10 ms·

The Media Has Neglected Puerto Rico

ghostly_s 9y ago
Not that I think the central conclusion is wrong, but after skimming the article it's very odd that relative number of affected people is not brought up ('population' isn't even mentioned in the piece). The Houston metro has twice the population of Puerto Rico. I don't know an easy way to estimate those effected in Florida, and probably the sum total of human suffering is greater in Puerto Rico thanks to the island's vulnerability, the state of infrastructure, and the strength of the storm. Obviously there's no real way to measure these up but it seems an obvious line of questioning in trying to explain the disparity.
- wccrawford 9y ago
  I live in Florida. Millions were affected here. However, at no point was the entire state out of power, and even if it had been, we have neighboring states that we can travel to relatively easily. In fact, many of us did that to avoid the storm altogether, and only came back when it was gone. Most of us that stayed weren't out of power for more than a week... In fact, most were only out for a few days. Most people in Puerto Rico didn't have that option, and they couldn't travel anyone via land to somewhere with power. In short, Puerto Rico is much, much worse.
- StudentStuff 9y ago
  10% of Houston was affected by flooding. Basically all my friends in PR were affected by this hurricane, despite them being sprinkled about the island. One still has servers that are underwater from said storm, helped him stand up replacements a few days back for those. More people were affected in PR by this hurricane than those affected in Houston.
  - ghostly_s 9y ago
    > More people were affected in PR by this hurricane than those affected in Houston. Thanks for this added context. I haven't really seen this discussed in the media coverage, which is not terribly surprising, but I guess I expected a stats-heavy outfit like 538 to touch on this aspect.
- Gimpei 9y ago
  Maybe. But by that logic we shouldn't see much coverage of the mass shooting in Las Vegas since it only affected a few thousand concert goers.
- spaceseaman 9y ago
  > it's very odd that relative number of affected people is not brought up I don't think it's that odd. It might seem that way though if you're only thinking in terms of numbers. As a rough estimate, we can use the fact that "95% of customers remain without power" and "45% have access to drinking water" [1]. In other words, the numbers say the storm has likely affected all of Puerto Rico, that is about 3 million people. [1] https://www.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/1330501/dod-accelerates-hurricane-relief-response-efforts-in-puerto-rico/ https://www.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/1330501/dod-acc... > The Houston metro has twice the population of Puerto Rico. Surprisingly correct (the Greater Houston area has a TON of people), but I personally think you're missing an important component of the argument you're making. I don't think it's just simply "More people in Houston -> More media". I think a more accurate way to phrase it would be: "More people in Houston the media thinks more people would care about and watch TV for -> more media" In other words, I think this article is more useful to highlight why media does or does not find a certain topic worth covering. A greater population of people affected doesn't really match up with that argument. Extraordinarily few people are affected by terrorism, yet it's the bread of butter of hot news. Since the number people affected by a disaster doesn't seem to correlate with how the news covers it, I think it's wise to ask, "Why does the news think of Puerto Rico differently than the United States?", rather than assuming population is that reason because it's the simplest thing. I think it has a lot more to do with the fact that most Americans find it a lot easier to empathize with Bob and Joanne in Houston rather than Jose in Puerto Rico. Take of that what you will. I believe this is what the article was trying to get at. Why does the media think it's easier to empathize with Houston? What makes Puerto Rico different? Does this speak to greater societal issues in the United States and the way its media looks at itself?
- joemaller1 9y ago
  The Media is very lazy, they'll cover anything they can drive to. Houston and Florida got tons of coverage because they were already there. Covering PR would mean significant personal discomfort for the reporters and crews, with no guarantee of being able to leave on their own schedule. There just don't seem to be many reporters of that ilk anymore.
  - skybrian 9y ago
    I don't know what you mean? Plenty of reporters cover wars in places hard to get to.
  - true_religion 9y ago
    Don't major news channels such as ABC, NBC, Fox already have affiliates or branches in Puerto Rico? It's certainly a large enough market to deserve a local news channel.
StudentStuff 9y ago
Hurricane Maria and its fallout weren't heavily covered. From what I hear from friends down there, power and water are still hard to come by, and the utilities are not providing things like bagged water, which is mandated in WA State after a few hours without water pressure. If what happened in Puerto Rico happened on the West Coast, but from an earthquake, we would have seen a much larger response and better media coverage. Partly due to utilities here planning, training and funding resources for such an event (with water distribution warehouses sprinkled through Seattle), basics like clean, potable water would be in much better supply.
- godzillabrennus 9y ago
  It wouldn’t hurt that the west coast is connected to the mainland and its far easier to transport supplies to without major coordination.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
foxfired 9y ago
Maybe it has something to do with the word Territory as in a U.S. Territory. I still don't know what it is, but it implies that it is not a state, not a city. If Hawaii can be half way around the world and be called a state, why can't we do the same for Puerto Rico?
- booleandilemma 9y ago
  I don’t think PR wants to be a state yet.
  - weirdstuff 9y ago
    And they don't want to remain under their current status, either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statehood_movement_in_Puerto_Rico https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statehood_movement_in_Puerto_R...
