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.
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.
— Ella Dorsey (@Ella__Dorsey) April 14, 2019
Here were some complaints of CBS breaking into Masters’ live coverage in Augusta:
A scroll at the bottom could have done the same thing. Also, there are other stations and this thing called the internet.
— RowYourOwnGears (@RowYourOwnGears) April 14, 2019
CBS a tornado could be outside my house and I don’t care. Put the masters back on
— BibatJuice (@BibatJuice) April 14, 2019
I understand there’s tornado warnings going on and CBS needs to tell us. But send me a text or something and put the masters back on
— John Theus (@jtheus71) April 14, 2019
Some found this a bit... rich.
ATLANTA people are yelling at the local CBS station for putting up a double screen of Masters and tornado WARNING bc it disrupted their golf watching. True story swear to God.
— Georgia Native (@Georgia_Native) April 15, 2019
I understand there’s tornado warnings going on and CBS needs to tell us. But send me a text or something and put the masters back on
— John Theus (@jtheus71) April 14, 2019
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.”
