Winnipesauke Divers observed, in part:
Quote:
Her next question was, “how do you deal with all the hundreds of thousands of boats out there and the crazies they bring, have you no concern for your well being or your crew?” To which my response was, “what are you talking about???” She said you know, with all the traffic out there and no speed limits, it’s virtual free for all and people getting killed every day. To which I just laughed and said, “you know how many boat we passed by to get here from Wolfe city???” “Seventeen and not one came anywhere near me” and that was one of the best days on the lake for a sailboat.
So here is the up shot: most people get their information from the media namely the TV where the story has been slanted to discourage boat traffic. They show pictures of the hot spots like the town docks or the Weirs channel to dramatize their story.
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(Rant mode ON)
While I agree that most folks these days unfortunately get the bulk of their news from TV, and that a good live shot when doing a story about the lake is to have boats in the background (therefore you set up at the Weirs or town docks) I want to point out that the bulk of the speed limit debate and all the negativity that it brought was covered by LOCAL NH media. In Boston virtually NOTHING was reported about it, it may have cracked the "news brief" section of the Herald and Globe a couple of times, I can't speak to how it was covered in Portland, but I didn't see anything about it on the National Media It was a LOCAL story!
The only Winnipesaukee story that I recall seeing on Boston TV this year was the fire at Anchor Marine, and that only made Boston TV because Channel 5 and Channel 9 are owned by the same parent company and they had good video of the fire, otherwise it would not have been mentioned. Even the Eagle Island speedboat landing didn't make Boston TV.
No, TV and the Media are not to blame for folks getting the idea that there are thousands of boats on Winni and none of them know how to boat and everyone travels at 70 MPH, the real culprit is the internet.
Yep, forums like this one.
Anyone anywhere can log on and read the debate over speed limits and some of it was, to say the least, over the top. You can still read the debate even though it is no longer active! This is certainly not the only site on the internet that presented that discussion and has archives.
It's easy to blame "the media". People have been doing it for centuries, that's where the saying "don't kill the messenger" comes from, AND nothing has changed. Media is an easy target. But if you really want to look at how much and where the speed limit story got coverage, then the culprit isn't TV or newspapers because there was virtually no coverage outside of NH.
The culprit for impressions of Lake Winnipesaukee and boating that the woman described by Winnipesaukee Divers has? The culprit is US.
(Rant mode OFF)