Gulf Oil Spill isnt Obama's Katrina, It's the Media's.

[MadBadger]

There are a number of reasons to believe that the oil spill story currently unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico is close to entering the pantheon of “epic” news stories. For starters, it’s earned its own shorthand moniker of “Gulf Oil Spill.” It’s also got its own branded graphics package on the cable news channels. But more importantly, it’s beginning to be exploited as a political device, most notably being called “Obama’s Katrina.” Well, there was a delayed response on this story, but it wasn’t by the administration. If the oil spill is anyone’s “Katrina,” its the media’s for taking almost week to cover it on an appropriate scale.

But more importantly, just as the story was beginning to come in to more focus on Friday, April 23rd, the Arizona Immigration bill was signed into law. It was almost as if one could almost hear the nation’s collective news editors deciding that the Immigration Law was to be the controversy for the next few days.

Following is a comparison of how the broadcast media covered the two stories in the earliest stages of the oil rig calamity:



Unlike Katrina, the scale of this was not immediately knowable – the news initially broke that just the leak was relatively small. And of course, hindsight is 20/20 – no one can be blamed for not predicting the future.

It is odd, then, that so many in the media took the “Obama’s Katrina” political meme and ran with it — multiple examples of the metaphor’s usage can be seen in The Daily Show clip below. But the truth appears to be that the government’s response was within the realm of an appropriate reaction from the very beginning of this disaster. It’s the members of the media, however, that should be asking themselves “is this our Katrina?”

http://www.mediaite.com/online/gulf-oil-spill-isnt-obamas-katrina-its-the-medias/

[donheld]

1. It's not Katrina it's Chernobyl

[Cary]

2. I was thinking the same thing.

We tend to think it can't happen here.

Well. . .

[SteppingRazor]

3. I don't blame the media. Like the article says, the scale wasn't immediately knowable. But...

You are right in that this isn't Obama's Katrina. This is BP's Katrina. This is corporate America's Katrina. This is deregulation's Katrina.

[Enrique]

4. Jon Stewart interviewed the EPA chief and didn't ask her about the spill

I guess they had planned to talk about the legislation, but the spill was a big story and I thought it was odd that it didn't come up, not even in passing.

[dchill]

5. Only the Bush administration...

was capable of having a Katrina. The media is just an exacerbater.

[Scuba]

6. How about "Cheney's Chernobyl"???