Hurricane coverage: CIO

So I open CNN.com a few minutes ago, and the giant headline is this:

http://tittysprinkles.net/images/ilx/one-dead.png

So the storm is a category 2 (of five), which if you live on the Gulf coast you are well and truly accustomed to, and it's killed one. Statistics show that when one and only one person dies in a storm, that person was a dumbass anyway. That's a fact; you can look it up.

Anyway, that's not so bad, but there's video, too:

http://tittysprinkles.net/images/ilx/killer-storm.png

Killer storm! It's already caused one dumbass to buy the farm -- will you be next?! Tips for not being a dumbass, click here.

I know, I know, it's a cable news channel, but this is starting to piss me off. Gustav was obviously a lame opportunity for the Republicans to try to save a little face, which I hope to hell didn't work on anyone, and for Ray Nagin to say hilarious shit like, "If you don't evacuate, it'll be the worst mistake you ever make in your life." If you live on the Gulf coast, you get big fuck-off storms every year, without fail. A big fuck-off storm is not that big a deal, really. I'm no climate change denier or anything, it's just... Christ, will you people relax? You really are looking desperate for news, and there's no reason you should be. Let's have some more news stories about how McCain's health care plan will suck you dry instead of "Dumbass drowns for lack of finding shelter," ok? Please?

not defending the media AT ALL, but:

last time a hurricane came right at houston/galveston was Alicia if i remember correctly. 1983 (i was there! all of 4 years old)...it's not terribly common for these storms to have a direct hit on major cities. and this one is coming right up the ship channel, and it'll cause a storm surge over a massive and heavily populated area.

so....not a killer storm if people evacuated, but it will be pretty nasty in terms of property/oil industrty etc...

oh and the one dead was a 10 year old kid killed by a tree his dad was cutting down so that it wouldn't fall on the house...so yeah, dumbassery was the indirect cause of death.

I think ethan said this once, but kenan, you are creepy and awful

No I'm not, I'm just overstating my case a bit. I expect next year the coverage won't be this hysterical. It's just the panic du jour.

sociopathetic

so yeah, dumbassery was the indirect cause of death

Hell, I think there's there's an argument that that's more a media-related death than a storm-related one.

Red Cross Hurricane relief fund:

http://www.redcross.org/article/0,1072,0_312_8157,00.html

You are clearly not feeling my annoyance. I'm not saying that storms, flooding, and loss of life are not bad things. I'm half steeling myself for an entire Gulf coast of weather refugees one of these days, because the weather is undeniably getting worse. It's just that there's no discretion in the reporting. And the Gustav story was at best crying wolf, and at worst heavily manipulated to try to gain political advantage for the Republicans. (Great headline: FEMA's reaction time improves. Well, cake for everybody, I guess, right?) But maybe most offensive to me is using coverage of these storms to kill time on cable news. It's almost... I dunno... disrespectful to the weather.

i dont think there's any question the media overplays these things most of the time...with Rita a few years ago the media caused panic in Houston basically all for nothing.

on the other hand it's hard to straddle the line between "don't panic" for people in the greater Houston area and then "get the fuck out now!" for galveston and other low lying areas around the bay.

Yeah but "get the fuck out of Galveston" is not a national story, or at least it didn't used to be.

Man, I am really going to regret starting this thread when Mom comes to live with me because her condo is underwater.

the picture on cnn.com right now is pretty hilarious...i hope they know that guy is holding himself up!!

Actually it kinda is. When you're a native you ride out lots of Cat 2s, but a Cat 3 or higher and you high tail it the fuck out because you're worried.

xxp

Hey, I'm a native. I grew up in Beaumont and Port Arthur and Houston. </credentials> Something like storm coverage cuts right to the heart, though, of the difference between reporting news that people need vs. reporting whatever people will watch.

Oh wow... 1.3 million without power right now? I'm still not sure it's the news they think it is, but man, that sucks a lot.

should be more than that by morning...my sister in Klein (which isnt even in hurricane winds yet) has lost power already...after Alicia it took WEEKS to get power back...and Houston in september with no AC aint no fun.

surely the highlight of the coverage on Fox was Geraldo rambling on about ZZ Top's "Balinese" (now probaly underwater) and getting hit with loose pavement on the Seawall.

Deep in the South of Texas
not so long ago,
there on a crowded island
in the Gulf of Mexico

it didn't take too much money,
man, but it sure was nice.
You could dance all night if you felt all right,
drinking whiskey and throwing dice.

And everybody knows
it was hard to leave.
And everybody knows
it was down at the Balinese.

Yeah, I remember Ruby,
she always dressed in red
wearing skintight pants, Lord, and how she could dance
with a rag wrapped around her head.

And everybody knows
it was hard to leave.
And everybody knows
it was down at the Balinese.

And everybody knows
it was hard to leave.
And everybody knows
it was down at the Balinese,
it was down at the Balinese,
it was down at the Balinese.

I'm still trying to put into words exactly what it is that's bugging me about the media coverage, and maybe it's bigger than I thought through the first time. With Katrina, we saw a sizable American city basically die, and that's some kinda crazy thing. It not the first time it's happened, but nobody is alive who can tell you about the time it happened before that. Maybe what I'm afraid of is that we will somehow collectively, culturally, deal with that strange and awful event by fetishizing hurricanes. That would be a shame, because for one thing it's a little sick, but it also avoids the real issues, which are infrastructure and energy.

well i think storms that are literally the size of texas and carrying winds over 100mph will always be a big story. these things are truly awesome in the original sense of that word. i dont see how it's possible to not find them fascinating!

and i guess unlike earthquakes and tornados they allow the media enough time to build anticipation and a narrative. it's a perfect media event in some ways. but absolutely none of this is new, and about the only thing different after Katrina is a renewed appreciation that if enough things go wrong these things can be a major clusterfuck.

Hurricanes were not the huge news stories three or four years ago that they are now, and it's not because the storms are uniformly awe-inspiring... the narrative is larger than that. I suppose you could say it's a victory for the people who have been getting their asses kicked by these storms since god created earth. Finally, someone's paying attention! Some good comes of it, I'm sure.

But you know how in Double Indemnity the Edward G. Robinson character talks about the "little man" that lives in his stomach and tells him when an insurance claim is phony? I have a really nasty little cynic in my stomach, and he doesn't believe for a second that any current institution has anyone's best interests at heart, at all, ever. :/