13 June 2006
RE: Alberto

Filed under Everything Else

Memo to Fox News, CNN, MSNBC:

Stop. You’re killing people.

I know you love the big story. I know you can’t resist the urge to talk for hours on end to anyone with a few lines of color on their chest or a political affiliation about a “major” current event. I know that you get a rush to your collective heads when you can use phrases like “worst case scenario” and “disasterous”. I advise you to seek counseling for this. In the long term, you may be able to fight the effects of this psychological condition of calamitism.
But in the short term, think long and hard about what you lead in with on your primetime shows, about the kinds of silly questions you ask. Here’s a passage – verbatim – that I had a tough time with from The Situation Room, Wolf Blitzer’s late-afternoon early-evening CNN show (emphasis mine):

BLITZER: Before we get to New Orleans and levees, how ready you are, maybe you are, maybe you’re not, what about Florida and this first topical storm — named storm, Alberto, which could become a hurricane? Are you worried about any Corps of Engineer projects right now in Florida?

LT. GEN. CARL STROCK, U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS: No, I wouldn’t say any of our projects. There are really not up in the area where we expect to have landfall. There is some concern about Lake Okeechobee on the part of the some of the locals down there because it’s an older dike that was built in the ’30s. But we’re very confident that Okeechobee can handle any rainfall that might arise from this storm.

Huh? This is Florida you’re talking about: land of the perpetual hurricane. This may be a valid question if the storm is hitting New Orleans or Biloxi (and think of that media field day!) or if the storm were 60% more powerful. But the factor in a tropical storm is never the wind damage, but the large amount of rain that comes with these storms.

The response isn’t much better: why even mention Lake Okeechobee? For those unfamiliar with the geography of the Sunshine State, it’s on par with asking how Philadelphia is holding up when there’s rain in DC. Governor Jeb Bush and the correspondents at FoxNews also talked extensively about the Okeechobee dams and levees. Bush also gets the quote of the day award: “Good God. You know. Who would have thunk it?” said Jeb.

And yet, this storm passed. A plane accident, resulting in one fatality, was attributed to bad weather from the storm. 20,000 (a far cry from the million plus of Katrina) evacuated to shelters, to higher ground. The hell of brush-fires has been extinguished by the high waters of another tropical storm.
Do I personally count my blessings? Yes, of course. I, my parents, most Floridians (especially Tampans) know this wasn’t the storm, the next in the list after Andrew, Katrina, Hugo, Camille that we talk about, that we fear, when there’s a disturbance in the Atlantic or the Gulf. My pool needs an extra chlorine tablet this month, the branches in the front yard probably need picking up.
And when an event the magnitude of Katrina occurs, where millions are displaced and homeless, we saw the effect, the power, the media can have. Without extensive, 24-hour coverage, Michael Brown would still be director of FEMA.

But this very same power is overused with events like Alberto. This is a story, but not the top story. Because in a week, or a few days, when the media reports on “cleaning up from Alberto”, people will look and say “it’s not that bad”. Of course, it’s not that bad because this storm wasn’t that bad. But the next one could be. Or the one after that.

The point here is the classic one: Don’t cry wolf, especially when it’s just a poodle. Don’t pretend this is the end of days. Don’t suffer from your egregious calamitism. Because we, the residents of the Gulf, fall asleep, lulled into disregarding your false warnings, your overpuffery. And when Katrina v2.0 comes around, we might not realize it until it’s too late.

I grant you: you do not, cannot decide for us when it is our time to go, when to stay. But you control the flow of information, the path that gets what we need to hear to us. So, when you trump up what we need to hear (evacuation orders, bridge closings) with what you think sells (Levee bursting, Price gouging, Murderous mayhem over the last bag of ice) that confuses us. That puts us in danger. Not to mention it disrespects our intelligence.
So stop. You’re killing us. Both literally, and figuratively.

Technorati Tags: Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, Alberto, media, hurricane, wolf blitzer

 ::  Adam