Hurricane Stan and the Media

OK, so I have a little axe to grind about news networks. And no, this is not going to have anything to do with complaining about their coverage of politics, believe it or not. It has to do with hurricanes. Specifically, with hurricane Stan, which recently paid a visit to Mexico.

I was watching CNN on 3 October at about 1pm, when the weather came on and the weatherwoman started talking about what was then tropical storm Stan. She stated that everybody should be happy because the storm is going to continue heading west and would not threaten the US, at which point she pointed straight at two Mexican coastal towns, and commented about how lucky this is. (She did not state that she was happy that it was going to hit Mexico, but there were clear implications of “better them than us”).

So I woke up this morning and Molly sent me an article from the Financial Times, which was discussing the results of hurricane Stan in the region. I had read this article from MSNBC in the morning, which buries any mention of the hurricane until the very end. While it is nice that MSNBC even has a report on the storm, it is reported as just that. There is a mention of the fact that this was a hurricane (buried at the very end) that came through some days ago, but it is up to the reader to figure out that this storm is in fact the hurricane, which has killed all these people and was the cause of the damage they are now facing.

So what to make of this? I am not sure, but I was appalled at the statement on CNN. And I am not sure what to make of the MSNBC bit (is the fact that the Financial Times is British important?)

Anyway, just some food for thought.