The Tsunami Media Effect: Who’s To Blame?
Yesterday, every network and news outlet waited with bated breath while a giant wall of water was supposed to come rushing towards Hawaii’s coast like a scene out of Deep Impact. Luckily it was a Saturday, or no one would have gotten any work done, glued to their TV sets as they were. But the tidal wave, caused by Friday night’s Chilean earthquake, never came…and while we can’t say we’re disappointed that a state wasn’t decimated, we are wondering: who got it wrong? We came up with two conclusions:
• The Forecasters: Look, predicting the weather is as much of an art as science. And when the water never showed after a whole day of waiting, we were told that Hawaii had “dodged” a bullet. Yet oceanographers were saying moments before the tide pulling back to reveal the shelf, and the discoloration of the water proved that there was about to be a natural disaster. And while all signs pointed to go, we wonder if shouting “fire” in a state under emergency really helped anybody. Gerard Frye at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center gave this explanation: “There are all sorts of assumptions that we make in trying to figure out how big the waves are going to be, and if we can avoid some of those assumptions then maybe we could do a better job.” Still, better safe than sorry, right? Except then we get to the television firestorm…
• The Media: There is nothing networks love more than a good national crisis. Not to be cynical, but it’s great for ratings, it’s great for bringing the experts on, and it’s great for deploying teams of your anchors to the spot to get exclusive coverage. So can anyone blame the news? Well yes…sort of. This isn’t the first time networks have bought whole-handedly whatever citizen journalism they could get their hands on. Credible news sources based the majority of their coverage on eye-witness accounts, pictures uploaded via Twitter, and in some cases, UStream. While we understand that there may have not been enough time to get your reporters embedded (especially with their airports closed): this kind of reliance on non-journalists for information hearkens back to the trouble we had at the Fort Hood shootings.
Nor did it help to have people like Rich Sanchez on the air, going nutzo and having a temper-tantrum. Although when you think about it, he was kind of right about the vague application of science in this scenario.
