Doing the Twister

It goes without saying that the top story of the past couple of weeks was the tornadoes that ravaged Jarrell and Cedar Park, and local news outlets deserve applause for their coverage. Both television and newspaper journalists worked hard and actually braved possible danger to deliver this story quickly, accurately, and for the most part, without sensationalism -- although, really, it would have been hard to overplay a story about a storm that wipes out an entire subdivision of a small town.

Especially impressive was the Austin American-Statesman's sensitivity to the nature of small towns -- if 30 people were to die here in our half-a-million-people metropolis, chances are still fairly slim that it would affect anyone we know. Small towns are different -- taking 30 people out of a town of 1,000 is devastating to a community, and not every big-city journalist would understand that. Also noteworthy was the hefty public service information list, complete with phone numbers, that the paper offered the day after the storm.

The one major coverage faux pas occurred on KTBC (Ch. 7): The theme music the network played as it cut to and from its tornado coverage was offensive, a maudlin composition that belonged in a disaster movie, not on the news. This wasn't Hollywood, guys, it was real life, and the people of Jarrell deserved better than to be trivialized like that. Of course, that brings up one of the mixed blessings of the storm -- KEYE (Ch. 42) was knocked off the air for a good part of it. Given that station's history of banality, there's no telling what extent of bad taste we were spared.

For once, the absurd amount of money that stations spend on weathercasting equipment was somewhat justified, although much of their techno-gadgetry is still overkill. However, the money they spent on reporters, who got up to Jarrell and gave us early warning of the danger crashing towards Austin, was worth the price.

Bad journalistic slips aside, most stations did a bang-up job. This was a story that involved a lot of danger and pain, and news outlets handled both well.

Unfortunately, coverage of Austin's city council run-off elections also got sucked up in the storm. If you blinked, you might have missed it.

Although I didn't really expect TV stations to interrupt their prime-time shows for the runoffs, poll returns flashed across the bottom of the screen would have been nice. But not this time. Nada -- at least that was the case whenever I flipped away from Channel 6, the City of Austin's cable channel.

And once the networks got to their 10pm reports, their coverage of the results was so brief that they were over and done before you could flip the channel. What I saw amounted to the following: "Bill Spelman won the election tonight for Place 5 over Manuel Zuniga, and Willie Lewis defeated Eric Mitchell in Place 6." And that was it, with maybe a quick soundbite of Mitchell's diatribe after his loss. Viewers were denied even the most surface analysis of what the results might mean for the future of our city.

For election night coverage, the only non-city-owned outlet in town that seemed to care or understand the importance of these contests was radio station KVET (1300 AM), which had on-the-spot-coverage and good analysis from the moment the polls closed, including commentary from former mayoral candidate Max Nofziger (granted, not everything that came out of his mouth was brilliant, but at least someone was there to offer analysis) and full play of Mitchell's speech. Channel 6 was wise to collaborate with KVET and provide video simulcast for its reporting. While the cable access-quality images of Channel 6 may not be flashy, they got the job done and showed the worth of funding the station. Channel 6 station managers, thankfully, filled the gap left by the local networks.

Since election night, the Statesman's coverage of the runoff has been downright embarrassing. The morning-after story itself was buried in the lower left-hand corner of page one, in favor of coverage of the tornado funerals and what was admittedly a good, but less important, report on the frivolous spending habits of Texas legislators. Not to appear insensitive to the tornado victims, but this election had enormous implications for Austin on a number of different fronts, and deserved more attention.

After that came almost total silence. When is the Statesman going to admit that it made a hideous mistake in endorsing Mitchell? And why, one must wonder, would they endorse him in the first place? If Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau hadn't already stolen the idea for Newt Gingrich, Austin's editorial cartoonists would logically have represented Mitchell as a bomb waiting to go off, which is exactly what he did Saturday night.

When is the Statesman going to really address his comments -- both those of Saturday night and throughout his tenure -- and apply the type of language to them that they deserve? The daily is infamous for shying away from strong adjectives -- the Chronicle has noted that "unfortunate" seems to be the strongest word the Statesman can apply to the lobbying habits of University of Texas chancellor William Cunningham -- and thus far, Don McLeese's "beyond the pale" is the best description they've managed with regards to Mitchell.

Editorial writer Susan S. Richardson particularly has been crippled by a twisted vision of Mitchell's supposed virtuosity and environmentalists' supposed racism for some time now, and it manifested itself again after the election. Last year she subjected readers to a particularly warped and idiotic editorial which slammed former Councilmember Brigid Shea on such charges and dismissed Shea's alliance with Ron Davis as merely "some minority support" (italics mine) without once mentioning that Davis defeated Mitchell in Eastside precincts in 1994. This year, two days after this election, she did manage to mention it -- once, parenthetically and without mentioning Davis' name -- and, rather admiringly, referred to Mitchell's conduct as "street." She glossed over Mitchell's racist remarks by neglecting to mention them altogether.

Richardson's goo goo-eyed adoration of Mitchell then led her to write, "Mitchell's loss reflects the limits of liberal arrogance..." followed by "We desperately need a voice on the council that can heal, not fuel, the racial divisions in this city." Does anyone else note the irony here, or is it just me? Mitchell was the walking definition of arrogance and divisiveness for the past three years, quick to go into a screaming, race-baiting fit against anyone who dared to disagree with him. But Richardson refers to Mitchell's particular brand of arrogance as his "style."

Then again, we are talking about the paper that also endorsed Phil Gramm.

Richard Oppel deserves much praise for the improvements he has made to the Statesman over the last couple of years. But frankly, election coverage and insightful analysis of city affairs are still in a sad state of disrepair, about as pathetic as the dismal days of Kintzel and Balough.