News Gloss

Disinfotainment

Last night, ABC had a reasonably well-researched show called "System failure" hosted by Ted Koppel. Many of the issues that arise from Hurricane Katrina were covered, in a nice general overview.

As always, good journalism has to be followed by bad.

The next show was called something like "Ready or not", an hour of poorly researched disinfotainment.

Just as a start, it probably caused some future deaths, because it repeated the long discredited notion that you should jump under a desk during an earthquake! That's a sure way to get crushed by a desk. Current field experts now recommend that you lie down next to a desk, so it can protect you from falling heavy structure.

But any show that begins with a panic propagated by the Council on Foreign Relations is already in the looney bin. The CFR does nothing without a purpose, and this purpose was clearly to distract from the ongoing problems in the medical industry, and divert funds to expensive 'emergency preparedness' plans. If we had a truly accessible, responsible and robust medical system, we'd be much better prepared for a disaster. Instead, the CFR-led story concentrated on the lack of a single drug, for a disease that has not yet evolved!

Someone, with money, should initiate a class action suit against the CFR, for causing death by distraction.

posted by Greg Bryant @ 1:04 PM