The News Media’s Dismal Hurricane Katrina Coverage

Since Hurricane Katrina first hit southern Florida on August 25, there has been plenty of criticism thrown around, much of it legitimate. Michael Brown, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has been criticized for acting far too slowly in his response to the hurricane. Though President Bush believes that Brown is doing a “heck of a job,” he is virtually alone in that assessment. The Bush administration has criticized the state and local governments for not doing more to evacuate people and prepare before the hurricane hit. And many residents were criticized for not evacuating when they were told to.

The only group that has escaped any real criticism so far is the news media, despite the fact that the actual coverage of the disaster has been pretty bad. Coverage of national tragedies is almost invariably abysmal: reporting of the anthrax scares, hurricanes, the terrorist attacks, and so on, was often deeply flawed and riddled with rumor, myth, and speculation.

Part of the reason for this is the nature of the disaster: all floods are essentially the same, and the news media does its best to complicate and add depth to what is a serious but ultimately very basic problem: people in water. People are drowned, people lose their possession, people are stranded, people need food and shelter. Virtually all the initial coverage is of this sort, and focus on these issues. The difficulty for journalists is that the stories are all pretty much the same, and one survivor’s story is often just like the rest. In order to justify wall-to-wall news coverage, they replay the same video footage over and over, superficially examine the same problems again and again, with little real analysis. They go from one desperate survivor to another, asking each in turn to tell their own slightly different tragedies for the cameras.

On and on this goes, with little real or usable news. There's nothing wrong with these sorts of personal, human stories— they are moving and important. But they should not be used as a substitute for real news. It's easy, cheap, and poor journalism at a time when the nation needs information. The audience knows that people are devastated. We know the survivors are desperate. This sort of continuous coverage is a form of voyeuristic, emotional pornography.

Take this test: The next time you sit down to watch coverage of the aftermath of a hurricane, bring a blank piece of paper and a pen with you. After half an hour, or an hour, write down what you learned about the disaster. What specific facts did you find out that you didn’t know before you sat down to watch the news? You may come up with two or three items, but my guess is that there wasn’t much new to tell, it was mostly rehashes, repeats, and minor updates heavily padded with recycled human interest footage.

Here are a few typical tragedy coverage moments:

● In-the-field correspondents reporting live from the approaching hurricanes, trying to appear as if they are risking their lives to provide important information when they are simply and needlessly endangering themselves and insulting their viewers' intelligence. Message to the macho field reporters “braving” the wind and rain: “Get out of there. You’re not impressing anyone but yourself, and getting smacked by a flying tree or a stop sign on camera is not going to get you an Emmy. Your audience is smart enough to know that the storm is real without you standing in front of it.”

● After a few days, experts start to worry about the effects of poor sanitation and disease. Diane Sawyer actually jumped the gun on this one, asking infectious disease expert Dr. Louis Minsky “What diseases are you seeing among the victims?” only two days after the hurricane hit. Minsky replied, “We're not seeing any diseases so far.” Sawyer should have done her homework: flood-borne diseases would not appear quickly, and would likely take at least a week—probably several weeks— to manifest themselves. I suspect Sawyer actually knew that, and was just trying to fill airtime despite the fact that what she was airing was speculative, premature, and alarmist. While there is certainly a growing danger of disease, recall the dire—and ultimately incorrect— predictions following the Asian tsunami that the diseases afterwards would kill far more than the initial flooding.

● After the initial panic subsides, the media turns to the question of the psychological damage the disaster will have—especially on the children.

(In my book Media Mythmakers, I show that the concern over children’s fears following the September 11 terrorist attacks were grossly exaggerated. While many children were understandably upset, the effects were temporary and overblown; in fact it was the parents who were unwittingly fueling their children’s fears. I suspect the same will turn out to be true of Katrina victims.

Much of the television coverage was also contradictory. For example, while one on-camera reporter talked about how unimaginable the devastation was, the following news segment featured not one but several experts and scientists who predicted not only the hurricane but the levee broach. Which is it? Was the flooding of New Orleans something no one could have expected, or was it an event that many knew was coming at some point? The anchors and reporters will tell you both are true....depending on what story they are telling, what angle they wish to emphasize.

Instead of just giving us the news, journalists feel the need to exaggerate and overdramatize the situation. This has become standard, unofficial journalistic practice, as if the situation wasn't bad enough and needed to be dramatized. This is less true in print journalism, but as you watch television broadcasts, pay attention to how they use overdramatic phrases and breathless prose every chance they get. On ABC's September 8 edition of World News Tonight, the on-camera reporter wrapped up a segment by saying that, though “it’s difficult to fathom,” there's a new hurricane forming off the coast of Florida. Really? While a second hurricane is certainly unfortunate, is it really hard to comprehend or understand? Of course not. This is journalistic hyperbole, a sprinkling of subtle words and phrases used to try and remind viewers how devastating it all is, in case anyone missed it.

The situation isn’t all bad. The analysis (as opposed to the coverage) has on the whole been decent. Journalists has asked questions about FEMA’s preparedness and done good work on the refugee end of the story. Hopefully as the media circus dies down and journalists gradually get out of “crisis spin mode” and back into real journalism, America will get the coverage— and the answers— it deserves.