Over the weekend there has been an absolute deluge of news coverage of Hurricane, then Tropical Storm, Irene. It has hardly been possible to turn on the radio, television, or read a newspaper (whether on paper or online) without being struck by the sheer volume of coverage. It is local news masquerading as national news. Why?
I don’t mean by that to diminish or minimize in any way the loss of life or the damage to property that took place but it needs to be placed in some perspective. This spring more than 500 people were killed in the floods of the Mississippi and in tornados. The damage is estimated in the billions, possibly the tens of billions. In July Chicago experienced a summer storm that had more rain and higher winds than Irene when it struck New York. So far in 2011 we’ve had a blizzard, flooding, heat, and a summer storm of historic proportions, each of which has produced fatalities. While these events were reported in the national news it was more as footnotes to the news. Not the incessant, obsessive coverage that Irene has received.
It’s not an isolated instance. I was blessed (if that’s the right word for it) to grow up in one of the few parts of the country that routinely experienced blizzards, thunderstorms, hail, tornados, hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes. Fortunately, they didn’t generally all happen at the same time. Several times a year we’d experience earthquakes that made the chandeliers rock and every couple of years we’d have an earthquake of roughly the size that shook DC not long ago. It really was not much to take note of and we didn’t expect it to make national headlines.
Why? I think there are two likely explanations. First, August is routinely a period of slow news. Second, the solipsistic national news media are overwhelmingly concentrated in New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC, and reporters who live in these places project their own vital interest in what happens to them on the rest of the country. The rest of us really aren’t that interested.
Well, so what? I think there is a legitimate reason that reporters need to show more restraint in trying to make us all as vitally interested in their local news as they are. Over the last couple of decades the national news media have experienced decreasing significance, going from among the most respected institutions in the country to least respected and losing the trust of the American people.
Some attribute it to print journalists in particular championing their own political agenda as the news but I think there’s a more basic reason. What they’re reporting just doesn’t have as much resonance with the American people as it should and an obsessive attention to their own local news contributes to that sense of disengagement. Couple that with the vague (or even explicit) disdain that those of us in the Midwest and the Mountain West perceive from the national news media and it contributes to that sense of distrust.
I struggled with the title of this post, toying with “National News Media Paralyzed by Summer Storm” but I finally decided to stick with Mama Rose’s wisecrack from the musical Gypsy. New York is not the center of the world. It is the center of New York.
Over the last couple of decades the national news media have experienced decreasing significance, going from among the most respected institutions in the country to least respected and losing the trust of the American people.
I’d add that local news outlets have declined even more, in part due to technology & in part due to corporatization. The increasing concentration of the media, both financially and geographically, has done no one any favors. Even their stockholders haven’t really benefited from this arrangement.
I would say that especially the stockholders haven’t benefited from the arrangement.
This seems as good a place as any to return to a theme I’ve sounded here fairly regularly. I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with the business model for newspapers that hasn’t been wrong with the model for 250 years. The model for highly leveraged newspaper chains is collapsing, however.
“I was blessed . . . to grow up in one of the few parts of the country that routinely experienced blizzards, thunderstorms, hail, tornados, hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes. Fortunately, they didn’t generally all happen at the same time.”
Hah. Almost sounds like a Twainism. We’ve got weather.
Hurricanes in St. Louis?
Yup. They come right up the Mississippi. It didn’t happen every year but it did occur several times when I was a kid.
Just because it used to be a hurricane doesn’t mean it is always a hurricane. I’m having trouble envisioning an eye-wall passing over Busch Stadium.
You get the wind, you get the rain. You don’t get storm surge because you’re not on the coast.
Gustav took two central limbs out of my favorite live oak. We’re 250 miles off the coast.
Picture: Live Oak.
Most of the times I’m a complete weather nerd, but I just couldn’t watch the Irene coverage for all the hype. I really think a better title for your piece would be “New York is the center of Mayor Bloomberg”. Everytime I saw his mug on TV I couldn;t help thinking “He loves this because he gets to show what a bigshot he is. Irene is all about him.”
One wonder what would have happened had 1/10th of the amount of coverage given Irene had been given to covering the Particularly Dangerous Storm warnings given by the NWS before the April tornado outbreaks in April and May? Maybe they wouldn’t have killed over 500 people.
But then again, those events happened in the MIdwest and South, and, we all know, no one imptant lives there.
Icepick, when Florida fails in its primary mission to stop/slow hurricanes, they tend to rotate up into the South and lower Midwest. They either become a tropical storm which is what hit the Mid-Atlantic, or they get reclassified as cyclones. A few years ago, Hurricane Ike became a cyclone and ended up hitting a lot of the cities in the Midwest like Cincinnati with winds equivalent to a Category 1 hurricane. 26 dead Inland.
In any event, as I recall, you reside in the hurricane barrier, did you find the level of coverage odd at all? As a former Lousiana resident, it strucke me as local coverage played nationally.
