How the News Does Spin its Own Hurricane

I have been watching the news non-stop every chance I get since Sunday. I have a sister who lives in New Orleans - she's okay - but that will be another blog. In watching and listening to the radio as much as I have, I can't help but comment.

Like all stories, news reporters sensationalize all they can. I don't mean this disrespectfully to the people of New Orleans, as a matter of fact, I mean just the opposite. I think the story of their misery needed to be sensationalized. It needed every bit of camera play and emotion that could be pulled from it, because I do believe the government was slow to respond. I don't think officials understood the scope or seriousness or just the pure disgusting-ness of the situation. Maybe if we could transmit smell over the tv, that would have helped. But to have the director of FEMA say, three days after the hurricane and after we are all witnessing the vile living conditions of people at the Convention Center, that he wasn't aware of any situation at the Convention Center - ? Doesn't he have a tv? Hasn't he even seen general news coverage of the event? Listened to the radio? No one he works with could have seen this and mentioned it to him? So, apparently, there was not enough sensationalizing going on if this was the response from government officials. Today, the mayor of New Orleans said the president decided to come down and see the destruction for himself because he didn't feel his own people were telling him enough of the story. I don't think he watches the news either.

Where I think sensationalism went to the negative? Focusing on the looting and negative behaviors of the people of New Orleans. Yes, there are morons in every community. If my hometown of sugar and spice were to be thrown into a destructive situation of life-threatening crisis, I can guarantee there will be those people who will be mean, hurt others, take advantage of others and think of no one but themselves. (As a matter of fact, I know some people who get elected to office and receive promotions for this type of behavior.) But these were not the majority of people in New Orleans. The majority of people were waiting - and in my opinion very patiently - for the promised buses to arrive. They waited for days. Some died. Some may have broken into stores for water or food or clean clothes. Wouldn't you? I sure as hell would. I saw some "looted" stores on the news today, right down on Canal Street. They were still full of material goods that could be worth a lot of money. But the water was gone. Food was gone. Some of the clothes were gone - some clothes still hung neatly on the racks. So what we saw on the news- the looters - in the first hours of the disaster, were those bad people who would be bad no matter what and were taking advantage of what they thought was a temporary situation. The guy who had a huge bag of clothes and shoes, no doubt he left those behind a day later, just wishing he had a sandwich.

But these looting scenes are the ones we saw again and again. And no doubt what the president was told was happening in New Orleans. And why a hundred buses sat outside the city for two days on hold, because it wasn't "safe" to go into New Orleans without an armed guard on every bus. For the love of whatever god you believe in, if the people had seen one hundred buses coming, why on earth would anyone have to fear their relief, their gratitude, their restored hope...

The news did us right and did us wrong on this story of Katrina and the people of New Orleans. As always. We as intelligent viewers have to be better about remembering that the news means to spin a story, and we have to sort through that to make our own decisions about what we believe, and maybe what we want to believe in spite what we are shown, about the inherent nature of human beings. In the days to come, I know time and again the overwhelming agreement will be that those people (not refugees, please!), those human beings in crisis needed help or at the very least, needed to know help was coming, long before they got it. Minutes matter in such situations, and each day is an eternity. No one will argue they needed more than they got and sooner than they got it. The question will be, Why didn't they get it? And that will no doubt be the drawn out, hashed over question that will take our nation all the way through the next election.