Rusted Sky

Of pretty much anything that's 'sensational' in the media.

Salon.com News | A city in ruins

The Army presence is heavy in the Convention Center. Troop transports arrive with busloads of people. They're processed quickly, searched, loaded onto giant helicopters and flown to New Orleans Airport, where buses, planes and trains are now moving in high gear to evacuate the city.

Geraldo Rivera arrives in a Fox News truck. An elderly woman with blond hair grips his elbow. She's wearing thick dark glasses and a pink shirt. He carries her small white dog in his arms. He's wearing thigh-high waders unzipped to below his knees. We shake hands. "Her relative called one of our stations," Geraldo tells me, explaining how that call went to another station, and then another, and finally to him.

The woman had been stranded in her home for six days. Geraldo picked up the woman and her dog and brought them here. The woman looks frail on his arm, though not as bad perhaps as a lady collapsed on a chair nearby, unable to move. Or a woman in a wheelchair being lifted from the truck, carrying her prosthetic leg on her lap.

"That's the second time he brought her here," one of the doctors tells me, nodding toward Geraldo.

"What?"

"They did two takes. Geraldo made that poor woman walk from the Fox News van to the heliport twice. Both times carrying her dog."

"Are you serious?" I ask. He says he is.

The doctor has been here for six days, volunteering for the state.

I recommend the whole article. As I posted up over on The Bellman in the comments to one of the posts...

I know a lot of you somewhat dislike Bush. (And NO is slightly damp at this point...grin) And I realize you're somewhat more politically oriented than I am - but after having watched administrations since Nixon come in with great promises of problem-solving and finding most of them not paying any real attention to actually solving the problems they used to get I'm getting to the point I'm grateful when ANY politician even TRIES to solve problems.
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If someone tries, and fails - would you slam them worse than if they didn't try at all? If all you have to judge success or failure by is media reports, considering that the reporter and cameraman would bypass twenty people who say that things are going well for one person who's hysterical - is it a fair assessment of the success or failure of an operation? Or do you believe that they're offering a balanced view of things?
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I'm a skeptic because I've learned that the media's not interested in presenting what's actually happening. They'll go for the sensational stories. They'll go for the ratings. Tragedy and hysteria gets viewers, viewers=ratings, ratings=revenue. Revenue drives the media industry.
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Now, take a look at the media coverage of the disaster. If you were to judge by the disaster coverage as far as CNN/MSNBC/FOX/ABC are concerned - NOLA's been completely destroyed and it's an ongoing disasterous clusterf*k, and a few trees blew over elsewhere. And the roads and rails were apparently clear right up to two miles outside NO - so what took the relief so damn long?
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My point being, in case it isn't clear, that the entire AREA down there, an area about the size of Great Britain, has been leveled. New Orleans had the reporters, so all we get is what the reporters THERE see fit to report, as they see fit to report it - and their first concern is making sure the viewer comes BACK. You don't get that with good news.
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I'll give props to ZDF for getting out into the sticks and actually trying to cover the REST of the story. (Probably it was because they couldn't shove their way into the media feeding frenzy surrounding New Orleans, he said, cynically..) I really wish that the media would devote 1/5th of their time showing the things that are going RIGHT. I realize it would take away from the impressions they're trying to generate ("How bad is it? Tune in at 11!") but it'd be a welcome relief from the "It's all totally messed up" mantra they're pushing.
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Just my two cents, take it as you will...
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J.

The media, right now, is in hog heaven. It's a disaster. It's pathos, tragedy, suspense, human interest, politically charged - all the absolute BEST of their stock in trade, rolled up into one putrid, smelly lump. And they're dicing it up and feeding it out as fast as they possibly can - regardless of context, regardless of accuracy, regardless of accountability, regardless of whether or not it's even REAL.

Geraldo making multiple takes of an old lady evacuating. Yeah, that's a big damn help in getting things taken care of, isn't it?

J.