ABC-TV’s Dr. Richard Besser will join Dallas politicians and healthcare officials tonight (Wednesday, Oct. 15) for a free town hall meeting titled “Ebola: Facts Not Fear” sponsored by WFAA-TV (Channel 8).
The town hall is scheduled from 6:30-7:30 p.m. at Lakewood Theater, 1825 Abrams Parkway in the Lakewood Village Shopping Center. If you don’t want to brave the limited parking and inevitably huge crowd of media, you can watch a live stream of the event on Channel 8.
Since the event is only scheduled to last an hour, you can bet there won’t be too many questions from the audience tonight; you’re probably looking mostly at more of what health officials have been yammering on about on TV every day.
I had to laugh this morning when I turned on the television, because Channel 8 was running continuous and fairly breathless coverage of the Dallas ebola situation well past 7 a.m., when the channel typically switches over to Good Morning America, ABC’s national morning news and chat show.
Channel 8 continued broadcasting until about 8 a.m., when Ron Corning and Alexa Conomos (a neighborhood resident who was profiled in the Advocate in June 2009) turned coverage over to ABC with a promise that Good Morning America was ready to grab the baton and keep pushing the envelope with ebola news.
Once the switch was made, however, the first thing I recall hearing was Ginger Zee, the Good Morning America weather broadcaster, pointing to some spot in Times Square where she was getting ready to do some breakdancing.
Eventually, the news talking heads did get around to discussing the latest ebola news from Dallas, but it was a good lesson in how much the rest of the country is really worried about what’s happening here.
The answer: Not so much.
