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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 consi
by 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 agoThey 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 agoWell, 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 agoI 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 agoIt'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 agoIt's not like things are much better now.
- flukus 9y agoIf nothings changed you wouldn't expect it to be on the news would you? Power being restored might be newsworthy, but something today being in the same situation as yesterday isn't.
- emodendroket 9y agoI'd say "United States region of 3.5 million without power for over a week, and residents are resorting to getting water from a creek" is actually a newsworthy story. We got endless updates about what Donald Trump thinks about the NFL and the anthem despite little significant change there.
- jsjohnst 9y agoLower and middle Manhattan was without power for nearly a week following Hurricane Sandy. Not saying that to justify the lack of news coverage (quite the opposite), just saying that disasters happen, especially following a hurricane.
- objectivetruth 9y agoAnd pretty sure we all heard about that exhaustively :-)
- emodendroket 9y agoWe heard a lot more about Sandy, and, besides that, although I lived through it and it sucked (especially being in a more rural-ish part of Connecticut that was not a priority for power restoration... though we were better off in other ways than parts of New York I guess) we weren't experiencing these kinds of fuel shortages or resorting to taking a bucket to a creek to get drinking water.
- in_cahoots 9y agoKatrina caused similar problems of a lack of information, and that didn’t stop the news networks from providing 24-hour coverage (much of which was later found to be based off inaccurate reporting). If they cared or thought it would boost ratings, they’d be there.
- zimpenfish 9y ago> an island at a considerable distance from the mainland U.S. It's just over 1000 miles from Florida - about a third the distance from New York to San Francisco. That's not "a considerable distance" that should be hampering anything for a country currently engaged in a war about 6000 miles away.
- ghostly_s 9y agoSurely they can deploy the same satellite links they use on trucks from a ship or a helicopter? Just land a damn crew on any accessible beach and provide daily status updates from reporters trekking inland on motorcycle, or foot. Would be a hell of a lot better than just ignoring the crisis because its too hard.