Last night I was watching CNN as they continued to cover the horrible aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. This particular segment was not about the victims, or FEMA, or even the efforts to rebuild. No, this was about the reporters themselves, and how many of them have broken down crying on the air. Apparently, CNN thought that coverage shouldn't go to the people who were actually hurt by the disaster, but to the reporters themselves. The segment also included "man on the street" interviews about whether or not it was appropriate for correspondents to show their emotions on the air. What I thought wasn't "appropriate" was the segment itself, which was nothing more than an exercise in unmitigated solipsism.
However, despite this lack of judgment, CNN is making efforts to reunite children who were separated from their parents during the hurricane. It's probably the most crucial effort going on right now, and at least it shows that the cable network isn't always mesmerized by its own navel.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
9-19-2005 @ 2:03AM
Morgan MacArthur said...
They should also be asking themselves if they should be exaggerating death counts and adding to the general hysteria.
I don't remember anything close to this level of pandemonium when between 11,000 and 15,000 people really died in the August 2003 heat wave in France. Of course, those were oldies under a Socialist government and it was harder to blame Bush, but how do people expect the news to be a credible source for evacuation recommendations when they always think it's Armaggedon here? Eventually people get numb to it and just decide to wait out class 5 hurricanes.
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