Images trickle out of storm's vast devastation

摘要

The urgency of hurricane coverage with its colorful satellite maps and reporters standing in the wind is a television staple, but devastation in Hurricane Michael's wake was so severe that it made images of some of the hardest-hit areas in Florida trickle out yesterday as slowly as if from a distant, third-world nation. Broadcast news organizations faced a challenge in getting reporters to Mexico Beach, 40 miles east of the more populated Panama City, where wind and storm surge left behind a moonscape of damage. Roads were impassable, and some reporters had been pulled out of the town in advance of the storm because of safety fears. "We knew that was a bad place, and our mission was to try to get there today," said Michael Bass, CNN's executive vice president of programming. A source's cellphone footage of water rushing through the town, picking up houses and cars along the way, and an official's anguished cellphone call Wednesday gave hints about the damage. Yesterday's coverage illustrated that there are still limits to technology and reportorial ingenuity in the face of a massive disaster. For several hours, television viewers following the story had the ominous sense that something was missing. Cable networks filled time with other stories, but even the sight of Kanye West meeting in the Oval Office with President Trump seemed like a distraction.