by Peggy Robin
Have you been following coverage of Hurricane Florence? That
means you’ve seen the reporter in a hooded rainjacket, hood drawn tight, standing
at the side of a flooded road, or in front of a house with waters lapping up almost
to the top porch step, or alone on what’s left of the beach as the waves are
crashing over the top of the pier. And all around, the rain is hammering down,
the wind is bending the trees, it’s making the dangling traffic lights dance on
their wires, and at times you may see the reporter having trouble remaining
upright. Even so, the reporter keeps talking -- really yelling -- over the roar
of the wind, to convey in words what we can plainly see happening all around: It’s
a big hurricane and it’s doing a lot of damage, for sure. And then the person back
at the studio sitting behind the anchor desk closes out the segment by putting
on a brow-puckered look of concern and saying earnestly to the reporter, “Stay
safe out there!”
Then you flip the channel and see the same scene , the same
dialog between the reporter and the anchor at the desk played out again, virtually
word for word. And then on the next hour, if you go back to any of the cable
news stations, there it is again. And again.
Why do they keep doing this? They can get all the camera shots they want of flooded roads, storm surge crashing over piers, downed trees, while the reporter narrates from inside a building well removed from the threat. Why must they always have the reporter right there in the thick of it, barely standing, miserable and soaked-through, lashed by winds and rain? What does that do for us, except show us that reporters can be almost as foolish as those folks who haven’t evacuated when told it's too risky to stay? Is it to make us appreciate the personal commitment to reporting from the scene? But when it comes to risking life and limb in a hurricane, it’s NOT personal – at least, as far as the hurricane is concerned. It isn’t out to get anyone specifically. That looming tree branch bending over with the gale-force winds that could crack and crash down anytime doesn’t care whether it hits a reporter or an empty car. Why do they think we want to see the reporter standing underneath?
And yet every single news outlet without exception is doing
it this way. And not just in this hurricane, but in every hurricane since the
invention of the mobile TV news camera. Maybe even since the day of newsreels. It’s so
standard, I’m sure they could recycle past hurricane footage from one era
to the next, and if you didn't notice the changing models of the flooded cars in the
shot, you couldn’t tell the difference.
It’s well past time for a change. And
we have the technology to do it – the virtual reporter! Imagine all the amazing and
dramatically risky the things a holographic reporter could do that a
flesh-and-blood reporter could never attempt: reporting from a rooftop, or from
the very end of that flooded pier, or from atop a surfboard inside a monster wave. This
looks like a job for Siri – or Alexa – or some bold, new virtual being that
Silicon Valley has yet to send forth. But whatever you do, allow that poor, drenched, human
reporter to come in out of the storm!
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Still Life with Robin is published on the Cleveland ParkListserv and on All Life Is Local on Saturdays.
Thank you. The ONLY saving grace is that they are not talking about Trump. But it's a narrow edge.
ReplyDeleteFully agree! There is nothing heroic for standing in such dangerous elements. We have enough technology to have this done remotely and in a safe place. It also may inspire people to still go out when they see that a reporter can do the same. Not a good example to follow.
ReplyDeleteHi Peggy – I enjoy your comments and have great admiration for what you and colleagues have done for this marvelous ListServe, but I must disagree with your comments about on scene reporting during weather disasters. As a first responder for FEMA for several years during the 90s, I worked on many disasters, including a couple in the same areas now being affected. Until you’ve actually been in the middle of one of these monsters, no amount of offsite technology or technical reporting can convey how awesome and dangerous they are. The only way you can viscerally understand what these forces are like is to experience one yourself, even with on scene reportage. And obviously we don’t want curious people flocking to a flooded river and downed power lines and all the rest, so on scene reporting really is necessary.
ReplyDeleteAn ancillary benefit is that when people begin to understand just how awful these situations are, they find ways to contribute assistance, and that is an important part of the recovery efforts.
In the current situation, I have heard some people disparage the TV coverage as hype, as though the reporters are deliberately exaggerating the dangers and the damage. That is emphatically not the case. We will continue to need first rate weather forecasting, warnings to affected areas, and accurate reporting from the storm centers themselves. The big storms are beyond description, but on-scene reporting is the best single source of information.
Bill L.
I see your points – but I wonder whether these on-the-scene reports have some unintended psychological effects that actually make it easier for people to rationalize staying put and “riding it out.” People see a reporter out in high winds and rain, and even though he’s telling people how dangerous the conditions are, they may be internalizing the idea that if it’s safe enough for the media to be there, it’s safe enough for them.
DeleteThe same on-scene camera footage can be gathered by drones – which many news outlets are already using to spectacular effect. Some of the most incredible footage I’ve seen of this hurricane has been narrated from someone in a studio while the camera is capturing roofs flying off and flood waters sweeping away cars.
You also see lots of scenes of reporters conducting interviews with people who have ignored evacuation orders. These kinds of interviews are really counter-productive. They portray the people who stay as gritty, dedicated to their homes, veterans of many hurricanes. Even as the reporter may be questioning their decision, there’s this undercurrent of admiration that comes through in all these interviews. I’m thinking that a more revealing sort of interview under these circumstances would be to send the reporter back to previous hurricane sites to interview people who made the decision to stay put – and see if they survived, or if they did survive, whether they needed to be rescued, or regretted their decision to try to “ride it out.” That would be more valuable, I suspect, than giving people the chance to explain why they don’t think the hurricane is as dangerous as they’ve been told it will be.
Thanks for writing,
Peggy
Dear Peggy – These are reasonable points, but they don’t really refute what I wrote. The most harrowing footage I saw the last couple of days in several hours of TV watching was where a father had evacuated his family and went back to his house as soon as safe and found his living room ceiling caved in, and indescribable interior damage, none of it accessible to drone coverage. He pointed to the desk where his daughter did her homework, and noted if they had not left she would probably have been killed.
DeleteThe people who stay are usually folks who have ridden out earlier hurricanes and think they have the answers. Often they do, except when they don’t. Rescue and response officials often point out that after a certain point they won’t be able to attempt a rescue – there is a point of no return in most mammoth disasters.
As for reporters, their job is not to report what happened yesterday or a year ago, but to report what’s going on now. First responders also supply valuable information – what’s holding, what isn’t, etc and that gets fed into the response system and helps determine where the inspectors will go first in order to assess damage and what’s needed. For a really big disaster literally hundreds, sometimes thousands of on-scene, assessors, officials, etc are involved and in the US we have the expertise to make it work, if certain politicians would ignore photo ops and relate to real situations.
Cheers, always
Bill L.