Weather Porn

If you turned on your TV this week and scanned the news channels, you would have been struck by the coverage.  Almost every station is now seemingly offering non-stop coverage of Hurricane Rita.  There is something unsettling about this (anyone remember Natalie Holloway?)  as well as about the nature of the coverage; it is weather porn, not news.

The Supreme Court, in Roth, 1957 addressed pornography.  This was the famous case in which the court set a precedent for judging materials obscene if they appealed exclusively to "prurient interests" and had "no redeeming social value."

Dictionary.com offers three definitions of pornography, the third of which states:

Lurid or sensational material: “Recent novels about the Holocaust have kept Hitler well offstage [so as] to avoid the... pornography of the era” (Morris Dickstein).

The hallmark of pornography would, in my opinion, include the lack of any socially redeeming quality and the use of the material to elicit emotional reactions unencumbered by rational thoughts.  This seems a fair description of the LMSM's* approach to what passes for news.

Watching breathless reporters describe the horrible devastation that would be caused by Rita if she recaptures her Cat 5 strength, or even if she only hits land as a strong Cat 4 produces a curious response in the viewer.  There is minimal effort made to impart useful information.   One is meant to marvel at the courage of the correspondent in the filed whose hair is being whipped around by the wind with the surf crashing into retaining walls behind him; one is meant to feel horror and terror for the poor unfortunates caught in the path of the Storm, and cower before the power of nature; one is not expected to think critically (what are those reporters doing there if it is so dangerous?)  There are constant reminders and flashbacks of the coverage of Katrina.  We are reminded of those who are still suffering from Katrina, perhaps with a bit of editorializing thrown in about how the poor and minorities are now back in the nation's consciousness (when they really mean back in the media's consciousness) with additional pornographic descriptions of the further havoc that could be wreaked upon New Orleans if the levees fail again... and they will if there is as much rain as projected by our weather maps, we are informed by the concerned, deeply troubled reporter with the sympathy flowing in waves from his or her worried face.

There are many things that are troubling about this, even beyond the enlistment of much of the nation as an army of voyeurs. 

Instapundit links to Beldarblog who pointed out one way in which the LMSM has failed in their stated duty of informing the public.  There are terrible traffic jams, with people running out of fuel, in the evacuation of Houston (which may be spared the worst in any event):

IMHO, local media have done a very bad job of distinguishing between "mandatory evacuation" areas (truly coastal counties, storm-surge areas) and elsewhere. Some of the adjacent coastal county officials are already bitching (publicly and unproductively) at Houston/Harris County officials for "ignoring the plan," which was to get the coastal zones evac'd first. Since so many Houstonians are also on the road ("early," in the view of those adjacent county folks), congestion is much worse for everyone. But I think the "fault" for that, if fault there be, can be laid more at the feet of the breathless media rather than Houston/Harris County officials. And ordinary folks are hyper-receptive to the hype because of Katrina.

If folks have actually LISTENED to what Mayor Bill White has been saying on TV, he's only been twisting arms for the mandatory evac zone folks to leave, plus those otherwise at high risk (e.g., hospital/nursing homes, those in mobile homes, those in houses repeatedly flooded by bayous in past storms).

If the LMSM saw their job as to inform, they could, and would, inform.   Unfortunately, they see their job as involving mobilizing people's emotions in order to increase their ratings and secondarily to become distressed and outraged over whatever injustice they see in their tea leaves or coffee grounds in the morning.

The problem with pornography is that when you appeal to the senses alone, with no attendant appeal to the rational mind, you are on a one way, dead end street.  You must continually escalate the lurid, sensational news you report and sensationalize the way in which you report the "news".  The LMSM know this.  This is why the New York Times has gone to court to obtain the additional pictures of the abu Graib scandal.  The story has died, but new, sensational pictures, especially those with a hint of sado-masochistic sex play, are all that is necessary to roil the entire world.  It would actually work in that part of the world that can be easily confused into thinking this is a fresh atrocity.  (Like the young child, seeing the WTC go down multiple times in the days following 9/11 who asked if badmen had flown into more buildings.)  Adults would see those pictures and, in the absence of something truly remarkable, sigh and move on; we've already seen it.  New pictures would not add anything to the story. 

The LMSM has been failing in their duty to inform for so long that it is unremarkable; they have always been pre-occupied with the sensational.  However, perhaps driven by the advent of the internet and the cable stations, along with their declining circulation and ad revenues, they have given up any pretense of offering real news except when incidental to their stories.  It is sad and dangerous.  It will be a long time before the blogosphere can replace their vital functions and too many will be kept in the dark as a result.