August 15, 2003
Media hype
Give me a break: Mass chaos 'echoed 9/11' says the BBC. Here's a report on "the chaos": The city was mostly calm overnight, but sporadic incidents of looting were reported in Brooklyn, with 20 people arrested after breaking into a shoe store, five arrested for looting an equipment rental center and one for breaking into a phone store, police said. Sheer chaos: Thousands of people stranded overnight in a powerless NYC, unable to get home... 26 arrests.
As James Lileks put it: The Fox news guy was outside Penn Station, where thousands of people were - brace yourself - patiently waiting for electricity to return. He seemed a little annoyed that there wasn’t a brawl or a riot...You can't wonder if a TV producer was looking at the feeds, seeing the people just walking along, the cars waiting their turns, and the producer's thinking: God help me for this, but would someone please throw a brick? We're dyin' here. I think the biggest crisis caused by the outage is that the networks had to suspend their Arnold and Kobe coverage.
Yeah, those news guys are getting pretty antsy. During an interview on NPR the host asked the reporter on the scene what changes needed to be made to make sure it didn't happen again. What did the local guy say? "I didn't design it!"
If we don't get some looting and brick throwing soon the news guys will be throwing down!