Saturday, January 29, 2011

The Brisbane Flood Media Coverage

My first rant will be on news at hand - The Queensland (Australia) Floods.  Specifically the flooding that occurred in the capital - Brisbane.  Too soon?  Well Tony Abbott is having a go at the Prime Minister's dodgy tax to cover the event.  So I guess as an over-opinionated blogger, my misinformed views are well overdue.

Being a resident who was out of town on holidays while the whole floods unfolded, I was totally reliant on the extensive news coverage to be informed whether any of my properties (or my friends properties) were being affected by the flood.  "Why didn't you pick up the phone and call someone?" you might ask.  Well THE MEDIA TOLD ME NOT TO USE THE PHONE OR TRAVEL TO BRISBANE!  So I decided to take their word for it and thus placed myself entirely in their hands.  Big mistake.  (I think that's a line from Pretty Woman.  Very disturbing start to my blogging career)

When I did dare an SMS or two I did find out I my property had escaped - but absolutely NO thanks to the media.

Over and over we were forced to view the same footage of the same unidentified houses under water.  By the end of any one sitting, the images all blurred into one mass of water, roofs and ignorant kids on boogie boards.

IRRESPONSIBLE STUFF
Why the media loves the image of kids floating around in flood muck is beyond me.  Like Charlie Sheen to a house of disrepute, the camera is drawn to some unsupervised delinquent clinging to a inflatable bed.  (1) If the water is above 600mm high in a house, it is in the toilet dude.  You're surfing in poo poo and wee wee dude.  Not so cool now?  (2) No disrespect to victims but there have been fatalities.  And the media is irresponsible enough to film one of the major causes.

Example: I remember one reporter who was chatting away with the camera angled such that a kid on a boogie board could be seen floating behind her.  The banter seemed to ignore the activity behind her as the network flashed back to the news desk.  When they returned to the reporter, a tinny full of police could be seen following the recreational flood surfer.  Still no mention from the reporting staff.  Are they blind or did they put the kid up to it in the first place?  Wouldn't surprise me.  Hang on - I almost forgot the point of this blog.  What I mean is OF COURSE IT WAS STAGED


UNINFORMATIVE STUFF
All I wanted to know is if the water had reached my house.  But no, no.  The media wanted to show us some spectacular and heart wrenching footage so to hell with reporting the facts.  On some occasions, all they needed to do is sweep the camera to the right or left of the reporter conducting an interview.  But no, no.  They wanted to hear some random person tell us what was happening.  It was like watching a 5 year old play Super Mario Galaxy.  You know the mind numbing experience of watching him run the little avatar off the cliff over and over and over.  I kept leaning in an attempt to will the camera man to zoom out a little.  But no, no.

The most painful was when they had footage from a chopper.  The chopper was moving but the camera man managed to keep the camera poised on a solitary image or street in the city centre.  Skillful cameraman -yes.  Spectacular shot -yes.  Tell me where the water was? No.  For all I new the entire city had been covered in water - not the <5% that actually was (Brisbane is quite sprawling so the actual percentage of land covered with water was probably quite low.  But in keeping with the theme of my blog I pulled a number out of my ....)

Now we didn't need this level of detail (as beautiful/tragic as these images are)
http://www.nearmap.com/?ll=-27.495786,152.996292&z=14&t=k&nmd=20110113
That map came a week after the event.  And is great for retrospective analysis.

All we wanted was a dude with a fluro pen and a map of brisbane.  That's all.  Or a screen capture of google maps and photoshop.  Or copy of the UBD and a niko pen.  What we got was a news reporter standing in front of a cityscape reading a bit of paper "...water is getting in to West End...." and cut to a shot of country town under water - at first I thought it WAS a shot of West End.  But when they used the same footage for another suburb I had my doubts.


IT'S HAPPENING AGAIN
Ahhh yes.  Spurred on by the ratings success of the last disaster, news.com.au leaps to action when they hear of an impending Cyclone.  http://www.news.com.au/national/north-queensland-braces-for-cyclone-anthony-as-cyclone-yasi-brews-behind-it/story-e6frfkvr-1225996801970  If the video is still active when you view this link you will notice that it starts with footage of a roof being blown off.  The cyclone hasn't even hit shore.  It's not even category 2.  So all I can assume is they're showing people who have never heard the term "cyclone" or "damaging wind" - this is what it looks like.

Well one thing's for sure, if the cyclone doesn't end up being big, news.com.au will find some footage of one that was...

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