Media Hyping Disasters
The media outlets where promoting their coverage of Hurricane Dean, making it out to be the next Katrina. The press loves nothing more (other than plane crashes) than some reporter with water up to his ankles, and wind in their faces, yelling about the coming big storm. Dean is turning out to be much less than was promised, or at least as it relates to the United States. Far greater destruction was done by the flood waters in the Midwest. That deserves far greater attention.
If you want to cover a real disaster, why haven't we heard more from Peru? We have seen very little coverage from that country in the wake of the earthquake there. The devastation was far greater than in Mexico. Maybe the problem was the media outlets couldn't get their cameras into Peru. Its not very glamorous without the video.
The saturation coverage of Hurricane Dean followed the saturation coverage of the Utah mine disaster, which followed the saturation coverage of the Minneapolis bridge collapse. The press can't cover a "big" story, they have to exaggerate the reporting. Whether its a celebrity, natural disaster, or mass murder, the press feels a need to beat the one "hot" story to death. The Virginia Tech tragedy was compounded by an arrogant press intent on getting every drop of juicy tidbits they can. It got so bad that students at the college stopped talking to the media.
Every major news is always begun the same way with comparisons to previous tragedys. The coverage is always done in a predictable fashion with a parade of experts, usually the same ones, depending upon the topic. In the Utah tragedy the networks allowed the mine owner to rant and rave with very little criticism. This individual was allowed to get away with very little scrutiny. They failed to expose the truth about the unsafe conditions for the workers there. Instead we got a steady dose of public relations dribble from an obviously negligent mine owner. You can expect there will be little coverage of the outrage over the mine working conditions.
If you want to cover a real disaster, why haven't we heard more from Peru? We have seen very little coverage from that country in the wake of the earthquake there. The devastation was far greater than in Mexico. Maybe the problem was the media outlets couldn't get their cameras into Peru. Its not very glamorous without the video.
The saturation coverage of Hurricane Dean followed the saturation coverage of the Utah mine disaster, which followed the saturation coverage of the Minneapolis bridge collapse. The press can't cover a "big" story, they have to exaggerate the reporting. Whether its a celebrity, natural disaster, or mass murder, the press feels a need to beat the one "hot" story to death. The Virginia Tech tragedy was compounded by an arrogant press intent on getting every drop of juicy tidbits they can. It got so bad that students at the college stopped talking to the media.
Every major news is always begun the same way with comparisons to previous tragedys. The coverage is always done in a predictable fashion with a parade of experts, usually the same ones, depending upon the topic. In the Utah tragedy the networks allowed the mine owner to rant and rave with very little criticism. This individual was allowed to get away with very little scrutiny. They failed to expose the truth about the unsafe conditions for the workers there. Instead we got a steady dose of public relations dribble from an obviously negligent mine owner. You can expect there will be little coverage of the outrage over the mine working conditions.
posted by End The Duopoly at
8:42 AM | | |
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