Food for Thought...On The Current Media Coverage of Hurricanes

[storm_in_a_teacup]

An interesting video on how the news media covers hurricanes in ways that are misleading and potentially harmful. This basically is what made me sick of all the post-Harvey media coverage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMfo-s9izIc

[euro6208]

That is why i am glad i don't have any cable. The cable news is there to hype sometimes overhype and when it is over, they like to focus on one area without looking at it whole.

I only have internet at home and i only follow the warnings and advisories from JTWC and our local NWS without no interference. I sometimes watch youtube to see the damage though.

I sometimes think these news outlet are being controlled by reptilians from draco if you know what i mean.

[stormlover2013]

all about ratings!!

[storm_in_a_teacup]

Mostly what bothered me wasn't the hype before the storm, but how afterwards people wouldn't stop sharing tons of feel-good stories about people rescuing cats and dogs and all hugging each other, while simultaneously branding any attempt to talk about what the city could have done to reduce the risk as "trying to turn a disaster political." A lot of people also tried to show that the response was somehow uniquely Houstonian, or Texan, or even patriotically American, as if nowhere else in the world people would help each other out. Basically they tried to take a tragedy and somehow turn it into a selling point for how awesome Houston was, which I resented given the choices the city had made that made the disaster worse.

(I say this as having lived in Houston my whole life. The city has its good points, but it also has its bad points, and to somehow avoid discussion of the latter at a time when said bad points were coming to the forefront bothered me a lot. People used "coming together" as a way to divert attention away from the effects of reckless development practices, lack of updates to flood control infrastructure, and so on.)

Unfortunately, all natural disasters are "political" by their definition, in that it is the human element that turns them from natural processes into disasters. Call it "finger-pointing" or "blame-finding" but a whole lot of decisions lead to the tipping point. I know my neighborhood has gotten more and more flooding from development upstream, so don't try to tell me that "now is not the time to discuss" these things.

Okay maybe I'm just a little bitter. But thanks for tolerating me at least!

[tolakram]

Are you getting these feel good stories from the same media that gave you the war stories? In my experience the real world and what the media shows are two totally different things. You can already see some discussion on twitter about flood insurance and flood zones, I suspect a lot more of it will be happening down the road and I suspect the media won't cover it because it's not exciting.

By the way, I'm aware of the irony of appearing on TV in order to decry it - Sideshow Bob, The Simpsons TV show

[storm_in_a_teacup]

Are you getting these feel good stories from the same media that gave you the war stories? In my experience the real world and what the media shows are two totally different things. You can already see some discussion on twitter about flood insurance and flood zones, I suspect a lot more of it will be happening down the road and I suspect the media won't cover it because it's not exciting.

By the way, I'm aware of the irony of appearing on TV in order to decry it - Sideshow Bob, The Simpsons TV show

Yes and no. A lot of the feel good stories were being shared online. However, the sources for the stories were often TV media sites like CNN, Fox, local news stations, etc. I honestly stopped watching TV coverage a day after the storm...it was too much.

However the war stories did bother me as well, particularly in their insistence on portraying Harvey as some sort of enemy force spitefully striking us down from the sky. They actually inspired me to write a serial short story where Harvey was instead personified as a naive child who didn't know what he was doing and basically flooded everything with his tears. (Hey! It's just as legitimate! And it felt better to me than the idea the storm was malicious...)
...I might post it on this site someday...probably not until the tropics are done though.

There also was a lot of hyping of looting reports as well as possibly the Cajun Navy bragging about being shot at but I don't want to offend anyone here. Let's just say I am skeptical of such stories ever since most of the Katrina rumors proved false and the "evacuee crime wave" everyone panicked about in Houston never materialized.

...

(Meanwhile I just went through an earthquake last night. I do like the advance warning hurricanes give us, but I am also not sure if I like the four days of watching the Sword of Damocles slowly drop.)

[euro6208]

A lot of people also tried to show that the response was somehow uniquely Houstonian, or Texan, or even patriotically American, as if nowhere else in the world people would help each other out.

Really true. They try to convey that the Americans are the only people in the world to do this. How about when they show the American flag? It really bugs me.

They don't do this for the other countries.

I was shocked that Guam, a U.S territory, was accepting donations for the Hurricane Harvey recovery for Texas. We don't do this for other countries. So far no info on Jose but maybe Puerto Rico since they have the same status as us?