On Sun, Aug 28, 2011 at 16:54, PGage <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sun, Aug 28, 2011 at 2:31 PM, David Lynch <[email protected]> wrote: > >> >> On Sun, Aug 28, 2011 at 14:27, PGage <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> 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 >>> } >>> >>> >> Kurtz gets a huge benefit from the fact that, as a media critic, he pretty >> gets to wait until the storm is over and then tell people they did it wrong. >> I wouldn't say that New York dodged a bullet, but it turned out to be a much >> smaller caliber than it could have been. The prediction was for a category >> two storm on Friday morning, if not later. If the reverse had come to pass >> -- that Irene was forecast to weaken to a tropical storm just as it hit NYC >> but actually was a category 2 hurricane, I'm sure he'd be complaining that >> there wasn't enough attention being given to Irene before it came and caused >> billions in damage. And, honestly, when you look at the accuracy of the >> forecasts for Irene relative to the statistics, the National Hurricane >> Center (who absolutely everyone relies on heavily when it comes to >> forecasting hurricanes) did a hell of a job with this one. >> >> Irene got more coverage than it might have if not for hitting New York, >> but I think that the prediction of a category 2 storm hitting a major >> metropolitan area would have been big news, even if it had been somewhere >> like Miami or Houston that would shrug off a less-intense cyclone. By the >> time it became clear that Irene was going to be somewhat weaker than had >> been forecast, it was too late to ratchet down the hype machine. Anchors had >> been called in on a weekend, reporters sent out into the field, satellite >> trucks rented, etc. etc. so the show must go on and they had to make do with >> what they could find. I've also gotten the impression that flooding has been >> much worse in the suburbs than in the city itself, which, of course, means >> it's ignored. >> > > I think I dispute some of this David. While the storm was predicted to be > Category 2 when it hit North Carolina (and I believe that is what happened), > as early as Friday morning lots of experts were saying that it would likely > be Category 1 by the time it got to NYC - and some were saying it might even > be Tropical Storm by then, which it was (caveat here, my Friday morning is 3 > hours earlier than NY Friday morning, so that might be part of the > discrepancy). This is what I mean by the cablers regularly confusing worst > case scenarios (it might be Category 2) with most likely scenarios (which by > Friday morning I believe was Category 1). >
I just looked through the NHC archive and it's less clear about the strength than I remember seeing, so it could be that my memory or some forecaster I saw/heard/read confused "could be category 2" and "will be category 2". The 5 AM EDT advisory from Friday -- which the east coast woke up to -- predicted a strong category 2 over Albemarle Sound, NC on the wee hours of Sunday and a tropical storm over western Maine on the wee hours of Monday, with no intermediate predictions. (This was when Irene was still supposed to hit NC as a major hurricane.) By 11 AM Eastern (8 AM Pacific), they had a forecast point just offshore from Atlantic City, or 70 miles due south of the southern tip of Staten Island, with an intensity right near the cat 1/cat 2 line. I wouldn't rule out a category 2 storm over/near NYC from either of these forecasts, but it's not explicit. > Additionally, the point of critics like Howie (and myself) is not that this > was a non-story, or not deserving of high-volume coverage (it was an > important story, and justified a lot of investment of resources and time in > coverage). The point is that the nature of the coverage was focused on > fanning anxiety in order to create viewer interest and decrease viewer > turn-over during commercials. Instead of providing sober reportage that > viewers could consume on as needed basis, they are motivated to create > viewer dependency on their coverage by over-emphasizing the most dramatic > and frightening aspects of the story. > I disagree with your interpretation of his piece here. When he makes comments like "Every producer knew that to abandon the coverage even briefly—say, to cover the continued fighting in Libya—was to risk driving viewers elsewhere", that's not about the tone of the coverage, it's about the quantity of coverage. He does take them to task for their tone as well, but that wasn't the only thing he criticized. > I don't blame CNN for making me stay up all night watching a glorified > weather report 3000 miles away from home - my own neurotic anxiety about a > (newly) grown child is the source of that, and I take responsibility for it. > I do blame them for giving me a distorted understanding of what was going on > 3000 miles away, and significantly complicating the planning and > decision-making process for the event. By Friday night we (my wife and I) > were pretty clear the Hurricane would not be Category 2 by the time it got > to NYC, and were just trying to figure out how extensive the fall out from a > Category 1 would be. It turns out CNN knew pretty accurately what the > Category 1 fall out would be, and new it would likely be Category 1 or > higher, but spent the vast majority of its on air time talking about what > the Category 2 consequences - without even doing us the service of clearly > labeling what they were doing. I repeatedly found myself Friday afternoon > and evening trying to resolve what seemed like an unacknowledged > contradiction between what almost all of the experts interviewed on CNN were > saying (this will be a Cat 1 or Trop Storm by the time it gets to NYC) and > the near hysterical commentary/advice from CNN reporters and anchors that > people should be getting out of lower Manhattan (with little or nor > attention to the subtleties of which Zone people were in). Relatively few > people in Manhattan, and even in lower Manhattan, live in the Zone A areas, > so this seemed that CNN was saying that even if you are not in Zone A, the > smart thing to do was to evacuate. It took me a while, but I eventually > figured out that this was not accurate, and that unless you were in Zone A, > the smart thing to do was stay home. Perhaps I'm overly cynical, but whenever I watch rolling cable news coverage, I go into it with the expectation that it will be one part new factual information, two parts repetition of whatever pieces of factual information will get viewers stay tuned, and several parts speculation and innuendo, especially about how the situation could change at any moment. The empty podium shot is a classic example. Sure, the sheriff/mayor/governor/president isn't there now, but he will be, and you don't want to miss that, do you? Some perspective would be nice, but there's also the saying about how it usually isn't news when a plane doesn't crash or the river doesn't flood, so I don't really expect it out of people whose job it is to keep me glued to my TV as much as possible. All of this is one of the reasons I find myself turning more and more to Twitter and live blogs for events where the situation actually might change minute-to-minute, then waiting for a traditional news broadcast or commentary show (e.g., Rachel Maddow) to sum everything up. Getting your breaking news from the web can be like drinking from a fire hose and you don't necessarily get a whole lot of deep analysis, but I find it better than the vapidity of cable news. -- David J. Lynch [email protected] -- 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
