Katrina & the Boy Who Cried Wolf
Amazing. I'm reading the paper. I'm watching the news. I'm listening to people around the dinner table. Everybody wants to blame somebody for the fiasco in New Orleans. I've heard everything from it's the poor black people's own fault for not evacuating to it's George Bush's fault for not signing Kyoto to it's the New Orleans mayor's fault for not being more like Rudy Giulliani. But there's one I haven't heard that seems pretty obvious to me, and that is it's the media's fault.
"The media?" you may ask incredulously. "How on earth could the media be responsible for the drowning, the looting, the starvation, the disease?" The answer can be found in the parable of the Boy Who Cried Wolf. For those of you unversed in Aesop, a shepherd tending his flock repeatedly cried "Wolf! Wolf!", even when there was none, so that he might see the villagers run out of their houses. After fooling the villagers three or four times, they no longer believed the shepherd when they heard his cries. When the wolf finally did appear, the villagers ignored the boy's cries and the wolf at his leisure destroyed the whole flock.
With 24/7 news coverage, the media has find something to talk about, and one of its favorite topics is natural disasters. When it comes to hurricanes, watch out, and I don't mean watch out for the wind. They love covering this stuff, even when the storms turn out to be minor. They send their reporters to stand there in the howling wind and rain, being filmed all the while, "Oh gee, isn't this exciting? We're placing ourselves in harm's way, we're just like Steve Irwin or those storm chasers in Twister!" Most of the time, the storms cause some property damage, a few injuries, in the worst cases some (not many) fatalities, and usually those are related to traffic.
I'll give you an example. About a year ago, for days we were deluged by reports of Hurricane Frances. There was much hand-wringing and dire non-stop news coverage of what could happen when Frances made landfall in the U.S. At the same time Frances was being downgraded to a category 1 storm, Chechen rebels were seizing a school in Breslan and holding hundreds of young children hostage, and our former President, Bill Clinton, was scheduling heart surgery. Can you guess which was the lead story on virtually every network? Frances, which turned out to be a big yawner for the vast majority of people in its path. Can you guess which story took second? Bill Clinton's heart. I know, because I was surfing channels trying to find info on the only important story that day, indeed that week, which was Breslan. Instead of giving this important world event the priority it deserved, the media cried wolf about some wind and rain.
I'm no journalist but I know an important story when I see one, and I know hype when I see it. Time after time after time, the media issues warning upon warning about hurricanes, while sending their news crews to broadcast themselves braving the storms. Maybe viewers who think they can just hunker down and wait it out are not being so irrational after all. Hey if Jim Cantore can do it, why can't we? So it's no wonder that people didn't evacuate upon hearing the doom and gloom predictions about Katrina. They've heard it all before, and hey look on TV, there's Brian Williams in New Orleans. If he's there, how bad can it be?
So go ahead and take your pick. Blame global warming, or an ignorant/poor/disenfranchised (whatever the hell that means) population, or an incompetent government for all the misery down south. But all of you out there in the media, the next time you're clipping your mike to your lapel and preparing to issue your latest "we're all going to die scenario," think about it before you cry wolf.
"The media?" you may ask incredulously. "How on earth could the media be responsible for the drowning, the looting, the starvation, the disease?" The answer can be found in the parable of the Boy Who Cried Wolf. For those of you unversed in Aesop, a shepherd tending his flock repeatedly cried "Wolf! Wolf!", even when there was none, so that he might see the villagers run out of their houses. After fooling the villagers three or four times, they no longer believed the shepherd when they heard his cries. When the wolf finally did appear, the villagers ignored the boy's cries and the wolf at his leisure destroyed the whole flock.
With 24/7 news coverage, the media has find something to talk about, and one of its favorite topics is natural disasters. When it comes to hurricanes, watch out, and I don't mean watch out for the wind. They love covering this stuff, even when the storms turn out to be minor. They send their reporters to stand there in the howling wind and rain, being filmed all the while, "Oh gee, isn't this exciting? We're placing ourselves in harm's way, we're just like Steve Irwin or those storm chasers in Twister!" Most of the time, the storms cause some property damage, a few injuries, in the worst cases some (not many) fatalities, and usually those are related to traffic.
I'll give you an example. About a year ago, for days we were deluged by reports of Hurricane Frances. There was much hand-wringing and dire non-stop news coverage of what could happen when Frances made landfall in the U.S. At the same time Frances was being downgraded to a category 1 storm, Chechen rebels were seizing a school in Breslan and holding hundreds of young children hostage, and our former President, Bill Clinton, was scheduling heart surgery. Can you guess which was the lead story on virtually every network? Frances, which turned out to be a big yawner for the vast majority of people in its path. Can you guess which story took second? Bill Clinton's heart. I know, because I was surfing channels trying to find info on the only important story that day, indeed that week, which was Breslan. Instead of giving this important world event the priority it deserved, the media cried wolf about some wind and rain.
I'm no journalist but I know an important story when I see one, and I know hype when I see it. Time after time after time, the media issues warning upon warning about hurricanes, while sending their news crews to broadcast themselves braving the storms. Maybe viewers who think they can just hunker down and wait it out are not being so irrational after all. Hey if Jim Cantore can do it, why can't we? So it's no wonder that people didn't evacuate upon hearing the doom and gloom predictions about Katrina. They've heard it all before, and hey look on TV, there's Brian Williams in New Orleans. If he's there, how bad can it be?
So go ahead and take your pick. Blame global warming, or an ignorant/poor/disenfranchised (whatever the hell that means) population, or an incompetent government for all the misery down south. But all of you out there in the media, the next time you're clipping your mike to your lapel and preparing to issue your latest "we're all going to die scenario," think about it before you cry wolf.
posted by calabresewoman | 10:25 AM
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