Major Faults in Earthquake Reporting

I don't know whether any of you had the misfortune to see Geraldo Rivera's evening show on Fox News the day of the Chilean quake. He has to be the single worst professional journalist on all of television: he is inappropriately chummy in interviews, often calling guests "bud" or "pal"; he is grossly uninformed on virtually all scientific matters; he is prone to using phrases and figures of speech that titillate and give a completely mistaken impression; and he habitually brings poor guests aboard--quite often those who have absolutely no knowledge of or background in the story's subject (in this case, earthquake and tsunami science). He leers and smirks, feigns crocodile tears, licks his chops, and caps everything off with an appalling punchline. He is insufferable. I hate to say it, but he seems right at home on the Fox network.

Rivera's show on the Chilean quake and tsunami was filled with the most unimaginable and irresponsible pseudo-science and quackery. The rest of it was a baffling series of non sequiturs. Herewith a sampling:

• What happened in Hawaii was a tsunami "false alarm."
• A quake of magnitude 9.5 will sooner or later occur in Southern California.
• Sediment seen off the coast of Hawaii the day of the quake was transported from the coast of Chile.
• No tsunami occurred that day in Hawaii. It "passed them by."
• The tsunami in Sumatra and Thailand in 2004 was only 8 feet high, but "pushed several miles inland."

I think this garbage requires the scientific community to publicly correct Rivera and Fox news. This bumbler does too much harm.

I'll tell you who was impressive--scientifically--that evening. His name is David Shuster and he's on MSNBC. In his questions to guests and his comments to the viewer, Shuster displayed a solid layman's understanding of earthquake and tsunami science, light years ahead of any of his colleagues at MSNBC, Fox, or CNN. Even his more casual verbiage throughout the broadcast revealed an awareness of important scientific distinctions (such as that between Richter and moment magnitude).

I betcha he's read Susan Hough's book Earthshaking Science.