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Author Topic: Minneapolis in flames. Would ham radio keep you apprised of such things?  (Read 1797 times)

N1AUP

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As most of you probably are aware, Minneapolis is in flames from rioting. 

Here in Central Mass, market changes have destroyed local media.  The local newspapers were bought up by out of state companies, and the local reporting staff fired.  There is barely any local news coverage, and certainly nothing up to the minute.

Further, there is a tendency for the government / police to hush up things that might make the citizens uneasy.  A friend of mine was sexually assaulted in the aisles of a local grocery store, and the store and police hushed it up, worried that it would negatively affect business.

If the Minneapolis riots spread to my nearby city, I'm wondering how would I keep abreast of what's going on? 

Would ham radio be useful here?

It would be great to be able to tune into ham radio, and get up to the minute reports about the area.  Kind of like Skywarn for public safety.  You could figure out what was happening, what areas of the city were safe, and if anything was spreading to your area.

Would ARES activate to do this sort of thing, or are they limited to health and welfare things?  Would it be useful to organize something to provide this sort of thing when TSHTF?

Thanks
N1AUP
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KT4WO

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"Would ham radio be useful here? "

No.
Not really what ARES does or AR in general.

« Last Edit: May 29, 2020, 07:40:34 AM by KT4WO »
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W0CKI

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No, but cable TV does it, however with overkill.
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K1FBI

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We could use our mobile antenna whips to toast the marshmallows.
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KA2DDX

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I believe a good vhf / uhf scanner is the best tool to keep up to date on things like this.
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N3UPM

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I have a Broadcastify/Radio Reference premium account, I can keep 6 of my favorite feeds running simultaneously on one tab, and split the audio to right and left. Currently listening to the Twin Cities and LA. Who was it that said "if you live within 5 miles of a 7-11, you're toast"?

As dead as most of the repeaters are, I don't think you'd  get good information. I would rely on just staying as far away from any major city as possible. There are some live streams on youtube and social media that are right in the thick of it, although some inject their own opinions, but you can see what's actually going on and make up your own mind.
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N8AUC

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"Would ham radio be useful here? "

No.
Not really what ARES does or AR in general.

That may be true where you live. But it is not necessarily true in all areas.
It depends on the relationship at either the local or state level between ARES and Emergency Management Officials.

In Ohio we have this thing called the "Ohio Watch Desk Project". At the discretion of the State EMA director, the EMA
can activate ARES on a statewide level, or in designated areas to request real time on the ground situation reporting.
It's been used a couple of times, and was very successful. I don't think it's ever been activated for a civil unrest situation
though. If I remember right, the last 2 times it was used it was done on a DMR talk group.

http://www.arrl.org/news/canceled-ohio-ares-state-conference-morphs-into-statewide-communication-exercise


« Last Edit: May 29, 2020, 06:11:07 PM by N8AUC »
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K5LXP

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Normally I would be along with those that say "good luck with that" finding out anything useful on ham radio but when there was a mass shooting in El Paso last year I heard someone report of "something really big going on" through the MegaLink here, and the op went into some detail about what movement he saw on the scene.  "Hearsay" by any definition but it was a good 15 minutes later before I heard anything about it on broadcast radio.   So I would say "it depends" on what kind of event you expect someone to comment about and what would be the chances of a ham, with a radio, willing to provide commentary be for any given activity.  "Pretty small" but probably not "impossible".

Mark K5LXP
Albuquerque, NM
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WO7R

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The problem with ham radio in a crisis like this -- where we are all just sitting home "reporting" -- as opposed to providing real public service is the same problem a newspaper editor has -- sifting through the reports and figuring out what's real, what's an outlier event -- in short, what really happened.

I lived in Minnesota for about 35 years.  I have friends there and, accordingly, my Facebook account is full of first hand stories just as I would be flooded by them if I was still there and monitoring the 2m repeater traffic (I could hear the most prominent Twin Cities' repeaters from my home miles away).

Right now, as I type this, there's a developing story.  There is, of course, looting going on.

But, who is behind it?  Is it random stuff or is it organized and if so, by whom?

I know just enough people there to have seen a surprising number of posts that are either first or second hand that clearly show a lot of white people doing looting in what is being reported nationally as race riots.  There are claims that certain white supremacist groups deliberately showed up as what amounts to provocateurs (there has been internet chatter about doing so for months, supposedly).

The thing is, it is very hard to sort it all out.  It could be "all of the above" -- random black looters, random white looters, organized looters (white, maybe black?).  It will probably take months to sort it out.  It's not even clear that the current set of arrests tell the story properly so that we know the proper proportions of who did what and even if one of the groups in question (if all of them even exist) had an outsided influence on what is happening.  For all I know, we may find some mixed race gang no one has heard about had a lot to do with it.  I suppose that's not terribly likely, but when all you see is random photos and posts from random people, who can really say what the truth is?  They aren't reporters.  They're just people with cell phones.

