Lawmakers on the legislature’s Transportation Committee asked the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) to correct what they said have been excessively exaggerated disaster reports on television when the nation has been affected by typhoons.
The comments were sparked as the bureau’s budget plan for the next fiscal year came under scrutiny yesterday.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) said that many television stations would send reporters to remote typhoon-affected areas and ask them to do live coverage from there.
He said that television stations boosted their ratings by providing images of severe disasters, when the typhoon brought hardly any rain and wind to most of the nation.
“Television news often criticizes the bureau for giving inaccurate weather forecasts, but nobody blames the television news for airing scary disaster reports. The bureau should speak up and correct these inaccurate reports,” Lee said.
Lee said that television news programs should base their reports mainly on the information provided by the bureau when the nation is affected by typhoons, and the reporters delivering the weather forecasts should either be certified by the bureau as qualified weather broadcasters, or have related professional backgrounds.
Lee’s proposal was echoed by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chiu Chih-wei (邱志偉) and KMT Legislator Lin Kuo-cheng (林國正).
Chiu said that weather forecasting is a highly professional and serious matter, adding that both NHK and BBC — public broadcasting services in Japan and the UK respectively — recruit people with backgrounds in atmospheric science to deliver weather reports.
He said that television broadcasters in Taiwan often exaggerate the weather reports in comparison, causing people to lose faith in the accuracy of weather forecasts.
“The bureau has the responsibility of establishing a certification program for weather broadcasters, and only certified people should present weather forecasts,” Chiu said.
Lin said the certification program would allow television stations to hire the most professional individuals to deliver weather forecasts, which in turn would give audiences more accurate services.
However, DPP Legislator Yeh Yi-jin (葉宜津) said that television news simply cannot use information provided by the bureau without exaggeration, because people do not like boring meteorological data.
She said that the bureau should strive to use more colloquial terms when delivering weather forecasts, so that everybody understands them.
In response, CWB director-general Shin Tzay-chyn (辛在勤) said that the bureau would enhance training for weather forecasters so they can give weather forecasts using laymen’s terms.
However, Shin said that television stations have rights in determining the employment of weather broadcasters, and the bureau can communicate with television stations on the issues generated by weather news on TV.
“We provide training sessions twice per year for television news reporters, and hopefully the sessions will enhance their knowledge on meteorology,” Shin said.
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