    - craftyguy 9y ago
      > The fifth referendum was held on June 11, 2017. 97% percent voted for statehood, though there was only 23% voter turnout.[1] http://thehill.com/homenews/news/337347-puerto-rico-votes-in-favor-of-statehood http://thehill.com/homenews/news/337347-puerto-rico-votes-in...
      - ocb 9y ago
        This is extremely misleading. The pro-status quo party boycotted the referendum. I'm relatively ignorant of the political situation in PR but it's obvious that this isn't a situation with near-universal consensus.
        dragonwriter 9y ago
        The pro-status-quo groups have been actively avoiding honest participation from the 1998 vote on, because they'd rather a vote with unclear results than a clear loss (though even so, they clearly lost in 2012, though their non-participation in the “if not status quo, then what” part of that ballot was used as grounds to deny the import of the substantial win by Statehood on that ballot.)
curtis 9y ago
I think the quality and quantity of reporting coming out of Puerto Rico has suffered from both its political status and the fact that it is an island at a considerable distance from the mainland U.S. However, I think the situation has been compounded by both the degree of damage caused by the hurricane and by the kind of damage. Something like 90% of the cell towers are offline and the landlines have been heavily damaged as well. So you have this problem where you can't get reporters in and you also can't get firsthand reports from locals out, either. It seems like a clear case of no news is bad news, but how is the news media supposed to report "no news"?
- roywiggins 9y ago
  They managed to keep up 24 hours rolling coverage of a missing plane for what seemed like weeks. Cable news is really good at filling time with speculation, talking heads, Wolf Blitzer, and CGI reenactments.
  - curtis 9y ago
    Well, yeah. But Maria was the third hurricane in a row. Maybe the news was suffering from hurricane fatigue combined with a lack of information coming out of Puerto Rico at the same time.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  I see friends on the island managing to post Facebook updates so I feel like a professional news organization should be able to get some reports out if they really want.
  - curtis 9y ago
    It's also been 11 or 12 days since the hurricane hit Puerto Rico. But for the first week, the reporting seemed pretty sparse even though it was obvious they had been hit really hard.
    - emodendroket 9y ago
turc1656 9y ago
While there may be a legit point to this article, let's also keep things in perspective. In the past few weeks we've had....... 3 major hurricanes resulting in enormous damage. The NFL anthem/knee controversy. Escalating tensions with North Korea. The Catalan vote turned into military police violence yesterday. The largest mass murder in recent American history today. OJ was released from prison. More Manafort investigations. The protests/riots in St. Louis over officer Jason Stockley being cleared in the shooting. The other riots at Georgia tech where a cop car was set on fire of a different shooting. The discovery that Jared Kushner has used private email for government business. Developments in the Russia hacking scandal which may prove involvement in the election. The deadly riots in India after a religious leader was convicted of rape. A terrorist knife attacker in France yesterday. Suicide bombers in Syria today. The alleged murderers of Kim Jong-Un's half brother began their trial. And that's just the shit I can remember! I'm afraid to think about what I have already forgotten - and that's really the point. There's really only so much any one person can focus on to any meaningful degree. I'm not a fan of the media, but I don't blame them for this one. People were sick of hurricane coverage and with all that other stuff going on, they curtailed coverage a bit to focus on some other hot button issues.
- turc1656 9y ago
  Also, pulling up 2-3 major news outlets right now I see that PR is mentioned on all of them, particularly because the president has announced a visit there. But still. It's on the main page of all of them this very minute. One other thing - today is a perfect example - if it weren't for the mass shooting in Vegas, the Catalan voting violence would have been the front page news today. Maybe being in Europe it is that way, but not here in the US. Catalan was all but drowned out to the Vegas attack.
- KGIII 9y ago
  The London Tube bombing. I think that was just a couple of weeks ago. As you say, there is only so much one can focus on. I don't even try to really retain or keep up with it all. I can't and I don't care if I'm expected to. I'd say that I also have a finite amount of empathy. It sounds bad but it gets used up quickly and I have more local things on which to spend my empathy. I know it is selfish, but that's just how it is.
jjawssd 9y ago
It is not the media that has neglected Puerto Rico https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpwYHAN28As https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpwYHAN28As
musgrove 9y ago
fivethirtyeight.com clearly doesn't include themselves as a member of the media.
- jdamon96 9y ago
  Did you bother to even open the article? Literally the first sentence is "While Puerto Rico suffers after Hurricane Maria, much of the U.S. media (FiveThirtyEight not excepted) has been occupied with other things..."
  - paradite 9y ago
    > Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - kadenshep 9y ago
      What an absolutely petty and useless rule/standard.
- islanderfun 9y ago
  It's in the first sentence. > While Puerto Rico suffers after Hurricane Maria, much of the U.S. media (FiveThirtyEight not excepted)...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
javiramos 9y ago
Puerto Rican here! In my opinion, these are two very good pieces to learn about Puerto Rico [1] https://youtu.be/CesHr99ezWE https://youtu.be/CesHr99ezWE [2] https://youtu.be/Tt-mpuR_QHQ https://youtu.be/Tt-mpuR_QHQ
dghughes 9y ago
I was impressed how fast France and the UK sent help to their territories. France and the UK are about 2,000 miles away from their Caribbean territories the US is about 970 miles away from Puerto Rico.

Not that I think the central conclusion is wrong, but after skimming the article it's very odd that relative number of affected people is not brought up ('population' isn't even mentioned in the piece). The Houston metro has twice the population of Puerto Rico. I don't know an easy way to estimate those effected in Florida, and probably the sum total of human suffering is greater in Puerto Rico thanks to the island's vulnerability, the state of infrastructure, and the strength of the storm. Obviously there's no real way to measure these up but it seems an obvious line of questioning in trying to explain the disparity.

wccrawford 9y ago
I live in Florida. Millions were affected here. However, at no point was the entire state out of power, and even if it had been, we have neighboring states that we can travel to relatively easily. In fact, many of us did that to avoid the storm altogether, and only came back when it was gone. Most of us that stayed weren't out of power for more than a week... In fact, most were only out for a few days. Most people in Puerto Rico didn't have that option, and they couldn't travel anyone via land to somewhere with power. In short, Puerto Rico is much, much worse.
StudentStuff 9y ago
10% of Houston was affected by flooding. Basically all my friends in PR were affected by this hurricane, despite them being sprinkled about the island. One still has servers that are underwater from said storm, helped him stand up replacements a few days back for those. More people were affected in PR by this hurricane than those affected in Houston.
- ghostly_s 9y ago
  > More people were affected in PR by this hurricane than those affected in Houston. Thanks for this added context. I haven't really seen this discussed in the media coverage, which is not terribly surprising, but I guess I expected a stats-heavy outfit like 538 to touch on this aspect.
Gimpei 9y ago
Maybe. But by that logic we shouldn't see much coverage of the mass shooting in Las Vegas since it only affected a few thousand concert goers.
spaceseaman 9y ago
> it's very odd that relative number of affected people is not brought up I don't think it's that odd. It might seem that way though if you're only thinking in terms of numbers. As a rough estimate, we can use the fact that "95% of customers remain without power" and "45% have access to drinking water" [1]. In other words, the numbers say the storm has likely affected all of Puerto Rico, that is about 3 million people. [1] https://www.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/1330501/dod-accelerates-hurricane-relief-response-efforts-in-puerto-rico/ https://www.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/1330501/dod-acc... > The Houston metro has twice the population of Puerto Rico. Surprisingly correct (the Greater Houston area has a TON of people), but I personally think you're missing an important component of the argument you're making. I don't think it's just simply "More people in Houston -> More media". I think a more accurate way to phrase it would be: "More people in Houston the media thinks more people would care about and watch TV for -> more media" In other words, I think this article is more useful to highlight why media does or does not find a certain topic worth covering. A greater population of people affected doesn't really match up with that argument. Extraordinarily few people are affected by terrorism, yet it's the bread of butter of hot news. Since the number people affected by a disaster doesn't seem to correlate with how the news covers it, I think it's wise to ask, "Why does the news think of Puerto Rico differently than the United States?", rather than assuming population is that reason because it's the simplest thing. I think it has a lot more to do with the fact that most Americans find it a lot easier to empathize with Bob and Joanne in Houston rather than Jose in Puerto Rico. Take of that what you will. I believe this is what the article was trying to get at. Why does the media think it's easier to empathize with Houston? What makes Puerto Rico different? Does this speak to greater societal issues in the United States and the way its media looks at itself?
