Hurricanes, Hype and Hysteria

The media has fallen to new lows in the face of the hurricanes. During the early days after Katrina, we heard nothing but hysteria from the media, 10,000 people were dead in New Orleans, the city was filled with looters, thousands of people were trapped in the superdome being terrorists by rapists, somebody was shooting at helicopters, the city's streets were filled with a toxic soup of disease filled waters, the police were running away, the city would have to be abandoned forever etc. etc. etc.
Yet, little of this turned out to be true, there were only between 800 and 900 deaths. There were no rapes and murders at the Superdome, no evidence that any body took a shot at an army helicopter has been found. Less than a month has passed since Katrina most of New Orleans is pumped out and residents are returning.
The media got it wrong, badly wrong, just as they got Rita Wrong that monster hurricane turned out to be far less of a threat than we were told. All the media reports did was to make a bad situation, authorities apparently kept some relief workers out of New Orleans because of reports of shooting, etc.
Why did the media do this? Probably because of a need for drama, the media wants to be as dramatic as possible. It sells newspapers and attracts viewership. In this age of 24 hour news the media has to have something going on every five minutes or so to attract viewers. The more dramatic the better, obviously viewers are going to watch so much coverage of firemen wading around in a flooded city or people handing out food to people before changing over to TV Land for another rerun of Andy Griffith. So the media makes the story more dramatic and sensational. The situation is made worse by non journalists playing journalists, Oprah Winfrey turned up in New Orleans and aired what turned out to be false and completely hysterical comments by Mayor Ray Nagin. Nagin falsely accused his own citizens of raping and murdering each other at the Superdome on Oprah's show. Imagine the outcry if a white mayor had done that?
What this will do of course is once again undermine credibility in the news media which is already close to zero. Remember similar hype right after Sept. 11, Bin Laden is coming to blow us up with a nucler bomb or release deadly germs, or before the Iraq War tens of thousands of American casualties, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi casualties? People won't pay attention to the media.
The frightening thing coming out of this is that when there is a real threat out there and the media tries to warn us. Nobody will listen because they don't believe anything in the news with good reason. Oops that already happened in New Orleans before Katrina vast numbers of people stayed put believing the warnings to be more media hysteria. The news media has a lot to pay for, the question is how do we make them act responsibly.