Howie Kurtz, who I guess did not have a show this morning, dumps on the
media hype of Irene
{
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/08/28/hurricane-irene-hype-how-the-media-went-overboard.html
}Excerpts: "But the apocalypse that cable television had been trumpeting had failed to materialize. And at 9 a.m., you could almost hear the air come out of the media’s hot-air balloon of constant coverage when Hurricane Irene was downgraded to a tropical storm. Not everyone was willing to accept this turn of events. When the Weather Channel’s Brian Norcross told MSNBC that forecasters had been expecting the first hurricane to make landfall in New York City since 1893—“and it didn’t happen”—anchor Alex Witt was openly skeptical.Really, Brian?” she asked. Hadn’t Irene technically still been a hurricane when it came ashore in New York an hour earlier? “Can’t we still go with that?” No, Norcross said. (SNIP) "I take nothing away from the journalists who worked around the clock, many braving the elements, to cover a hurricane that was sweeping its way from North Carolina to New England. But the tsunami of hype on this story was relentless, a Category 5 performance that was driven in large measure by ratings. Every producer knew that to abandon the coverage even briefly—say, to cover the continued fighting in Libya—was to risk driving viewers elsewhere." (SNP) *************** I was actually watching MSNBC during the exchange Howie comments on above - to be fair, Witt's tone was rather ironic and self-aware, so it was not as bad as he is making it out to be, but there is a lot of truth in what he says. The cablesters had clearly smoked their own shit, and were bummed they were not going to have an Anderson Cooper, Katrina-like moment. I don't mind them making viewers aware of the worse case scenarios, and encouraging viewers in the region to be prepared for them - that is only prudent. I have minded, a great deal, their tendency to confuse the worse case scenario with the most likely or modal scenario, and skewing all of their coverage in that direction. They also did a lot of cherry-picking of extreme images - something we know TV news does almost as a function of what it is. During the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 (which I always recall vividly in part because the same 22 year old daughter I have been worrying about this weekend in Manhattan was a three month old infant in my arms when it struck while I was watching the Giants and As play what for us was a huge World Series) the national news played on seeming endless loop shots of the Bay Bridge collapsing and the Marina on fire and a few other money shots, giving many in the country the impression that San Francisco was on the brink of falling apart (we had many relatives calling in a panic). The fact was that, while there were a few isolated areas in extremis, the vast majority of San Francisco was either just fine or only moderately impaired. In the same way, once the media realized that there would not be a lot of images of hipsters and investment bankers floating down the main streets of Manhattan on make-shift rafts, they spent almost all of their time showing images of a relatively few areas of relatively moderate river spillage (hyping it to the max, a la "Joe, is the river overflowing the banks?" Joe: "Yes, I can report that the waters of the Hudson river are at this moment rushing into the streets of Manhattan"). I saw almost no video of the 98% of river frontage and Manhattan streets that were not overflowing or flooded. They also showed a lot of admittedly dramatic footage from Long Beach, with sea water flooding under the boardwalk into the streets (but no context as to how deeply into the city the streets were flooded) - which, as Howie writes, but was never once reported during the many continuous hours I watched the live coverage of these images through the early morning hours: "Long Beach, it should be noted, is a narrow barrier island three feet above sea level and prone to flooding." I am not pretending Casablanca like surprise that cable news outlets hype their stories to get ratings at the expense of reporting important information, but I guess I am surprised at how relentlessly they did this in what could have been serious and life-threatening situations, and I guess I am pissed since, selfishly, in this case I had skin in the game and so felt obliged to expose myself to their shameful tactics (and was emotionally vulnerable to them, however cynical I tried to make myself). -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