joemaller1 9y ago
The Media is very lazy, they'll cover anything they can drive to. Houston and Florida got tons of coverage because they were already there. Covering PR would mean significant personal discomfort for the reporters and crews, with no guarantee of being able to leave on their own schedule. There just don't seem to be many reporters of that ilk anymore.
- skybrian 9y ago
  I don't know what you mean? Plenty of reporters cover wars in places hard to get to.
- true_religion 9y ago
  Don't major news channels such as ABC, NBC, Fox already have affiliates or branches in Puerto Rico? It's certainly a large enough market to deserve a local news channel.

StudentStuff 9y ago

Hurricane Maria and its fallout weren't heavily covered. From what I hear from friends down there, power and water are still hard to come by, and the utilities are not providing things like bagged water, which is mandated in WA State after a few hours without water pressure. If what happened in Puerto Rico happened on the West Coast, but from an earthquake, we would have seen a much larger response and better media coverage. Partly due to utilities here planning, training and funding resources for such an event (with water distribution warehouses sprinkled through Seattle), basics like clean, potable water would be in much better supply.

godzillabrennus 9y ago
It wouldn’t hurt that the west coast is connected to the mainland and its far easier to transport supplies to without major coordination.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

foxfired 9y ago

Maybe it has something to do with the word Territory as in a U.S. Territory. I still don't know what it is, but it implies that it is not a state, not a city. If Hawaii can be half way around the world and be called a state, why can't we do the same for Puerto Rico?

booleandilemma 9y ago
I don’t think PR wants to be a state yet.
- weirdstuff 9y ago
  And they don't want to remain under their current status, either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statehood_movement_in_Puerto_Rico https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statehood_movement_in_Puerto_R...
  - craftyguy 9y ago
    > The fifth referendum was held on June 11, 2017. 97% percent voted for statehood, though there was only 23% voter turnout.[1] http://thehill.com/homenews/news/337347-puerto-rico-votes-in-favor-of-statehood http://thehill.com/homenews/news/337347-puerto-rico-votes-in...
    - ocb 9y ago
      This is extremely misleading. The pro-status quo party boycotted the referendum. I'm relatively ignorant of the political situation in PR but it's obvious that this isn't a situation with near-universal consensus.
      - dragonwriter 9y ago
        The pro-status-quo groups have been actively avoiding honest participation from the 1998 vote on, because they'd rather a vote with unclear results than a clear loss (though even so, they clearly lost in 2012, though their non-participation in the “if not status quo, then what” part of that ballot was used as grounds to deny the import of the substantial win by Statehood on that ballot.)

curtis 9y ago

I think the quality and quantity of reporting coming out of Puerto Rico has suffered from both its political status and the fact that it is an island at a considerable distance from the mainland U.S. However, I think the situation has been compounded by both the degree of damage caused by the hurricane and by the kind of damage. Something like 90% of the cell towers are offline and the landlines have been heavily damaged as well. So you have this problem where you can't get reporters in and you also can't get firsthand reports from locals out, either. It seems like a clear case of no news is bad news, but how is the news media supposed to report "no news"?

