Did anyone hear a promo for a story on Y2K on ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings for tomorrow (10/1/98)? Caught the end of the promo, and frankly it caught me by suprise due to the LACK of major media coverage on this event. If the piece airs, I'd like to hear what everyone's opinion is on the slant this might take.

-- Debbie V (djvpool@frontiernet.net), September 30, 1998

Answers

Debbie, I saw that too! I'll be watching and I'm sure I'll be stunned if it really is a report regarding y2k. Today, 9/30, I saw a very small story on CNN regarding the bogus report of 99% Compliance by the FAA. I wonder what the ABC slant will be. Either way, I see an modest increase in mainstream coverag

-- Michael Taylor (mtdesign3@aol.com), October 01, 1998.

I watched it. It consisted of two segments, first about the Lubbock drill, and then about the Indian code factories. It wasn't clear to me from this report if Lubbock was testing whether things would fail, or practicing responses to possible failures. They presented only one result - that Lubbock 'discovered' that they rely on the outside world. For this, they needed a test? The Indians are cranking code for many US companies. They have some knowledge of COBOL and they are very cheap. End of story. Summary: people are working on this, don't worry.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), October 01, 1998.

I just finished watching it. In my opinion they presented Y2K as if it were going to be a 2 or a 3 and with a bit of effort, we'd get away with minor disruptions. No real analysis of the facts or what we are headed for.

-- Craig (craig@ccinet.ab.ca), October 01, 1998.

While I agree with Craig that there was "not much analysis", I think the first half of the presentation from Lubbock Texas was far from predicting 2-3 (on 10 scale)impact. Weasel words aside from the media types, the city manager, fire chief clearly said they still don't have any idea what the impact will be,...they did this to see how the could cope if all computers went down at once....I think Gary North, does and did call this kind of community action a miracle.

Let us see what happens whens the folks in Lubbock toddle up to Washington and tell the congress (the opposite of "progress")has to say.

-- Donna Barthuley (moment@pacbell.net), October 01, 1998.