The national press is, again as I type this, still trying to sort it out as well.  The possibility of outside groups is being covered, fitfully, as well.  It's behind my Facebook feed, but it also looks like the presence of an editor is probably getting a better, more accurate look overall.  Maybe.

In a maelstrom like this, unless we organize the traffic and the reporting, we are more likely than not to get it wrong.

Police understand this.  Witness stories often contradict each other.  There are pretty famous exercises where someone with a gorilla suit or something walks into a criminal justice class, does a few things and leaves, and then the class (this is all an exercise of course) collects each others statements.   Was the gorilla wearing a shirt?  Was it red or green?  Et cetera.

It was famously said that "the Internet doesn't have an editor."  This is a moment that cries out for one.
« Last Edit: May 30, 2020, 08:45:50 PM by WO7R »
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W9FIB

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It was famously said that "the Internet doesn't have an editor."  This is a moment that cries out for one.

I disagree. There are too many editors already. The problem is almost every editor today rules with some form of bias. And what they see as "fit to print", as the NYT famously puts it, varies based on that bias.

And they feel the need to not just report what happened, but rather draw conclusions and basically tell you what to think.

To have 1 person, group, agency, or company be the final "editor" would put us in the same condition George Orwell predicted in his book "1984". "Big brother" would always be watching and editing to the bias they are based on. And what is true today may not be true tomorrow as revisions are made at the mercy of the "final editor", and with the bias of the day as they decide what "we the people" need to know.
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73, Stan
Travelling the world one signal at a time.

N9AOP

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I always liked the 'news media personnel' that would come on after the President gave a conference to tell me what he said.  It's like these gas bags don't think the average citizen can understand what was originally said.
Art
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K6CPO

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We suffered major destruction and looting last night in one of the incorporated cities just east of San Diego.  I was monitoring the repeaters and the news TV stations the entire time and the information coming over the radio was sketchy at best, mostly about one of the freeways being closed because of protesters.  The TV stations were right in the middle of it and it was possible to see what was happening.  Just before I went to bed, I heard someone come on a repeater and report that two banks had been torched and were burning.  I hadn't seen anything about that on the last news report so I treated it with a certain amount of skepticism.  When I got up this morning, I turned on the news to find out that two banks had indeed burned to the ground.

So it is possible to get accurate information over ham radio, but it's best to verify anything you hear before passing it along.
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WO7R

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Quote
I disagree. There are too many editors already.

Nope.  Take a gander at the comments section of any newspaper.  Your idea of "let a thousand voices bloom" is all over it.

It's also the cacaphony of a thousand nut cases of every political position imaginable.

We could, maybe do a little better than that.  But it is still a raw feed and its perspective is biased more fundamentally than any editor's is.  It's the bias of not being able to see more than about 50 yards in any direction.  Question is, is it the most important 50 yards or is it misleading?  Are they seeing the correct color of the gorilla's shirt?

The fact is, to sort out a situation where thousands of people are doing thousands of things (that is, after all what a riot is) requires perspective and sorting out.

Is their bias with an editor?  Sure.  But, there is also perspective.  There is also the sifting of various accounts.  There are also trained reporters out there who know all about the difficulties of collecting information from people under stress.  It's not like witnesses, too, lack their own biases.

An editor sits at the apex of that.  You and I sit at the apex of nothing.  Even if we have the politics of the situation right, we have no realistic ability to get to where the most important action is.  We only get the perspective of where we happen to be.

The idea that we could assemble anything like "the truth" from all of that borders on the comical.  I will take the problems of political bias from editors over pretending a cacaphony of random, contradictory voices is somehow "objective".  It isn't.
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W9FIB

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Quote
I disagree. There are too many editors already.
Nope.  Take a gander at the comments section of any newspaper.  Your idea of "let a thousand voices bloom" is all over it.

It's also the cacaphony of a thousand nut cases of every political position imaginable.

And the reason for such varied coverage is the bias of the editor over what ever publication. So again 1 editor over all news is a major mistake. I have yet to find a publication whether on the net or actual print that does not contain a bias of some sort. Now put 1 editor over everything? Long live 1984!

As for the nut cases, guess who allows those to be published...the editor.
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73, Stan
Travelling the world one signal at a time.

KD0REQ

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newspapers by physical limitations are way behind. good newspaper sites are a little behind. fishwraps are not useful. right now, TV news on local stations with staffing and remote capability are your best shot at breaking information.

ham regs do not permit "broadcasting."

anybody silly enough to take a HT into a riot scene is not going to be on the air long. I will bet 100 percent of anybody else's money they haven't even looked at the Poynter Institute's 29 tips on reporting from unrest. so they're going into danger, bringing an antenna launcher to a gunfight.

stay safe, stay home, if nothing else, watch Twitter or Facebook for the occasional, cryptic, and guarded official reports from the local police.
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