Special Foamy rant on the Hurricane (language NSFW)
 

I couldnt agree more with this rant about the non help some of the trapped people have gotten

Foamy fans, know who this is lol, those of you that dont know foamy...I promise this is not a spammy bad website, although because of language its prob NSFW because of all the F words in it


http://www.illwillpress.com/kat.html

Man, I haven't watched foamy is hella long.

Did the goth chick ever get naked?

Now that you're agreeing with the rant, let's hear some suggestions from you as to what we can do?

How is the guy reporting outside of the superdome supposed to get people off roofs? He doesn't have a helicopter. And the news choppers that are down there 1) don't have winches on them, so they can't pull anyone off a roof, and 2) generally can't carry more than 3 people. Dunno if you noticed but the army and coast guard choppers that are down there are BIG damn helicopters. They've got 12-passenger Bell 212's and coast guard versions of the Blackhawk. News choppers are almost always small. Nothing bigger than a Jet Ranger. Counting the pilot and the guy running the nonexistant winch, we have room left for 1 guy - the guy that goes down on the end of the nonexistant winch to secure the victim in the rescue harness. That leaves no room for the victim.

So now that we've established the news choppers can't do anything, please tell me how exactly we as the media are supposed to get anyone off of a roof?

And elsewhere in the city, what are we to do? I'm a TV news photographer. I've spent years learning how to tell stories in a visual medium. None of my continuing education in this field has included fixing broken gas lines, pumping water out of a city, performing arial rescues, or clearing the dangerous snakes out of the water.

News operations aren't set up as rescue operations. Even if we want to (and believe me, every time we cover a disaster we want to help) we do not have the ability to help. If we do have the ability to help, and if that help isn't already coming from somewhere else, we will help.


I'm REALLY tired of newscrews being portrayed as heartless jackasses who delight in human misery. It's simply not true, and in my experience most of the people who run around saying that are just jumping on the popular "I hate this group of people because other people do" bandwagon.

It's just like lawyers. Everyone LOVES to rag on attorneys until they find themselves needing one. Then suddenly they're crawling to the lawyer's door begging him to solve their legal problems.

And before we get too worked up railing on the media, let's remember that it was the media that got the hurricane warnings out so that towns knew to evacuate. It is the media that is telling the rest of the country what is happening down there, which is having the direct result of rallying communities nationwide to donate time, effort, and money to help the victims of this storm.

When I cover a hurricane, I figure I can either drown trying to help one guy off a roof (as though he'd come with me when I told him we'd have to swim for it), or I can do my job, get the story out, and let the rest of the country see what's happening and what is needed, so that they can decide what to give to help recover from the disaster.

Oh and by the way, FYI the CBS chopper, while it can't pull people off the roof, is dropping bottled water down to the people while they wait on the roof for the rescue choppers to get to them. So yes, the heartless media is doing what they can to directly help out.

well lets see for one.....they could do like the cameraman for a news crew did in New Orleans when the guy driving the car ran it into water he didnt see and the guy ran to help him get out of the car before he was swept away.

You just proved my point for me. They are helping. You know, not every liveshot has a guy floating a car behind it for the photographer to go rescue. They're doing what they can, but unfortunately what they can do isn't much, except for getting the story out to get people in the rest of the country, and world, to offer help.

hey, Im not gonna apologize for only being shown one instance of that from the media you're so vehemently defending....maybe if ya'll showed more of that, people like the creator of foamy wouldnt feel the need to rant about it huh?

It's not our job to glorify what we're doing down there. If I'm given the choice between dedicating my 2 minutes of air to either showing the human suffering down there or showing me rescuing some guy, I'm gonna show the human suffering. THAT is the story. I am not the story.

It's the same thing as covering a bad traffic accident. If I get there before the EMT's get there, I'll start CPR if necessary and try to help the victims. Once the EMT's, who are much more qualified than I am, get there, I'll pull back and let them do their job while I do mine.

There are a lot of people down there who are much better equipped and who are much better qualified to help the victims than the reporters and photographers are. It's absolutely stupid to get angry at someone for letting the more experienced rescuer do his job.



I'm defending the media because they are doing what they are supposed to do, and then they are going above and beyond what they are supposed to do to try and help, yet people still insist on ragging on the guys who are out there.

