Originally posted Sunday, April 14, 2019 by RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com on his AJC Radio & TV Talk blog
Ella Dorsey, a meteorologist at CBS46, said she received death threats for interrupting the Masters golf tournament earlier today while Tiger Woods was chasing history. She was focused on tornado watches around Georgia, including metro Atlanta.
At 1:33 p.m. on Twitter, she posted: “To everyone sending me death threats right now: you wouldn’t be saying a damn thing if a tornado was ravaging your home this afternoon. Lives are more important than 5 minutes of golf. I will continue to repeat that if and when we cut into programming to keep people safe.”
They actually split the screen and people were not able to hear the CBS commentary.
Woods would win the Masters before the storms rolled into Augusta.
A tornado did touch down in Butts County. Power lines and trees fell throughout the metro area.
Here were some complaints of CBS breaking into Masters’ live coverage in Augusta:
Some found this a bit... rich.
Steve Doerr, Dorsey’s news director, was flabbergasted. “The venom around this was insane,” he texted me, “even by social media standards.” He had to take phone calls, too.
UPDATE on Monday, April 15 : There were some skeptics who didn’t believe Dorsey. Doerr said in a follow-up text that “some keyboard tough guy trolls crossed the line. Not an imminent safety issue. They wouldn’t be skeptical if they were here yesterday answering phone calls. People were vicious.”
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