BTW/ the right side of the hurricane is traditionally the most dangerous, so I’m not sure the skipping along the Eastern coast is equivalent to direct landings that are typical further to the South.
One of the attractive things about hurricanes as stories is the long lead-up. Unlike tornados hurricanes follow the three act structure: It’s coming! It’s here! Aftermath! Tornados only do the last two.
A news director can position his people and know he’ll get at least 2-3 good days of story at relatively low cost: no foreign travel, interpreters, armed guards and so on. No painstaking investigation that may go nowhere. Just a satellite van, uplink time and a poncho and you’ve got several days of pure gold. Especially cool for them when it’s just a cab ride to the scene of the story.
How about that everything has become so politicized that we’re reduced to talking about the weather?
The last bastion of civil discourse.
In any event, as I recall, you reside in the hurricane barrier, did you find the level of coverage odd at all? As a former Lousiana resident, it strucke me as local coverage played nationally.
We (my wife and I, at any rate) call it weather porn. And the national coverage played very much like local coverage, save for this: The local coverage is usually more restrained. Or it used to be. Earlier this year I noticed that several local stations pre-empted all coverage for what amounted to spring storms. Really, 30 years ago we would have said, “Wow, those were some big storms yesterday!” And “Yeah, my friend out in Christmas said they had quarter sized hail!” And “Wow, I’m glad that didn’t wreck my car!” Now it’s non-stop coverage on almost every single local channel. Who knows what they’ll do when the next hurricane comes through.
They probably did save some lives when they caught the very late path shift from Charley, and I think that’s when the local coverage started down the current over-the-top path. At 2pm on Friday it wasn’t supposed to hit anywhere near Orlando. (Charley was a small storm, but very powerful.) That night at 8pm Charley was ripping through Orlando, with winds at 110 mph in the southern part of town. Scary stuff, as the eye-wall sounded just like a freight train.
As for the big storms in the mid-west: We get big storms here too, without the benefit of calling them Hurricanes. And there is a big difference from one to the other. I seriously doubt anything in the midwest has had the intensity of Hurricane Charley, much less a Hurricane Andrew.
The last bastion of civil discourse.
Not really.
I saw that, too. Now we don’t have any way to relate at all.
Icepick, when Florida fails in its primary mission to stop/slow hurricanes….
I thought our primary mission was to give all you damned Yankees someplace to fuck up in your retirement. Well, that and provide costumed characters for Brazilians to grope.
Why did you make your choice to live in Florida? You’d have to pay me some fierce money to live there. At least enough to cover plywood and nails.
PD is making a geographical point.
geological
Geologically, Florida has no PURPOSE – it just is.
As for why I chose to live here – I didn’t, I’m a native. As for the plywood and nails – I have lived in Central Florida for all but three years out of my forty-three. In that time we have experienced three direct hits from hurricanes. All of them hit in a six week stretch during 2004. (A fourth hurricane hit Florida in the pan handle during that stretch – the terrifying Ivan. Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jean – We won’t be forgetting that quartet anytime soon.)
By contrast, I lived in Baltimore for three years. Not long after I left in 2003 a hurricane plowed up through the Chesapeake. Amongst other things, it left a good chunk of Baltimore (in the Fells Point area) under water. Would someone have to pay you to live in Baltimore? Based on personal experience Baltimore gets hit about four times as often, lol.
BTW, the hurricanes are in no way, shape, or form the worst part about Florida. And it isn’t the heat or the humidty. And it certainly isn’t the gators. It’s not even all the tourists. Tourists are great – they come here, spend money, and GO HOME.
No, the worst thing about Florida is all the bugs. Mosquitos, cock roachs (actually, palmetto bugs), wasps, fire ants, killer bees, and on and on and on. And that doesn’t even count the little ‘bugs’, such as the amoeba.
I’d be a better gardener in Loiuisiana if I didn’t have to slather myself in Deet.
Icepick,
I lived in Florida during that 2004 year – just over in Melbourne. We evacuated three times, which sucked with a baby and a pregnant wife and we still got hit by them – just in a hotel instead of at home.
I was also in Dayton, Ohio when the remnants of Ike hit and let me just say that was a completely different experience.
To be clear, I was comparing the hurricane remnants in the Upper South/ Lower Midwest with the tropical storm that hit the mid-atlantic, not with major hurricanes.
I also have to confess that I did a bit of reporting from New Orleans during Hurricane Andrews. Phone interviews at the midwest t.v. station where my uncle worked. All I remember is saying that Bourbon Street was pretty cool the night before without all the tourists.
Andy, that was really bad luck. Frances and Jean really weren’t that bad inland, except for being pile-ons to Charley. But I remember seeing pictures from Melbourne and areas along the coast and seeing beachside condos that were waste deep in sand after Frances. Jean couldn’t have helped.