Chris,

There was one woman at the USGS in Colorado who was available to the media and has been referenced in many of the news reports. It seems to me that it's likely that no one asked her how a tsunami occurs, because she would have been available to tell them.

We are also talking about news stations we have their rookies on duty during a very large holiday. All of the senior staffers who have pulled rank are out of the office and they probably have all of the contact information where the rookie has none. In being fair to them, they should have possibly done one of three things:

A. Ask the woman at the USGS who was available.
B. Look on the Internet and got the details from a scientific web site and then reported, using that information.
C. Not try to explain how a tsunami is generated, just say there was one.

Most of the people I work with cannot even understand why I have an interest in earthquakes at all, let alone know anything about them. Perhaps we are expecting too much?

Petra