Drowning the News

What did we in the media talk about before we spent all our time talking about hurricanes? Before all the chatter was about Category 4 and Category 5 and levees and evacuations? Before we flooded the zone, to use Howell Raines's phrase, of Katrina and Rita and every storm in between?

Let me think real hard. There was the Cindy Sheehan business. Tax cuts. Intelligent design. Iraq. Hillary. John...Roberts, right? And some woman missing in Aruba. It all seems so...dry.

Now we cover Mother Nature, in all its fury, and people fleeing Mother, and politicians arguing about how to spend money to repair Mother's damage.

Journalists have become hurricane hounds, and everything else--especially if you watch cable--has been put on hold, sidelined, shelved or, to use a baseball term, rained out.

Think about all the beat folks. Financial reporters cover the effect on the economy, energy reporters on the oil supply, the social-policy reporters the debate over poverty and race, the real estate reporters the effect on housing, the sports reporters the relocation of the Saints and the Hornets. The blog reporters cover the role of the Internet. The NYT Food section even has a piece about New Orleans chefs who are still cooking.

Meanwhile, some GOPers have finally gotten specific about spending cuts, although that doesn't mean any of the cutbacks will pass:

"Yesterday the Republican Study Committee, a group of more than 100 conservative House members, say they have compiled a package of proposed cuts that would save the federal government more than $139 billion next year," says the Boston Globe . "It calls for eliminating subsidies for public broadcasting and Amtrak, and for sharply limiting foreign aid, among a wide range of other proposals."

Pulling the plug on Amtrak? Congress wouldn't even let the rail service raise fares a few days ago.

"Even some of President Bush's most cherished priorities are coming under scrutiny. The committee wants to kill Bush's idea to send manned spacecraft to the moon and Mars and cut the 'Millennium Challenge Accounts' the president wants as rewards for nations that make strides toward economic and personal freedom.

"And a growing number of Republicans are asking for a one-year delay in implementing the new Medicare prescription drug benefit, which would begin Jan. 1. The delay would save the federal government about $30 billion in 2006, money that some Republicans say would be better spent on rebuilding New Orleans and the Gulf Coast."

The New Republic's Jason Zengerle has some thoughts on who's spinning the numbers:

"Now it appears New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was wildly (and thankfully) off the mark when he estimated, in the initial aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, that his city's death toll might reach 10,000. For this error, he--and, to an even greater extent, the media that dutifully reported his estimate--have come under fire from the right.