I Am a Force for Change

Sometimes you see something is wrong and you contact the powers that be to correct it, but often you get no response. It’s as if you’re screaming into a void. That is, until you speak up one more time about something wrong and finally get some real change.

Last week I began noticing something peculiar on Action News. They run this “Storm Tracker 6 Live” in the mornings in an inset on the side of the screen during commercials. It’s supposed to show live weather conditions in the Delaware Valley. For at least a week, my half-asleep mind had noticed that it didn’t seem to be showing live weather. It just showed the same green graphic of rain all over the I-95 corridor. This was despite the fact that there was no rain forecast.

The radar showed rain pretty much right over our house but it was bright and sunny. Even more curious was that I swore it was the same rainy graphic each day for several days. What were the odds rain would fall in the same pattern? It soon became clear that Channel 6 was running the same outdated radar information every day.

Now, I could have just accepted this passively. I could have just rolled my eyes at a mistake by Action News. But I decided I didn’t want to lie down and take this. We need accurate weather information during used car commercials.

So I emailed the station and politely pointed out the mistake. Too many people assume someone else already called 911 when they pass a car accident but I didn’t want to be that guy. I wanted to make sure someone reported it.

I didn’t get a response to my email but Monday morning, the radar was clear. The weather outside was sunny and the radar matched. No more green rain obscuring tristate borders. Perhaps the station was just too embarrassed to contact me. (I hope nobody got fired.) I’d like to think I had a small part in correcting this wrong.

See? For everybody out there who thinks their voice is too small to matter, that the wrongs will never be righted, I have proved that speaking up can make a difference. I am a force for change.