How mainstream reporters disgraced themselves during Hurricane Dorian

. . . I was wrong that Dorian did little damage to the U.S.  The media somehow managed to lower its already debased reputation during the storm, much like Wilde's titular character.  Too bad there's no insurance company or federal agency to clean up the press's self-destructive behavior.  . . . TL

Taylor Lewis  . . . "Every time someone posts a video of a natural disaster wreaking havoc around him, reporters hound his replies, requesting permission to use the footage.

The common exchange goes something like this:

" 'Wow, take a look at this tornado tearing the roofs off of trailer homes in Kansas City. This happened 30 seconds ago in front of me."

"Reply: "Hi, I'm from the Washington Post.  May I use this footage in my report?  Thank you!"

"Second reply: "Oh, and please stay safe!  Did you see my original comment?  I'd like to file the report ASAP.  You own the video, right?"

"So it goes, with numerous reporters from a sundry of publications all asking for the same video to take advantage of the algorithm-driven news cycle.  We're to expect real human feeling out of these sensationalism-chasers?

"One more instance of media malpractice to emphasize my point.  Vox reporter Aaron Rupar thought he had sniffed out not so subtle racism displayed by President Trump regarding the then approaching storm.  As Dorian approached, Trump pointed out that Puerto Rico received $92 billion in aid after Hurricane Maria ravaged the island two years ago.  He then issued a warning to Floridians, urging them to heed "State and Federal instructions."  All-around innocuous, no?

"Not so, apparently.  "[W]hen the hurricane is headed toward brown people vs. when it's headed toward white people," Rupar snarked, thinking he had made a clever and incisive point about the two tweets.  The implication is that Trump warned white people of the hurricane and dickered about the cost of cleaning up the last one in a territory inhabited by non-whites.  In Rupar's reductive formulation, Florida might as well look like Denmark demographically, while Puerto Rico is the Inca Empire." . . .

Thomas Lifson: Media bias called out -- and not by a conservative  "We welcome to the club of media skeptics a former MSNBC host and Dem congressional nominee.  Conservatives can take a small degree of satisfaction that not all Democrats are oblivious to the toxic level of media bias. An article in The Hill by a progressive commentator named Krystal Ball, who ran for Congress unsuccessfully as the Democrat-endorsed candidate in 2010, and who has been a media figure for many years, including as an MSNBC host, calls out some striking examples of misreporting… the sort of thing that President Trump would call “fake news,” though Ball scrupulously avoids using that term." . . .

Ball correctly diagnoses the reason that the media obey the Democrats’ power elite. It is not a conspiracy, per se, but rather a system of incentives that operate on prominent journalists: