I've been pondering something for the past few days that might seem like I'm being faux naive or something, but here it is anyway: Why has the Florida condo collapse gotten so much news coverage for so long?
Obviously this was a newsworthy event. That's not what I'm talking about. But it strikes me as the kind of thing that would normally get three or four days of coverage and then fade away. Instead, it's been front-page news for a solid two weeks now. Why?
I can't come up with an answer. Is it a bigger deal than I think? Is it due to lack of news in other quarters? Or does it say something about our collective fear that the United States is falling apart?
Maybe I'm just inventing something that isn't there, but it seems like the condo collapse has seized our attention far more than other, similar disasters. Is it simply the fear of sudden death in a place we normally consider 100 percent safe? Or what?
Any ideas?
I think these questions always relate back to narrative: if a story fits the current narrative, it receives a lot of attention (and if it doesn’t it tends to disappear, or it doesn’t get mentioned at all). For better or for worse, the current narrative is more or less, “our roads and bridges are crumbling and our country is falling apart.” Naturally, the FL condo story fits perfectly. I believe Kevin’s blog has in fact pushed back against the “everything is falling apart” narrative, but, obviously, dramatic stories, however anecdotal (and tragic), will always trump (excuse the term) data.
Here’s another possible example: why on Earth are we hearing so much about the decision by Nikole Hannah-Jones to work @Howard University instead of UNC? I know she’s a public figure, and some news on the topic would not have surprised me. But I’ve seen headlines about it everywhere I look, I’ve heard radio segments, and I saw at least one news show where a panel was asked to discuss the issue. And it’s just not a story that needs that much attention; but, it does play right into more than one currently powerful narrative (take your pick: there’s no social progress for blacks, all white people are irredeemably racist, etc…)
It is in fact more than a bit unnerving to consider how much “news” is either based on narrative or is just the narrative itself. There’s at least a generation or two out there that has grown up on the narrative that Raegan was a great president who proved tax cuts can pay for themselves (or some version of that story) despite any and all facts to the contrary.
And over the Fourth of July it became apparent that we’re dealing with a deeply set narrative of the Left as unpatriotic despite the very obvious fact that RIGHT- wing anti-American extremists rather recently engaged in a fairly obvious attempt at an insurrection at the Capitol building. That one, worrisomely, will apparently be a very difficult narrative to change.
The Insurrection never happened, but it was ANTIFA. & anyway, the Q-drunk MAGATS were only guilty of loving their country too much & not wanting to see their country lose its guiding light Trump in favor of the enfeebled Democrat stuck in the past.
Kevin is just wrong when he writes that there are "similar tragedies". Buildings full of residents collapsing spontaneously is not something we see often. In fact I do not remember a single instance. Given the way these people died the exceptional nature of the catastrophe is plenty of explanation.
BTW: Kevin's data on how great our infrastructure is: It is garbage. Take the electricity grid: Name one other country where power lines are strung through the air on rickety poles like a boy scouts project! In the summer the hurricane takes them down for days or weeks of outages. Or they light the forest on fire. In the winter snow or ice rain takes them down again for some more outages. Take roads: Kevin's data pretends that our roads are about as well maintained as the ones in France. Ha!
It's seized the attention of the mono-news death spiral.
I've always found the mono-news on tv repulsive, it's little better than no news. They have two stories and they repeat the three inane things they know about them, over and over again, all day. How the news people do it without hanging themselves I don't know.
At the same time their ratings are contracting, while they increasingly promote mono-news format, --which is probably why their ratings are contracting. They've cultivated an audience expecting instant gratification on the one headline they've heard about.
After five minutes you realize they're just going to keep on blathering on about this, and you turn it off, and that's the mono-news death spiral.
"Mono-news" -- thanks for a very useful term. I, too, have complained about this. And I continue to miss the "like" button.
audiences cycle. people tune in, others tune out throughout the day. of course they repeat the same stuff because a) the new audience hasn't heard the 3 things and b) news in real time just doesn't move the quickly. otoh i live in hurricane country. the local tv news goes wall-to-wall nuts whenever a storm threatens the region. last summer as one storm approached, one channel stationed a reporter in the parking lot along a back street that regularly floods, breathlessly chronicling the rise of water to non-threatening levels, hour after hour after hour well past ridiculousness. "Mike, I've been out here for six hours monitoring the situation here and as you can see the water now is almost covering the tips of my toes ..."
I suspect none of the people posting so far live in condos.
(I don't, either, but did for a while.)
Consider if you did own your little corner of an older building, and had been arguing with your neighbors about maintenance for years. (If you satisfy the first, I know you've been doing the second.)
Even if the building isn't coastal and threatened, this is going to make you think of what-ifs and about your property value.
Just wait until it is freestanding homes on half-acre lots that are threatened. Just the real-estate-panic portion is going to be something to see, and should hit well before the mass migrations start.
Think about how much news a plane crash generates, and air travel has a much higher fatality rate than a *fucking building collapsing.* If a plane crash, which is not a routine occurrence, generates days of news coverage, isn't a goddamn building collapse MUCH more newsworthy?
Yes. AND it's the number of unrescued and unrecovered victims. While people are still missing, the story isn't finished yet.
The real winner of the Florida condominium collapse? Ron de Santis's 2024 presidential campaign.
How so? It focuses a not very flattering light on the state of Florida.
I think it's "climate change meets crumbling infrastructure meets fighting neighbors". Plus sudden, totally random, unforeseen deaths of 100+, with a few accidental near-misses.
When was the last time an engineering disaster killed 150 people? The Hyatt Regency Collapse was the last one I can recall, and that killed about 115. It's now in the textbooks.
I just watched a few minutes of CNN going on about this today, trying every trick in the book to turn 'the narrative' into an epic drama of tearjerking and stuffed with 'everyday heroes'.
Really, it is all just insufferable horseshit.
The perverse thing is that we still have 150 or more people dying every day from COVID, people could easily avoid becoming a statistic by getting a free vaccine, and they chose not to. I don't agree, but I certainly understand people not wanting to spend $80,000 to $200,000 dollars on a special assessment to fix damage that they don't see in their condo unit. I don't understand people risking the death of themselves *and* their friends and family in order to make some sort of incoherent political statement.
When I first saw the story my initial reaction was what happened? This is something that happens in developing countries, not the U.S. My other initial thought was a bomb or attack. I think the fact that it is a failure of government and regulation that makes people uneasy.
The people who report the news largely live in condos and apartments of dubious age that probably exhibit a lack of maintenance.
"Why has the Florida condo collapse seized so much of our attention?"
Joe Biden is a much more boring president.