Category: Uncategorized

Texas is burning, and not like the Clash warned London would.
Months of no rainfall, and high temperatures regularly over 100 degrees have
conspired to turn the state into a tinderbox. It was only a matter of time
before:

CC-licensed by Stephen To

Boingboing.net contributor Jasmina Tesanovic visited the wildfires this
past weekend to report on them. There was a line in her article that struck
a chord in me. It was a summation line, and there was a focus on science
that interested me less. But the first part—the first part of the line
resonated.

Disaster scenes are the new normality: with blurry but efficient
technologies that witness the death of progress, the denial of science.

Disaster scenes ARE the new normal. With blurry but always available
technologies, we see into the worst days, every day.

I remember spending the afternoon of 9/11/01 pasted to the television
screen. What would my reaction be today? Would I get streaming video from
inside the buildings? Would I see more that I couldn’t unsee? Would my
trauma, felt 80 miles away from Ground Zero, color my future? Change how I
see future disasters? Would my perceptions of future risks have been
altered?

I like to talk about how we need to engage our publics before an emergency
in the interest of getting them ready. But at the end of the day, some will
be ready and most won’t be. Like always.

I wonder, though, how much thinking have we done for after the emergency.
After the spotlight has moved on and those most closely affected begin
silently rebuilding. What then?

Do we use that disaster to teach our publics how to get ready for next time?
Do we just go back to regularly scheduled programming? Do we reach out to
those affected by the visceral images that come from seemingly everywhere in
a disaster? Do we rethink what we do? Do we tell the public what we found
after rethinking?

The world is an increasingly violent place with cameras everywhere. And we
have no control over what people see. Since what they’ve seen affects what
we do, what can we do to mitigate the trauma that is inflicted and do we
have a responsibility to do that?

Gerald Baron, as he’s wont to do, has inspired some discussion with
his post on the media’s response to Hurricane Irene. Yesterday I
talked about how we, as PIOs, can avoid being seen as someone that is
perpetually “crying wolf.” Today, I’d like to talk a bit about my
other problem with the media’s coverage of the event.

This post will look more closely at the seemingly pervading feeling
that the media “over-hyped” what ended up being a weak, ineffectual
storm. I, obviously, don’t feel that it was over-hyped and in fact
feel that the media could have done more to warn about the storm.
Given that I have absolutely no sway over how the media is going to
cover the news, I want to know what we can do differently, and I think
that I have an idea.

But let’s start at the beginning. My biggest problem with the national
media’s coverage of the hurricane is not that it was over-hyped or
under-hyped, it’s that it was too focused. The biggest storyline
leading up to landfall was not the initial landfall in North Carolina,
or the effects in Virginia, Delaware or Maryland; it was all New York,
all the time. First hurricane in a century, Category 3 at landfall,
could swamp the subway lines! And it came to New York and feebly
drenched everything. And New York breathed a sigh of relief. Jokes by
members of the media posted to Twitter mocked the
storm:

Just lost power in Brooklyn…. on my ipad. It’s ok recharging now

But the storm, well, she just kept doing her thing. And rained and
stormed in upstate New York, and Connecticut, and Massachusetts, and
Vermont, and New Hampshire, and Maine. And anyone who knows about the
geography of our country knows why lots of rain in New York may not be
terrible, but lots of rain in Vermont is.

To hear the national media talk about it, though, it was all, “dodged
a bullet,” “lucky breaks,” and storm wrap-up.

I wondered why this was, I mean, the storm wasn’t even gone. Then I
remembered that most national media is headquartered in New York. They
had dodged a bullet, and everywhere north of them? Well, I don’t
want to say they didn’t care what happened, but the relief that was
evident on the broadcasts was palpable.

So, what does this mean for us as PIOs (who probably live outside of
New York, Washington and Los Angeles)? Well, first we need to realize
our spot in the pecking order. The national media, for all of their
goods and their bads, are human beings with homes and families and
neighbors. They care about their hometown as much as any of us and
given the choice over what to fret about, well, the choice is easy for
me, too. And if something bigger comes along, whether in New York or
Kansas City, the next thing you’ll see from them is their satellite
vans cutting tracks through your lawn on their way to the highway.

