Here’s an early prediction on which Hawai`i news story will be ranked #1 by the local news media at year’s end: The October 15 earthquakes and subsequent power outage will top the list.
Then again, we haven’t heard the last of Michelle Wie this year. The Big Earthquake vs. the Big Wiesy -- that’s a tough choice in this town. Still, we’ll go with the earthquake.
But the real story isn’t the shaker itself. The real story is how the quake exposed gaping holes in our community’s emergency communications system and plans.
Civil Defense communications sputtered, the broadcast industry fell apart and the electric company couldn’t find a way to tell customers why the power was out and would stay that way for hours.
So with that backdrop, the Governor’s “Comprehensive Communications Review Committee” began meeting this week to gather information on what went wrong and how to do better next time.
The Big News Blackout
Representatives of the news media and government agencies met on Tuesday and Thursday in the Governor’s Capitol conference room. News directors, editors, reporters have been on the inside dissecting one of the big news stories of the year.
What have they discussed? What deficiencies are targeted for correction? What protocols are being rewritten? What can we expect in the next major emergency?
We don’t know any of that because the number of news stories published and aired about the committee meetings so far has been exactly zero. Not one.
Not Newsworthy?
Are Hawai`i citizens to believe these meetings are not newsworthy? Do these executives not recognize news when they see it? Once inside, do they become members of the “insiders club” and feel no obligation to report?
We see only two possibilities for this news blackout:
Either the media reps don’t recognize the news value of these meetings, or they’ve been told not to report what’s happening behind closed doors.
[Note: See comment below in Afternoon Update from a Honolulu TV reporter that eliminates the second of those two possibilities.]
Either way, that’s bad. Having been shut out from participating on this committee, the public now apparently doesn’t deserve to know what officials are doing to improve emergency preparedness and execution.
CHORE hopes Hawai`i citizens find this as baffling as we do. If so, call or write the media and ask what’s going on. You might want to ask the same of the Governor’s office.
Public safety and what’s being done to preserve it shouldn’t be treated like a state secret.
Aftershocks
Doug White’s blog today offers this view about why the media aren’t covering the meetings:
In general, editors prefer to edit the news, not make the news. This particular issue, however, obviously throws a spanner into that machine since it would require exactly that sort of meta-reporting. Furthermore, there is a risk of the media being unable to objectively report the story once they become an intimate part of it (recall the “embedded” war correspondents). A strange form of willing co-optation could be at play, although I’m sure the members of the Committee would rather describe it in more paternalistic terms.
White has a point about the media not wanting to be part of the story in most cases, but I’m not buying it in this one. This is Emergency Communications to Protect Public Safety we’re talking about. The newspapers’ letters pages are full of the public’s upset over the government’s performance.
These meetings are newsworthy, and if the media have to assign a non-participating reporter to cover what’s said, so be it.
What would George Chaplin and Bud Smyser do?
Afternoon Update
A Honolulu television reporter responded to CHORE as follows: The reporter's newsroom personnel "did not see news value in covering the meeting per se." This reporter says "it's a battle to get government news on in this consultant-driven world" because the younger producers and staff "believe the more visually oriented story is preferable and doesn't bore the audience."
We sympathize with this reporter; it's an all-too-familiar story. But do these staffers truly believe it's boring to report on how they and their families can be better informed and protected before, during and after the next hurricane?
The reporter also says the State "welcomed and encouraged" coverage of the Comprehensive Communications Review Committee. CHORE therefore concludes that the impediment to news coverage of the committee's meetings isn't the State, and we eliminate it as a contributor to the news blackout. The problem seems to be the lack of journalistic enterprise within the Honolulu media.
We have to believe this wouldn't be happening if George and Bud and KGMB's Bob Sevey were still around and running their respective news operations.
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ReplyDeleteThe gov establises a committee to conduct an assessment of the myriad equipment and communicaton failures that occured and now we find out they've been meeting in secret behind closes doors with no opportunity for input from the public?
This crazy!
I attended Monday's HECO briefing at the state capitol.
My interest in attending the briefing was to get a better understanding of how HECO handled the pubic communications aspects of the island wide black out. Needless-to-say I was disappointed that those details where left out of the briefing.
In point of fact, there were two failures, one related to the other. There appears to have been an equipment and/or human failure which resulted in the blackout. I understand and appreciate those details are still being sorted out. The second failure was the communications failure.
From my limited perspective, I think it's very important to have a frank and candid review of the entire episode with an eye toward improving HECO's public communication when ---not if--- that next natural disaster strikes.
The same examination should extend to the State's poor response from our Civil Defense unit. . . . .practically non-existant.
In this regard, constructive criticism is a useful component of such an exercise and I one would anticipate that HECO and the State would encourage and welcome such input. That doesn't seem to be the case!
J. Comcowich