Radio hosts fixate on schools closing as Gabrielle closes in

Cyclone Gabrielle buried homes and took lives, including those of rescuers, this week. But as it bore down on the country, front-rank hosts at Newstalk ZB played down the danger it posed and complained about a day of school closures.Cyclone Gabrielle buried homes and took lives, including those of rescuers, this week. But as it bore down on the country, front-rank hosts at Newstalk ZB played down the danger it posed and complained about a day of school closures.* An earlier version of this story quoted Tim Beveridge's comments about hyperbolic media coverage of the incoming Cyclone Gabrielle without noting he had also expressed clear concern about its potential impact. Mediawatch went on to describe as "trivialising" other comments by other Newstalk ZB hosts broadcast after Cyclone Gabrielle had made landfall. This wrongly implied that Tim Beveridge's comments were also trivial. This wasn't intended, but not enough care was taken to ensure the distinction was clear. RNZ apologises to Tim Beveridge for that lapse.On Sunday afternoon, Newstalk ZB's Tim Beveridge told listeners he saw some of the media coverage about the threat posed by Cyclone Gabrielle as a bit overblown."We need to take a breath in the media with our hyperbole and emotive language around it, because I'm not sure that it's really particularly helpful," he said."Privately I just look at some of the coverage and think 'this is just getting ridiculous'."Tim Beveridge had in mind the anxiety of Aucklanders hit by flooding just a fortnight earlier - and added this caveat: "It's a tricky role to be working in the media around discussions around storms and weather... so I offer these comments with a degree of caution... because we want people to be prepared and we want people to take weather events seriously," he said.There was no such reservation from other hosts on the same network on Monday morning when the cyclone's destructive force was clear in parts of the the upper North Island.Kate Hawkesby decried what she called "hysteria" from authorities and she scoffed at the media warning that the storm would be destructive."One of the headlines I saw on Newshub was 'There will be destruction'. That was the headline. If you've ever seen anything more anxiety inducing in your life, I don't know. There will be destruction," she said."They seem convinced it's coming our way and it's going to happen so we shall see."Later in the show, Breakfast host Mike Hosking came on to add his own derision to the mix…Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details