Posted by
Icarus on Tuesday, September 02, 2008 9:11:25 AM
I'm currently vacationing in Athens, Greece and, therefore, am stuck with CNN for news and information, since I do not understand the Greek newscasts.
On Monday CNN's big news was, of course, Hurricane Gustav. In the hours before the hurricane made landfall CNN had a couple of local New Orleans reporters talk about the preparation for the storm. The locals guys were asked how the evacuation had been progressing. They reported that things were going quite well, as compared to the run up to Katrina.
Not satisfied with this bit of relative good news, the CNN anchor kept hammering away at how bad things might be if the city is not prepared. This was despite the fact that locals were reporting that the area was much better prepared now then it was three years earlier.
It is one thing to do nothing but present bad news, it is something else entirely to actively search for bad news in the middle of a newscast that relayed how well things were going.