed by a cute animal story.

The other night, ours had an item about a young woman who had had both legs and arms amputated and her skin disfigured by meningitis. The interviewer was the most glamorous newscaster they could find, absolutely done up to the nines. "So, how does it feel to have both your legs and arms amputated?"

Fortunately the girl had come to terms with it all - "It's how God wants me to look."

celticgrid

"World news"

celticgrid

To put this into context, we recently received a short survey from our electricity supplier asking about emergency outages. One of the possible answers to select to the question:

was....

....Magazines / newspapers

So only an hour later seems absolutely timely

Guindalf

At least it wasn't "On TV!"

sir_eccles

The shocking things you didn't know about *blank* coming up next.

Cardienscarf

The 10 minute slot dedicated to how bad it would have been if something that didn't happen had happened. And predicting the news - If ..... happens, then ......

Just Jenney

My absolute favorite practice of our local news reporters is when they are "reporting live at the scene" -- only that scene is a school or courthouse or similar building that's closed because it's 11 o'clock at night. There's no one around, it's pitch black outside and nothing's going on. But dagnabbit, they are LIVE AT THE SCENE just in case something/someone pops up.

AmerLisa

Actually heard a commercial on the radio for them today.... Interesting.

paul32x

What gets me with American news is when something happens overseas, they always have to explain where it is, 'Today, in Paris, France...' -- duh!

AmerLisa

Because there's no such place as Paris, Texas...

paul32x

Yeah, I know there is, but nine times out of ten, it's so ruddy obvious what they're talking about, but hey, if the natives need their hands held, so be it!

AdobePinon

Oh yes, everything measured in football fields. Nobody seems to know what a yard is, though.

But I've also noticed that the Park Service has a strange measure of energy: school buses per cliff per minute.

Cliff is sometimes substituted by waterfall when "appropriate".