Gratuitous or necessary? Take 3
Newsweek’s Marc Peyser weighs in on last weekends Wilma coverage…
The tedium of storm coverage reached its low-water mark during this week’s coverage of Hurricane Wilma. Because Hurricane Katrina turned into truly a catastrophic event, the TV storm chasers were out in huge numbers, even though this was a much less deadly storm. At one point, CNN had Miles O’Brien and Anderson Cooper on screen at the same time for no other reason than to show us the Storm Tango—two star reporters falling down in unison. (Were they actually together? It was hard to tell, thanks to another hallmark of storm coverage: “technical difficulties.”) Whatever the case, when they had both almost landed on their feet again, we arrived at another staple of TV storm stories: the voice of the anchor, ensconced in his warm, dry studio, pleading with the reporters to get inside. And so they did.
But not soon enough to save Cooper. Just weeks earlier, he’d become an overnight sensation with his teary, emotional coverage of Katrina. Cooper had, miraculously, cut through the cant and found the anger and sadness that many New Orleans hurricane victims felt, especially those who were so poor that the government seemed not to care about them. So of course Cooper turned up for the next big storm. But instead of finding the human pulse behind it, he stood outside like the rest of the schmoes telling us it was raining. It was a pity to see Cooper squander his reputation as a thoughtful TV reporter and turn himself into yet another hurricane whore.
Spud, TVNewser cites Al Roker’s website, where Al calls out those in print journalism who have been bashing the TV guys covering the hurricanes. Roker brings up some very pertinent points, telling these whiners to knock it off. You may want to post this item separately, as it may finally shut up those whining print journalists. They ARE irrelevant when it comes to stories such as hurricanes, or others where visuals do a better job of telling the story.
Comment by Missy — October 28, 2005 @ 11:07 pm
Yawn….sometimes I think the people who write these columns are somewhat jealous. They have to report the storms as history while the news/weather channels can report the storms as news.
Comment by Anonymous — October 29, 2005 @ 4:05 am
Al needs to get thicker skin. You’d think after being a fat ass for all those years he’d be beyond googling himself and flipping out. Geez - what a self-absorbed a**hole he must be.
Comment by ITK — October 29, 2005 @ 5:01 pm
Al Roker should be happy people are talking about him. No press is bad press. We rip on him, and he gets to read it!
Comment by Terance — October 29, 2005 @ 5:35 pm