roywiggins 9y ago
They managed to keep up 24 hours rolling coverage of a missing plane for what seemed like weeks. Cable news is really good at filling time with speculation, talking heads, Wolf Blitzer, and CGI reenactments.
- curtis 9y ago
  Well, yeah. But Maria was the third hurricane in a row. Maybe the news was suffering from hurricane fatigue combined with a lack of information coming out of Puerto Rico at the same time.
emodendroket 9y ago
I see friends on the island managing to post Facebook updates so I feel like a professional news organization should be able to get some reports out if they really want.
- curtis 9y ago
  It's also been 11 or 12 days since the hurricane hit Puerto Rico. But for the first week, the reporting seemed pretty sparse even though it was obvious they had been hit really hard.
  - emodendroket 9y ago

turc1656 9y ago

While there may be a legit point to this article, let's also keep things in perspective. In the past few weeks we've had....... 3 major hurricanes resulting in enormous damage. The NFL anthem/knee controversy. Escalating tensions with North Korea. The Catalan vote turned into military police violence yesterday. The largest mass murder in recent American history today. OJ was released from prison. More Manafort investigations. The protests/riots in St. Louis over officer Jason Stockley being cleared in the shooting. The other riots at Georgia tech where a cop car was set on fire of a different shooting. The discovery that Jared Kushner has used private email for government business. Developments in the Russia hacking scandal which may prove involvement in the election. The deadly riots in India after a religious leader was convicted of rape. A terrorist knife attacker in France yesterday. Suicide bombers in Syria today. The alleged murderers of Kim Jong-Un's half brother began their trial. And that's just the shit I can remember! I'm afraid to think about what I have already forgotten - and that's really the point. There's really only so much any one person can focus on to any meaningful degree. I'm not a fan of the media, but I don't blame them for this one. People were sick of hurricane coverage and with all that other stuff going on, they curtailed coverage a bit to focus on some other hot button issues.

turc1656 9y ago
Also, pulling up 2-3 major news outlets right now I see that PR is mentioned on all of them, particularly because the president has announced a visit there. But still. It's on the main page of all of them this very minute. One other thing - today is a perfect example - if it weren't for the mass shooting in Vegas, the Catalan voting violence would have been the front page news today. Maybe being in Europe it is that way, but not here in the US. Catalan was all but drowned out to the Vegas attack.
KGIII 9y ago
The London Tube bombing. I think that was just a couple of weeks ago. As you say, there is only so much one can focus on. I don't even try to really retain or keep up with it all. I can't and I don't care if I'm expected to. I'd say that I also have a finite amount of empathy. It sounds bad but it gets used up quickly and I have more local things on which to spend my empathy. I know it is selfish, but that's just how it is.

jjawssd 9y ago

It is not the media that has neglected Puerto Rico https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpwYHAN28As https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpwYHAN28As

musgrove 9y ago

fivethirtyeight.com clearly doesn't include themselves as a member of the media.

jdamon96 9y ago
Did you bother to even open the article? Literally the first sentence is "While Puerto Rico suffers after Hurricane Maria, much of the U.S. media (FiveThirtyEight not excepted) has been occupied with other things..."
- paradite 9y ago
  > Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - kadenshep 9y ago
    What an absolutely petty and useless rule/standard.
islanderfun 9y ago
It's in the first sentence. > While Puerto Rico suffers after Hurricane Maria, much of the U.S. media (FiveThirtyEight not excepted)...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

javiramos 9y ago

Puerto Rican here! In my opinion, these are two very good pieces to learn about Puerto Rico [1] https://youtu.be/CesHr99ezWE https://youtu.be/CesHr99ezWE [2] https://youtu.be/Tt-mpuR_QHQ https://youtu.be/Tt-mpuR_QHQ

dghughes 9y ago

I was impressed how fast France and the UK sent help to their territories. France and the UK are about 2,000 miles away from their Caribbean territories the US is about 970 miles away from Puerto Rico.