Check out these powerful on-air remarks from Steve MacLaughlin, a five-time Emmy Award-winning meteorologist and climate change reporter for NBC6 in South Florida.
He said, “This is the first time that I have been overly concerned that we have reached a point we cannot return from.”
MacLaughin was reacting to a buoy reading that showed a water temperature of 101 degrees in Manatee Bay, south of Miami, last week.
“That was hotter than any number we saw in the entire planet for the ocean, right here in South Florida,” MacLaughlin said. “And that leads to so many issues when it comes to climate change.”
MacLaughin referred to six inches of rain in one day over the weekend, a 24-inch rainfall in 24 hours in Fort Lauderdale in April and other weather effects.
“It all comes from the ocean,” MacLaughin said, adding, “90 percent of global warming is stored in the ocean and 25 percent of sea life lives in and around reefs. We call it the ‘rainforest of the sea.’ ”
MacLaughin added that, “Reefs can only take another 1.5-degree rise, and the ocean is forecast to rise another 1.5 degrees in the next decade,” MacLaughin said.
MacLaughin tweeted a clip of what he said, and wrote, “In 25 years of broadcasting, I’ve never uttered these words on TV before. I try to stay positive. I report on not just the problem, but the solution. I try to not be alarmist. But with corals, sirens should be blaring.”
Meanwhile, this was the lead story on The New York Times’ website for most of Sunday: “A Climate Warning from the Cradle of Civilization.”
Reporter Alissa J. Rubin and photojournalist Bryan Denton spent months reporting from nearly two dozen cities, towns and villages across Iraq.
The story starts with this ominous passage:
“The word itself, Mesopotamia, means the land between rivers. It is where the wheel was invented, irrigation flourished and the earliest known system of writing emerged. The rivers here, some scholars say, fed the fabled Hanging Gardens of Babylon and converged at the place described in the Bible as the Garden of Eden. Now, so little water remains in some villages near the Euphrates River that families are dismantling their homes, brick by brick, piling them into pickup trucks — window frames, doors and all — and driving away.”
It’s a powerful piece that suggests what could be in store for the planet. Charles Iceland, the director of water security for the World Resource Institute, a research organization, told the Times, “Because of this region’s vulnerabilities, one of the most vulnerable on the planet, it is one of the first places that is going to show some kind of extreme succumbing, literally, to climate change.”
Meanwhile, also on Sunday, The Los Angeles Times published Ian James’ “Colorado River losing vast amounts of water due to warming climate, study finds.”
James writes, “For much of the last 23 years, the Colorado River has been ravaged by unrelenting dryness, its reservoirs falling to their lowest levels since they were filled. New research shows that global warming is a major culprit, shrinking the river’s flow and robbing the region of a vast amount of water.”
James adds, “The river’s flow has decreased an estimated 10.3% because of higher temperatures, and the researchers warned that the water supply is set to shrink further as warming driven by the burning of fossil fuels continues to dry out the watershed.”
Sadly, MacLaughin’s words are haunting: Have we reached a point that we cannot return from?
This is all to say that climate change coverage is more important than ever.
Sports radio talk-show hosts keep saying dumb things. It seems like every few months I write about how some lunkhead has been suspended or fired for inappropriate comments made on the air. Add Don Geronimo to the list
Last Thursday, the host on WBIG-FM, a radio partner of the Washington Commanders NFL team, was broadcasting live from Commanders’ training camp. A sports reporter and anchor for WUSA-TV, Sharla McBride, walked by and Geronimo shouted on air, “Hey look, Barbie’s here. Hi, Barbie girl. I’m guessing she’s a cheerleader.”
Later in the show, Geronimo said to his producer and on-air sidekick, Crash Young, “Oh hey. There’s that chick that you thought … said tight,.”
Young said, “Yeah. I screamed tight when she was …”
Geronimo then said McBride was a sportscaster for one of the local TV stations, adding, “I thought she was a cheerleader.”
(You can hear the audio as a part of WUSA-TV’s report here.)
The Commanders banned the show from attending Commanders’ training camp on Friday. Then came an announcement Saturday night from iHeart, which owns the station, that Geronimo had been fired. In a statement to The Washington Post’s Nicki Jhabvala, iHeartMedia’s D.C. regional president Aaron Hyland, said, “After an internal review, Don Geronimo is no longer an employee of WBIG. We take matters of this nature very seriously and this behavior does not align with our core values.”
A spokesperson for the Commanders told the Post, “We were confident that iHeart would address this swiftly and are pleased that they did.”
When asked about the remarks Geronimo made about her, McBride told the Post in a statement, “When I heard the comments made about me on their radio show, I felt incredibly insulted and embarrassed. In my 17 years as a professional journalist, I have never been disrespected in such a blatant manner while trying to do my job. Their words were sexist and misogynistic. No woman should experience this in the workplace, and I appreciate the Commanders’ swift response in handling this matter.”
