This is not meant to sound insensitive toward those suffering from the flooding. In fact, I have a profound sadness in regard to the situation there and for those affected. I do kind of have a certain antipathy toward the media's handling of the coverage ...
I think there is definitely a real difference in the way the media is reporting on the flooding in the midwest, especially when directly compared to Katrina. For starters, the media is not conveying the same sense of desperation that was so easy to tap into during Katrina. But maybe that's because there is no Superdome this time, with thousands of desperate people all looking and sounding desperate for the TV cameras? This is not to say that they're not out there this time; they're just not in a confined area, and so they're not as accessible (i.e. the media has to go out of their way a little more to find them).
This flood-process has been much slower, whereas with Katrina, it was like we all went to bed and woke up and New Orleans was under water; it was a huge disaster, like in the movies. That shocks people, even though most probably knew there was a hurricane on the way. With this flooding, it's been more of a siege. People can't handle sieges; their attention isn't great enough. From the media's perspective, that's not dramatic enough for hour-upon-hour of coverage; there aren't dead bodies lying on the streets. There aren't huge numbers of people trapped with ongoing Coast Guard rescues. It's terrible to say that, but I think that has everything to do with the lack of/difference in the coverage of this flooding. And, it's extremely disheartening because there is an opportunity being missed. With Katrina, people all over the world were pretty astounded by the things they were seeing non-stop on CNN & all the other networks. People knew something very terrible was happening. With this, it's almost like it's too subtle, more of an Oh, hmmm, yeah, flooding in the heartland. Wow; what time's the game come on? With Katrina, it was a very scary thing for everyone, whether they were from the Gulf Coast or the North Pole, because it exposed a vulnerability of the human condition that few have ever experienced, or had even thought about. With this flooding, the media doesn't know how to get across what is likely the much bigger story, so they take the easy route, focusing on making "the story" about gritty, strong midwestern folk doing what needs to be done to get through, and we all expect them to perservere because that's what those gritty, strong midwestern folk always do. As evidence of this, the biggest story so far has been all the people piling sandbags in Iowa City. That's the story; once that part was "over," it's as if the media can't figure out what to do next because most people (their viewers) don't have a way to relate to flooded farmland, let alone millions of acres of it, and the average person can't relate to toxic mud in their home, let alone thousands of them. I mean, if they can't get that footage of people stacking sandbags somewhere, forget it.
The opportunity being missed is to show the real impact on everyone's lives; this story is about eveyone, not just those gritty, strong midwestern folk. How does this effect "the rest of us" from an economic, agricultural, environmental, quality of life, etc. standpoint? The media isn't doing enough from the empathy and/or "how can we help?" stance to begin with, so there's probably not a high probability that they'll make a huge shift toward what's really the bigger story, which is that this flooding could very well be (or maybe already IS) a cause of real crisis for the global community, especially as far as commodities and inflation are concerned. But the media are, afterall, humans, and I think this time around, it really exposes a general lack of understanding among most people as to how seemingly "small" subtle things such as the farm-based economy in Iowa can effect the rest of the world; sort of the proverbial flap of the butterfly's wings. It would take a lot of effort to get that message out in a way that the average person could actually incorporate, and even then, there's no guarantee that they'd even be "tuned in." I do have a few ideas as to why the media is not scratching the surface on these more "scary" kinds of aspects of the situation, but I will not go into that because they easily fall into the political debate category.
