At 5:20 today, I found myself sitting in my living-room flipping from CNN, to HLN, to FOX NEWS. I was trying to see who was putting the scariest spin on the possible tsunami headed toward Hawaii.
I think CNN actually made a very docile event sound threatening and dangerous. They showed the waves coming in, but they laid down some serious "The worst may be yet to come..." dialogue over their split screen images. HLN didn't do bad, they had some good interviews and they made the potential three foot waves sound like a 50 feet wall of watery death. FOX though... well, they really disappointed me. They mentioned the potential tsunami, covered some other news, brushed past the tsunami again, covered the earthquake, did the weather and briefly mentioned the tsunami one more time.
WTH?
FOX news stunned me! I figured that if any network could scare me - here on the east coast - about a tsunami 3000 miles away, it would be FOX! But alas, I was wrong. I guess FOX can only scare folks with political nonsense. I guess they can only play to their strengths. They've got real heavyweights when it comes to spinning the most innocent political issue into the next Holocaust, but they just don't have the journalistic depth to exploit anything else. I feel like I should be happy, but I simply find myself confused.
CNN on the other hand was really pulling out the stops. I felt a little sad for them though - they wanted so badly to catch a person getting dragged to their death in a rip-tide, or smashed against a wall in a massive surge of water. When the scientists began to tell them that the worst was over and the water level had only raised a little, the newscaster was practically begging him to give him a glimmer of deadly hope. "But technically the threat could still go on for hours couldn't it? Technically?" The scientist gave him a slight bit of hope. I could almost hear the reporter going, "YEEEEESSSSSSSSSS!"
Don't worry cable news networks - you'll have plenty of other chances to try to scare us to death this year - it's only February.
TTBM
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