Wait, There are still Good Reasons to Panic!

My mother and Edgar left this morning for Texas with a large order of Pilates Apparatus from their Studio. Naturally, we were very interested in the hurricane that is making landfall in Louisiana and headed directly towards their final location. So on went CNN and after a couple minutes of weather information, mandatory evacuation notices, and history about Katrina, they went live to several people on location.

As each person checked in they repeated about the same things, "everything is going well", "people are moving out nice and orderly", and "this isn't that bad". Each time they would cut back to the studio person who would immediately tell you what could go wrong. As if to say, "Wait, there are still good reasons to panic!"

Now I understand the need for ratings, but do you really want to over-hype something that our country has a very recent history of handling poorly? The increased bombardment of “what ifs” and nightmare scenarios only increase the possibility that people are going to see it as hyperbole and ignore it, or when the storm doesn’t live up to the extreme conditions, take the news less seriously next time. This means fewer people watching next time. So whatever gains you may have gotten with the “we all could die” stuff will be wiped out next time.

So please, just give us the facts and move on. We’ll do the panicking on our own.