Full of hot air
By Kelly Young

As the rest of the Newport, R.I. was bar-hopping on the final weekend of summer, I was cemented to the couch of someone else’s summer house, watching newscasts of Hurricane Frances rip through my home in central Florida. After three hurricanes tore through my neighborhood -- and I watched all from afar -- I have become somewhat of an expert in hurricane coverage.
What should be designed to be helpful has turned into info-tainment, and unoriginal info-tainment at that. Footage of communities preparing for a hurricane has become cliché: homeowners loading wood into their SUVs, people stocking up on non-perishables, surfers catching early waves, and evacuees spray-painting quips on their plywood. During the hurricane, the lead-in graphic almost always incorporates palm trees swaying in gale-force wind, never mind that palm trees get whipped around in every summer afternoon thunderstorm. The channels should give viewers something besides the same tired footage.

Throughout the past month of hurricane coverage, all of the networks overly emphasized the position of the eye and sketchy projections of where it might hit. With Frances creeping along at a meager five mph, the location of the eye was about the only thing new to report. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration experts spanked CNN for doing so. About midnight on Sept. 4, the director of the National Hurricane Center reminded the anchor and viewers that where the eye makes landfall is inconsequential when the hurricane is a Category 4 beast the size of Texas. Everything in the state will be battered, eye wall or no.

With all the talk of eye location, there was another way to tell where the networks thought the worst damage would be -- where they put their marquee reporters. The Weather Channel’s Jim Cantore is the one to watch. Doing so is not a chore. His pre-hurricane uniform is a black T-shirt stretched tight across his broad chest. Perhaps not coincidentally, Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera also sports a black T-shirt when filing reports. Sunlight gleams off Cantore’s tan, bald head, which also serves as a perch for his sunglasses. Despite his comeliness, people dread the arrival of the hurricane hottie in their town. For Frances, he hunkered down in Palm Bay in southern Brevard County, Fla. He missed the hurricane by a few miles -- Frances actually made landfall near Ft. Pierce. Saturday, he returned to Punta Gorda, a town flattened by Hurricane Charley and a potential victim of Ivan, which loomed in the Caribbean over the weekend.

During Frances, viewers emailed CNN to object to reporters giving live updates as errant 2x4’s practically soared behind them. Anchor Miles O’Brien responded from the air-conditioned comfort of the Atlanta studio by saying that no reporter was required to report from the eye of the hurricane. Nevertheless, high-profile talking heads such as Anderson Cooper, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Bill Hemmer and Chad Myers donned flimsy windbreakers and took their spots in front of the shaking camera in Melbourne. One reporter noted that Dan Rather cut his teeth reporting on a Texas hurricane.

While the cable news channels can occasionally switch to other breaking stories, the people at the Weather Channel live for hurricanes. An Ivan promo noted how well its field reporters told the news from the middle of Charley and Frances. For Frances, they sent a reporter on a WC-130 chaser plane, where she filed her unintelligible report by telephone above the hurricane. The channel promised the same eyewall-to-eyewall coverage with Ivan. But for all of the Weather Channel’s expertise, they still act like the little kid on the block who wants to tag along with the big kids. During Frances, one of their reporters was doing a live shot on the beach when he was tackled by the formerly zaftig NBC weather guy, Al Roker. The pair clutched one another as they struggled to stay upright in the bracing wind. After somewhat homoerotic comments about man-hugs, the Weather Channel’s reporter ended his segment by suggesting that he and ol’ Al lay down in the sand together. The Weather Channel kept replaying the clip all day long, happy to be associated with a big-shot weather man, despite the odd conditions.

As for the other cable channels, Fox News was surprisingly fair and balanced. MSNBC was unsurprisingly oatmealy bland.
Viewers should question the mission of non-stop hurricane coverage. If it’s education, then the cable channels do a fine job, interspersing up-to-date wind speed and eye location with explanations of storm surge and the Saffir-Simpson scale. If it’s entertainment, they perform marvelously. Watching perfectly coiffed anchors get the crap kicked out of them by 100-plus mph winds is mildly amusing. But if it’s public service, then the networks fall short. When a hurricane hits, high winds quickly knock out the power. If the people in danger don’t have electricity to click on their television, the people who most need the information can’t get it. That leaves only people who have evacuated, friends and relatives of those in affected areas, and most likely, people just looking for a quick hit of infotainment.