In a text message to the Post on Saturday after he was fired, Geronimo said, “Under the advice of my representatives I’ve been advised that I can not comment at this time.”
Under previous owner Daniel Snyder, the Commanders had multiple sexual harassment allegations, including an investigation that resulted in a $60 million fine. Not that Snyder noticed. The fine came down as he was selling the team for $6.05 billion.
Still, it’s good to see the team, under new owner Josh Harris, taking these matters seriously. They immediately acted on this incident even though it didn’t involve any of their employees.
After Geronimo’s comments on Thursday, the Commanders put out a statement to WUSA, saying, “We have worked hard to ensure that everyone feels safe and respected in our workplace, and we took swift action when we learned that an employee of our partner iHeart made sexually disparaging remarks to and about a member of the media while she was broadcasting live from training camp yesterday. iHeart and the individual were not permitted to broadcast from Training Camp today, and we will continue to work collaboratively with iHeart to address the issue and trust that iHeart will take appropriate action as it works through an internal investigation.”
A day later, Geronimo was fired.
The Post’s Jhabvala reported that just last week, Geronimo announced that he had signed an extension through 2026. Jhabvala wrote, “Geronimo, 64, has been a notable figure in local radio for decades, known for his sports broadcasts as well as his raunchy, ‘guy talk’ radio as half of ‘The Don and Mike Show’ with Mike O’Meara on WJFK (106.7 FM). The show garnered a following for off-color stunts, including a nude Olympics that was shown on pay-per-view. As The Post detailed in 1998, the pair prided itself on pushing the envelope, and their act resulted in a handful of lawsuits and complaints, at least a couple of which were resolved with settlements.”
Workers install lighting on an “X” sign atop the San Francisco headquarters of the company formerly known as Twitter on Friday night. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)
Eight months after he was kicked off of the social platform formerly known as Twitter, the artist formerly known as Kanye West had his account reinstated.
Officially, X has reinstated Ye.
Last December, Ye posted a picture of a swastika merged with the Star of David. X owner Elon Musk said that violated Twitter’s rule against the incitement of violence.
The Wall Street Journal’s Rebecca Elliott reported, “X reinstated West’s account after receiving reassurance that he wouldn’t use the platform to share antisemitic or otherwise harmful language, a person familiar with the matter said.”
Elliott also wrote, “The musician and designer, who now legally goes by Ye, won’t be eligible to monetize his account on X, and advertisements won’t appear next to his posts, the company said.”
For what it’s worth, Musk tweeted Saturday night that X is not moving its headquarters out of San Francisco.
Last week, Ed Yong wrote another superb article for The Atlantic: “Fatigue Can Shatter a Person.”
The next day, Yong made a surprise announcement on Twitter. He wrote, “Some news: After 8 years & 750 stories, I’ve decided to leave The Atlantic. Today’s my last day.”
But Yong, who won a 2021 Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on COVID-19, is not leaving the business. After thanking his colleagues at The Atlantic, Yong wrote, “I’ll still write about the areas you know I care about — the importance of the natural world, the experiences of people with chronic illnesses, the societal vulnerabilities that the pandemic exposed, and more — with empathy, curiosity, and synthesis at the heart of it all.”
He added, “I’m not leaving for anywhere else. I’ll soon be starting on a 3rd book — and a few other exciting projects that I’ll announce in due time. I’ll likely do smaller-scale pieces too, but am still working out the details of where, what, how, and all the rest.”
He also has a newsletter.
He concluded his Twitter thread by writing, “Endings are hard. Blank pages are harder — but also exciting and full of possibility. Onward. TKTK.”
Just a quick note about Yong. His coverage of COVID-19 for The Atlantic was spectacular — one of the best examples of journalism ever seen. That’s not hyperbole. It was informative and invaluable.
After winning the Pulitzer in 2021, he told me, “It’s surreal. I wish that the stories I wrote had never been necessary, but I’m proud to have been able to help my readers make sense of a crisis that often defied sense. And I’m incredibly grateful to the team of phenomenal editors, fact-checkers, copy-editors, and artists, without whom my work would have been impossible.”
Theo Baker, the Stanford student whose stories helped lead to the resignation of Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne, writes a guest essay for The New York Times: “The Research Scandal at Stanford Is More Common Than You Think.”
The Washington Post’s Reis Thebault with “His Hollywood star was finally rising. Now he cleans apartments.”
I’m going to link to New York Times sports stories each chance I get. Here’s Juliet Macur with “Megan Rapinoe Is Not Going Quietly.”
Have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at tjones@poynter.org.
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