http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/theg...hy-the-media-ignored-the-nashville-flood.aspx I can't help but think if this happened in Haiti or on the border it would be getting much more attention.
Matt, being a sports media guy, how do you try to find the right balance between stories that "sell" and stories that are just more important on a human level? Is there perhaps a different responsibility when it comes to delivering sports news/commentary versus more general news/commentary?
To be honest, very few stories in sports have serious human consequences to the general public. Truthfully, very few X's and O's type questions develop into hot button issues. Other than steroids, crime, and racism, there aren't very many topics that get people's blood boiling...except for Vince Young. :grin:
This has fallen into the Cracks. I know I got the feeling that there was a flood but . . . 'it was just a regular ole flood' no big deal. Rocket River
Its because cities here can recover from this stuff. Yes it costs millions but what set something like Katrina apart from anything else here wasnt the monetary cost, it was the fact that New Orleans actually looked like a 3rd world country that got hit by a natural disaster and even then it took an absolutely incompetent response from all levels of government to bring more media attention to it. We just take these things for granted now because we know we can recover from these types of things. A country like Haiti is just ****ed when something like that happens. They barely had any infrastructure before, now they're left with nothing at all. Not to mention because infrastructure is so bad in poorer countries, you end up with massive death tolls that you dont see here. I think less than 40 people died in Nashville, while 200000 or more mightve died in Haiti. Hell even Katrina had over 1800 deaths. Yeah it sucks that we dont notice these things but our infrastructure is so good and our ability to respond to disasters is so strong that these things just kind of slide out of our consciousness.
I agree with the writer. If you look at the major floods over the last few years, none of them got more than a cursory glance from the national media... or at most the equivalent of an "in depth" 3 minute story on a Friday. The one exception is if it is the Mississippi that's flooding... then, for some reason, it's a bigger story... probably because it's a bigger (and mythic) river and they try to sell the man vs. nature thing with visuals of desperate people throwing sandbags on top of levees. There have been at least three major floods since 2007 that I know of that the Federal government mobilized incident management teams and other emergency personnel, but I doubt many people outside the affected areas could name them. While it has been inadequate, I think the Nashville flood has received more coverage than others. All that said, I thought the OP's comments were over the top and did nothing to further the discussion except mark him as a Republican who cannot think critically and lets his biases and untethered emotions overwhelm him. That was such a nonsensical and meanspirited statement that it makes me weep (figuratively... I have an image to uphold so I can't be seen crying) for our public discourse. I'm sure everyone can recite chapter and verse of the great El Paso flood of 2006. Or the notable Arizona floods over the last 20 years. And to pick on Haiti is just absurd. That was an epic human tragedy and was (is) worthy of receiving the news coverage it did (does).
[rquoter]Media silence means public ignorance, and public ignorance means fewer charitable donations, slower aid, and less political pressure. If that's not reason enough to cover the flood--to do our jobs--I don't know what is.[/rquoter] So, why isn't Mr. Romano out there covering the flood? If the national media have a feedback effect on certain stories, couldn't he trigger that effect by utilizing his national media platforms--Newsweek/newsweek.com?
Well, the Haitian Earthquake killed an estimated 250,000 people, and left over 1 million people homeless - the Nashville flooding is estimated to have caused 30 deaths. You can't seriously be attempting to compare the two events in terms of humanitarian tragedy...?
I apologize if you think I was minimizing the suffering in Haiti. My point is news media pick and choose the stories that the public consumes. Televising protests is not going to change the law in Arizona. Televising a disaster might lead to more relief from the private sector which is the only way these effected areas ever get the help that they need. Immigration and Drilling are political footballs while a flood in Nashville is not "controversial".
The bill in Arizona has already been changed because of all the attention it got but anyway. The media choosing the news is not a lot different than you guys doing a half hour on the Cowboys every week last year despite being in Houston. Et tu Mattj.
I didn't like the way that he made it sound like the oil spill story is over because "containment" is on the way. WTF, that story is only beginning.
Great non-apology. Not only do you offer this clever little statement, you also confirm the biases evident in the OP. You definitely minimized the suffering in Haiti by trying to make some smartass wingnut crack. I apologize that you apparently get away with such shoddy thinking and mindless groupthink in your regular life. (See what I did there... it's just what you did.) Here, unlike wingnut radio, we're not all docile little wimps and only Clutch controls the microphone, not you. Anyway, to refresh, you offered an opinion piece and then said: To anyone that can read, you were minimizing the suffering in Haiti by choosing to bring it into a conversation about Nashville flooding when there was no obvious connection and implying that Haiti was a media creation. The border comment makes you look borderline racist and frankly you come off as an entitled prick. (Please don't apologize to me for me making the observation that you're an entitled prick.) No. That was the point of the article you posted. Your point was that brown and black people get more coverage from the media (I apologize again if you think they are the Liberal media). You said nothing about drilling. The author did. You said Haiti and border. Now, you're trying to change the goalposts by throwing in drilling.
Floods don't get a lot of attention because they aren't spectacular for lack of a better term. not like hurricaines and earthquakes. they're boring natural disasters.
The same weekend there was a failed terror bombing and an oil spill. Both stories will actually have less immediate human impact, but sell much better.
The Grand Ol' Opry flooding is the best thing that can happen to music in America. They better save Memphis though.
The example that immediately comes to mind was coverage of Ike in the middle of a national economic meltdown. Both Ike and the flooding are very regional, while the immigration issue and the oil spill stories are parts of debates occurring on a national level.