I've covered enough hurricanes to know what they're going through, and it's not fun. I also know how much they want to help and how helpless they feel that they can't help more. That's not fun either. They do not deserve this idiotic anger that's being unjustly directed at them.

well it just goes to show there is more than one opinion for every side of a story...good on you for helping when you can. I personally would rather read about the help people are getting from those around them, rather than see photographs of people having to huddle on the sidewalk while the storm is coming in....but thats just one southern girl who has lived thru MANY tornado's in her 37 years and had to watch media stand around drinking coffee and trying to keep their hair dry while people around them are hurt and devastated...little ole opinion. Im sure if all media people were like you....natural disasters would be a little easier on some people

In the tornados, were rescue personnel in the area? Were the hurt/devastated people hurt in any way that the media people on scene could help with? When I've covered tornados, there's only so much I've been able to do - You obviously can't help the ones who died. The ones who are badly hurt, I frankly have NO clue how to help them. I do know, however, that if I screw up by trying I could kill them, so I leave them to EMS. The ones who aren't badly hurt, well they don't need much help in the way of first aid. Anything they can use that's in my (rather extensive) first aid kit in my truck, they get.

As for the devastated people, a mentor of mine always said you have to know when to put the camera down and give someone a hug. I've always believed that. Sure, there are callous reporters out there who delight in the "big news story" but they are NOT representative of the media as a whole. (edit) I'll ammend that a bit. They're not representative of reporters and photographers and the other people that get out in the field every day and understand that behind every story is a person. Some of the bosses who sit in their office every day wishing for a bit of hard news, yeah, they'll be pretty callous. That usually changes if you get 'em to come out with you though and they see that people are more than pictures on a TV set.



And as an aside, those reporters don't get as good of a story either. I can't count the number of tornados that I've covered where I've put the camera down, been there for people (usually I get there just minutes after the tornado went through, and people are scared out of their mind) talked with 'em off and on for several hours making sure they're OK. And guess what? That person almost 100% of the time agrees to an interview with me, but not with my competitors who are busy drooling over the debris. So not only am I doing the right thing (which I'd do no matter what the consequences) but I'm also getting the story on MY air when the competitors can't get it ;)


And I still say in this situation, there's just not a whole lot anyone can do unless they're very specially trained and have a lot of specialized equipment that the media just doesn't have. Hell even the professional rescuers are having one hell of a time with their task.

I said before that I've covered a lot of hurricanes (not covering this one because I'm no longer at a station down in that area) but I've NEVER seen damage like this. The gulf coast looks more like a demilitarized 3rd world country than anything else from what I've seen.

I do know a lot of the guys down there covering this, and I guarantee most of them would drop the camera in the middle of a live shot (one of the bigger no-no's in my industry) if they thought they could save someone's life.

rather than retyping a response to that....I'll simply just paste what I pm'd to you :)

I have lived in the south all my life (daddy worked for the pipeline so we moved around a lot when I was little) We lived in an area of alabama that had so many tornado's that I remember more times waking up in the linen closet where my mother had put me than I remember waking up in my own bed lol and the part of north ga Im in get hit hard too...usually by the storms coming in from alabama. I have been in some VERY bad tornados.....seen people lying under their houses...seen people stuck in trees, seen people stuck in flash floods caused by the rain preceeding and following tornados. I've seen people so battered and bruised themselves that they later ended up inthe hosptial and somtimes in icu, helping these people because the news crews stood around doing nothing....seen them stand around while the emergancy crews couldnt get to us because they had so many other injuries along the way...seen them refuse to share their drinks with injured people...seen them refuse coats to people going into shock....I've been in more tornado's than one single person has a right to...and yes I will admit one or two times there was ONE person who would lend aid....but to stand there and refuse to give a person in terrible shock with bones protruding out of their body, or some piece of some building stuck in them somewhere aid, is just a very hard thing to take....and to remember

and I will add...you of course know, that a lot of little southern towns depend on volunteer EMS....and they arent in great abundance....lots of times they were home themselves and included in the destruction. In small towns it takes time for EMS to show up....but somehow not the media.....like I told you...Im a tad jaded and my heart breaks for the people affected by Katrina that could not (notice im not saying would not) get out of the storms path

BUT DOES THE GOTH CHICK, Germaine, EVER GET NAKED IN ANY OF THE TOONS?

Haha, man.

Actually, she does. Episode 70 is an interactive dress up flash animation, and you can strip all her clothes off.

So there ya go.