So, to figure out what to do, let’s do a little role-play. You’ve got
a disaster. Something big and heinous. And you’ve got Anderson Cooper
choppering in and maybe even some international press. Now, you’ve
been to all of those FEMA PIO classes, so you know how to integrate
them into the response framework. Media holding area, pool reports,
view of the southern sky, spell everyone’s name out, the whole nine.
And they are pressed and dressed and made up and ask the hard
questions and push to the front of the press conference because, do
you know who they work for? I’m from the network, bitch.

And then they’ll get your executive on TV and say what a
great/terrible job your agency did, and hop back into their vans and,
whew what a week! Your town got hit pretty hard, and with a lot of
work you guys will pull through. And who’s there to report on all of
the sacrifices your town made? And the Herculean effort you’ll have to
pull off to recover from this disaster? Not Anderson Cooper. It’ll be
that bookish fellow from the local weekly. It’ll be the local health
reporter that’s got your home phone number because, goshdarnit, you
guys have worked together for the last twenty years.

I know that Anderson Cooper is a great reporter, and the network folks
are the ones you see every night, and they look nice and frankly, it’s
not hard to be a bit starstruck. I am. But when that disaster hits,
don’t forget your local media. They’re the ones who will be there for
the long haul. They’re the ones who you’ve built a relationship with.
They’re the ones who keep telling your public, “Yeah, it didn’t hit
New York that bad, but it’s still a monster storm and it’s headed
right for us.” Definitely clear some space for those satellite trucks,
but don’t forget to also make sure that the local beat reporter gets
to ask a question at the presser.

Earlier his week, Gerald Baron (on the excellent Crisisblogger
blog) lamented the state of the media today. Yeah, I know, what’s new? Well,
I disagreed with him, which is pretty unusual. But, as usual, he raised a
very important point. Gerald’s post focused on how the media “cried wolf”
on the Hurricane Irene threat.

As this article from the Philadelphia Inquirer points out, Irene was a
deadly storm with 18 deaths and that the media plays a vital role in the
warning the public to take the dangers of a major storm very seriously. But
it also points out that “some cable anchors were still reporting that Irene
could strike New Jersey and New York as a major hurricane long after his
team determined that it clearly was weakening.”

That’s not just mistaken or poor reporting. That’s intentionally lying,
that is crying wolf. The author of the article, Will Bunch, also very
succinctly nailed the reasons behind this kind of media coverage: Ratings,
journalist careers, and political opportunism. (Anderson Cooper, it is
pointed out, was offered his primetime anchor spot after his spirited
coverage during Katrina.)

Having spent twelve hours in the Philly EOC and then not being able to sleep
afterwards because I was watching the destruction being wrought in western
New York, Connecticut and Vermont, I truly believe that the storm was
definitely not over-hyped.

That said, it raises an interesting point and leads me to another criticism
of the media (that I’ll deal with in another post).

Gerald explicitly asks about something that bedevils public health
communicators daily. Ghosts of 1976. Public health communicators have shied
away from making grandiose statements about threats ever since they warned
the public about the swine flu threat (until after Katrina, I believe). In
this week’s case, if we’re wrong and get people scared for something that
ultimately doesn’t happen, will they stop believing us? Are we
unintentionally crying wolf? Best intentions and all that.

I like to think there’s a way to avoid that fate, but I haven’t seen it
demonstrated to know if it works. It makes sense rattlin’ around in my
brain, but I’m anxious to see it in action. I call it the post-campaign era.
Once we get beyond communicating with our publics in a one-off
fashion—“Here’s what you need to know about the hurricane that’s coming
tomorrow”—and begin a longer conversation directly with them—“We’re
worried about this storm that’s a week out, and here’s why,” and then, “Now
that the hurricane has blown through and we’re okay, let us know how your
neighborhood fared, and also, the Red Cross needs blood donors.”

You’re supposed to say now, “That’s ridiculous, Jim. The media would never
carry those long messages over weeks at a time.” Exactly. We need to move
beyond the media, ESPECIALLY the national media (whose presence will be
measured in hours). Have a conversation directly with your public. Be
available to them all the time. Have the conversation saying we got lucky,
but others didn’t fare so well. Here’s what we can do next time to ensure
that if it is worse, we’ll be okay.

I agree with Gerald that if we continue with our one-off, campaign-based
strategy, people will see us as crying wolf. If the only time they hear from
us is right before a disaster that seemingly always fizzles, of course
they’ll stop believing us. But if we have that one-to-one, always on
conversation, maybe we won’t be seen as fear-mongers, but
partners.