Petty and persistent biased reporting

This is the second of this morning's striking new reporting experiences.  From "Real men wear white boots" and other tales of Lefty fails by Beege Welborn.  In my prior post, the news report was from a Second Amendment advocacy group.

This time, the news organization is much more broadly and explicitly political, Hot Air which is decidedly opposed to Democrats and Liberals.  And it shows in the tone of the reporting which is more snarky and snide.  

But again, strip away the tone and you get to the core issue - are they usefully accurate in their reporting?

And in this instance I would have to say yes.  For all that Welborn is clearly dismissive of Democrats and the mainstream media, he is actually reporting on something interesting.

Leading up to Hurricane Ian, there was much reporting in the right leaning media about the preparatory efforts of the mainstream media to establish Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida as a fall guy for the anticipated hurricane disaster.  The right leaning press was reporting this more in glee than anything.  They anticipated with confidence that DeSantis would do a good job managing the relief efforts to the disaster.

As he has done.  

I read the right-leaning pre-landfall reporting with some jaundice.  Their enemy is always the mainstream media and they would of course take any jab they could.  But, as so often happens, the mainstream media played to the stereotype they were being accused of.  I saw a puff piece by Eileen Sullivan in the New York Times trying to elevate the role of the FEMA director into a critical role.  The subheading was, For Deanne Criswell, a former firefighter and the face of the government’s response to Hurricane Ian, handling complex disasters has been a mainstay of her career.

I have no criticism of Criswell because I have no basis for any such criticism.  The reportorial error was the mis characterization of who responds to natural disasters.  There is no doubt that the federal government makes an important contribution but it is usually the least of three sources of succor.  

50-60% of the response to a natural disaster is the emergent order of citizens and local organizations, typically churches.  They provide shelter, first aid, rescue services, and restoration assistance.  They are there from the start and long after the natural disaster.  They are far and away the most important responce to natural disasters and the least reported on nationally.

The second source of response, perhaps 35-45% is at the State and County level along with local commercial enterprises (such as utility companies).  These are the first responders, EMTs, fire rescue, sheriffs departments, the state National Guard, etc.  They provide the boots on the ground to make things happen and they usually know the nuances of the community.  There is a cascade structure from the Governor, to Mayors to county leaders.  They are the actual face of the great majority of government response to emergencies.  

The final 5-10% of response is from the Federal government.  They can bring technical expertise to bare, along with military resources, medical assistance and financial aid.  

Sullivan's error was not the puff piece per se but the representation that the Director of FEMA is the face of the government response to a natural disaster.  A member of the coalition of government and citizen efforts?  Certainly.  The face of that response.  Virtually never.

Despite all the snark and petty jibes in Welborn's report, it becomes clear just how much the mainstream media was trying to shape a narrative which did not actually exist.  Welborn includes the tweets and the video to support his presentation.  

And it is one thing to try and extract political advantage out of a natural disaster.  It is quite another to trying a reduce aid and charity to those in extremis solely due to political animus.  

Much as I am not wild about the partisan reporting characterized by Welborn, I have to acknowledge that he does a good job of highlighting the petty and persistent political bias of the mainstream media.