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Inside Out

Better than the news?

Jeanne Sager
Posted 10/4/22

Watching the footage from Lee County, Florida on CNN this week, it was hard to keep tears from pricking at the corners of your eyes.  

Minute after minute, hour after hour, video footage of …

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Inside Out

Better than the news?

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Watching the footage from Lee County, Florida on CNN this week, it was hard to keep tears from pricking at the corners of your eyes. 

Minute after minute, hour after hour, video footage of the devastation left behind when Hurricane Ian made landfall in the Gulf Coast communities forced you to make sense of both the power of nature and the very human impact of massive storms. 

Homes flattened. People trapped. Roofs ripped off. Roads made unpassable possibly for years to come. Water positively everywhere. 

I saw all this in spurts of watching the news on Wednesday evening, Thursday morning, Thursday night, and Friday morning. 

I didn’t watch long really – Wednesday night after work, in the heart of Ian’s attack on the people of Florida, represented the longest stint for me. Still, I saw it all and struggled to face it all. 

So I couldn’t help but be surprised to be reading a certain local Facebook group to see people claiming that photos shared from one of the hardest hit Florida towns showed the devastation “better than the news.”

What news?

Were they watching the same news?

Were they watching the news at all?

The coverage was everywhere. It was detailed. It was devastating. 

You only had to look for it, and it was there.

The news has been a popular punching bag for generations, and the criticism comes from all sides. 

In the Vietnam era, there were those who claimed the news showed too much by daring to show the reality of what was occurring a world away, regardless of the narrative being carefully crafted by politicians. 

During Watergate, now famed journalists Woodward and Bernstein were attacked for invading President Nixon’s privacy even while others celebrated their investigative journalism that would help to bring down a corrupt president. 

Fast forward to 2022, and the media landscape is changing almost every day. There are questionable “news” sources at every turn.

But when you find yourself about to claim something hasn’t been covered by the media or not covered enough, you might want to stop and ask yourself: “Did you actually check the news to see what they’ve covered?” 

You might be surprised what a little Googling can uncover. 

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