With all the hype and hope over emerging technologies liberating the commoner (me) from relying on the mainstream media for all the news, along comes Katrina. After witnessing a flurry of articles and stories about the use of camera phones and the Internet following the London subway bombings, it would appear that Katrina, packing a 75-mph-punch, has thrown a speed bump up on the information superhighway. At least, that is the sentiment of one commentator.
Gregory Favre, a columnist with the Poynter Institute, stirs up memories of an earlier killer hurricane, Camille, and bemoans, yet again, a lack of information about his hometown in Bay St. Louis, Miss. Favre well remembers how he lost contact with family and friends back home during Camille in 1969, and now some 35 year later, Katrina has done it again.
The author tells a story of how his connections with muckety-mucks at the phone company got a repair worker to help him find his family during Camille. Now, with no telephone service available for cell phones in the area, Favre is feeling left in the dark. Where is the telephone repair worker, Favre wonders? For Favre, the worker has "been replaced by cell phones that don't work. They take pictures, but what good are pictures without some good news as captions?"
I think Favre's comments do not give a fair accounting for all the information humming across the Internet about Katrina. In fact, I think Favre's assessment is a bit misleading and fails to accurately represent the impact emerging technology is having on crisis coverage. Yes, I know Favre's report is anedotal and personal. But it is still misleading.
For example, MediaPost.com is reporting that MSNBC has racked up more than 9 million video streams to the Internet from the hurricane. In fact, MSNBC has a Citizen Journalism Reporting page with images and comments from survivors of the disaster. Moreover, CNN has a website dedicated to the contributions of citizen journalists, which features photographs from across the region. NOLA.com (Everything New Orleans) has a page called "Caught on Camera" with even more images from citizen shutterbugs. Now if that isn't enough, surfers can see even more downloaded images on WWLTV's weather page.
Despite Favre's observation that he is not getting the information he needs, I would argue that the new technology does and will continue to have an impact on how the news is covered in the future.