The extraordinary flood coverage local TV stations provided in Texas and Louisiana has not gone unnoticed. “If anything is seriously amiss in town, you can be sure that the TV stations will be on it and you can trust what they report.” That’s from our own Harry Jessell, TVNewsCheck’s editor, in the insightful piece he […]
The extraordinary flood coverage local TV stations provided in Texas and Louisiana has not gone unnoticed.
“If anything is seriously amiss in town, you can be sure that the TV stations will be on it and you can trust what they report.”
That’s from our own Harry Jessell, TVNewsCheck’s editor, in the insightful piece he wrote about the “irreplaceable role” local TV plays “when disasters strike as one did in Houston this week.”
So it’s no wonder that, according to a TVNewsCheck article on a recent study by the TVB, that Southern Texas communities overwhelmingly chose local broadcast television as their preferred news source for storm coverage over all other media.
In my 30 plus years of working in local TV news and its marketing, I’ve seen how local TV newsrooms come together during a crisis, whether it’s a wildfire, a tornado, a hurricane, or something man-made, like when crack cocaine turned some quiet residential New Orleans streets into a drive-by shopping mall back in the 1980s.
Mostly, the people who work in local TV news are in it for the right reasons, to serve the public, to inform, to expose injustice, to make a difference.
So while I’ve been overwhelmed, I’m not surprised by the news coverage being provided by TV stations in the affected flood areas of Texas and Louisiana.
Nor am I surprised by how people in Texas and Louisiana helped each other in those floods.
Although a Pennsylvania boy, I lived for a time in both states.
I have been watching much of local TV’s coverage on my Facebook feed as I follow many TV stations’ Facebook pages including many of those in the flood zones.
And what I’m seeing is remarkable.
These examples are some of the Facebook videos that, in my mind, stood out.
Some are just snippets from reporters in the field, in shelters, in flood waters or in rescue boats, while other videos are produced with music and words added that function as tributes to the citizens or volunteers.
This does not represent a comprehensive look at all of the fine work done by local stations covering the events during Harvey, just some examples that crossed my Facebook feed.
I don’t play favorites. I realize that, in some cases, some of these videos may have originally been posted by other stations. If you have some outstanding examples from your reporters in the field, feel free to pass them along to me.
Many thanks to Sharye Fabbri. She wrote that this happened in the Lakewood Forest subdivision near the Cypress area: “I ran outside as fast as I could. A guy had his guitar cranked up & playing the Star Spangled Banner as loud as he could on my street. Our neighborhood just pulled together through some serious devastation.”
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