An epistemic collapse

This is somewhat disconcerting.  I heard about a derecho, a land hurricane, in Iowa perhaps two weeks ago.  The news I saw focused on its rarity and unusualness.  OK.  Interesting.

And since then, radio silence.  My remaining two papers are the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.  I occasionally still listen to NPR.  But I get most of the Washington Post headlines, CNN, and other mainstream media headlines indirectly on my twitter feed.

This morning I come across a direct report from an Iowan which paints a picture of widespread devastation and destruction in Iowa and half a million without power.  Four deaths.  Iowa is a state of 3.2 million.  

What’s going on in Iowa?⚡️ pic.twitter.com/tMiwOnGglF

— Political Farm 🇺🇸 (@politicalfarm) August 18, 2020

What are we looking at here?  An hysterical local citizen report about widespread suffering from a natural disaster?   Or truly a mainstream media blackout?

More the latter than the former it seems.  A search of The New York Times for "Iowa" shows five Iowa storm reports in the eighteen days since it occurred August 10th.  Only two of which are focused on Iowa (as opposed to the derecho in the midwest.)  On Tuesday the 18th, the NYT reports Iowans feeling overlooked despite the widespread damage and devastation.  Trump's visit to the storm ravaged state on Tuesday barely gets a mention.

Searching Google media headlines, I see a few headlines from USAToday, some local TV channels, The Hill, The Guardian.  Only a handful of reports across the two weeks.

So, a blackout?  No.  But overlooked?  Sure seems that way.  Deliberately suppressed?  Hard to say.  Flyover country doesn't merit I guess.

I am left in a peculiar position.  The homemade TikTok video seems to get the story broadly right - major storm, widespread devastation, massive crop damage.  Power outage estimates in most MSM seems to indicate 150,000 rather than 500,000 but at this point, who to believe?

It is an odd and uncomfortable position to feel like major news is being suppressed, hidden, or minimized (continuing nightly violent Antifa and BLM riots in Minneapolis, Chicago, Seattle, Tacoma, etc.; massive increases in death rates from street crime in those and other cities who have defunded or stood-down their police departments, plummeting American Covid-19 death rates).  It is also uncomfortable to feel forced to give credence to informal citizen reporting.  

We need good, solid, dependable, fact-based reporting and we are just not getting it.  I do not like this epistemic collapse.

And it goes beyond Iowa.  As Bailey mentions, Iowa is a breadbasket not just for the US but for the world.  China, the largest country by headcount, has, this year, had to slaughter much of their pig population owing to a porcine disease which has been spreading there.  China has also seen massive flooding in their bread basket, the Yangtze River area, with corresponding crop losses.

Losing a large percentage of Iowa's food production is going to have major impacts on cost of food inflation, on China's capacity to feed its population and on political stability.  Hungry nations become unstable nations.

I have to get an awareness of this potential issue from a direct report from an Iowa teenager?  

Something is not right.