2008 Woodie Awards
Hurricane 'Vogue' Exemplifies Media Overindulgence
Julie Casper Roth
Issue date: 9/22/05 Section: Opinion
- Page 1 of 2 next >
On the way out the door yesterday, I noticed an amazing spider web. It was huge - spanning the entire side of a bush - and its sizable, orange maker was perched squarely in the middle. A puff of air on my part tested the web's engineering; it held and it held well with barely a ripple of motion upsetting the design. Hours later I was a little surprised and a mite saddened to find the web completely destroyed after a downpour of rain. I couldn't help but liken the situation to a massive hurricane and began to wonder if the spider would rebuild or pull up its stakes and move to Texas.
With the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina very much on the American mind, it's difficult not to make such an analogy. The news media assails the viewer so frequently with every last detail of Katrina that we begin to see it in everything. We drive around locally and see piles of furniture in a front yard and think, "Oh, those poor people," until a sign reminds us that it's a yard sale, not hurricane aftermath. Not to downplay the severity of Hurricane Katrina -which absolutely deserves the attention it has received - but hurricanes have moved from being perennial headliners to this season's all-out hot topic events. The sidebars in news weeklies rehash the available history of hurricanes that have touched the American mainland. The nation's climate prophets feed reporters ideas on global warming related to severe weather. When it rains, it pours; the media cannot report one major story without finding a link to it everywhere.
Last week Hurricane Ophelia took the media runway not because she held a flame to Katrina's strength, but because she was born of the ocean and swirled like her sister. The media reported that Ophelia was a poorly organized storm that may not even pose a threat to the Eastern seaboard yet its pre-strike coverage was substantial. While she did build in strength, and did hit the Carolinas forcefully, she still garnered much more attention than warranted.
With the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina very much on the American mind, it's difficult not to make such an analogy. The news media assails the viewer so frequently with every last detail of Katrina that we begin to see it in everything. We drive around locally and see piles of furniture in a front yard and think, "Oh, those poor people," until a sign reminds us that it's a yard sale, not hurricane aftermath. Not to downplay the severity of Hurricane Katrina -which absolutely deserves the attention it has received - but hurricanes have moved from being perennial headliners to this season's all-out hot topic events. The sidebars in news weeklies rehash the available history of hurricanes that have touched the American mainland. The nation's climate prophets feed reporters ideas on global warming related to severe weather. When it rains, it pours; the media cannot report one major story without finding a link to it everywhere.
Last week Hurricane Ophelia took the media runway not because she held a flame to Katrina's strength, but because she was born of the ocean and swirled like her sister. The media reported that Ophelia was a poorly organized storm that may not even pose a threat to the Eastern seaboard yet its pre-strike coverage was substantial. While she did build in strength, and did hit the Carolinas forcefully, she still garnered much more attention than warranted.