2008 Woodie Awards
California fires burn more than just Malibu, the O.C.
Issue date: 11/1/07 Section: Opinion/Editorial
- Page 1 of 1
For the past week or so, more than a dozen wildfires have scorched areas of Southern California, reducing homes to cinders, shutting down major freeways and costing the state more than $1 billion in damages.
On a local level, our San Diego campus was shut down because of the fires, and there are students from Southern California who attend the St. Louis campus.
As with the case of Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans, this high-profile natural disaster - looping endlessly on the major news networks and even making the front page of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch more than 1,500 miles away - has revealed interesting aspects of race, class and how the media covers them.
Unlike New Orleans, where the most devastated regions also had a tendency to be the poor areas such as the Ninth Ward, the California wildfires affected the most affluent neighborhoods, ranging from star-studded Malibu and high-income Orange County areas to the tinder-dry hills of San Diego.
As a result, the media had a tendency to focus on the rich, white residents who built their lavish homes in these danger areas. In particular, there was heavy concentration on celebrities and other Hollywood glitterati, in sharp contrast to the focus of the Hurricane Katrina disaster - poor, black residents.
Rather than focusing on the extremes and running pieces on beachfront homes and hilltop mansions on fire, the media should have been more balanced, equally covering other areas that were affected, such as the mostly Hispanic city of Chula Vista just south of San Diego.
Instead of discussing whether Suzanne Somers' multi-million dollar abode was in danger from fires yet again, the national and global media should have highlighted how university students throughout San Diego organized relief efforts for those affected by the fire. There was more involved with this disaster than collagen-lipped, second-rate actors.
Though nowhere near the same scale as Hurricane Katrina, the fires in California are tragic nonetheless, and like the case of New Orleans, the whole story needs to be told.
On a local level, our San Diego campus was shut down because of the fires, and there are students from Southern California who attend the St. Louis campus.
As with the case of Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans, this high-profile natural disaster - looping endlessly on the major news networks and even making the front page of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch more than 1,500 miles away - has revealed interesting aspects of race, class and how the media covers them.
Unlike New Orleans, where the most devastated regions also had a tendency to be the poor areas such as the Ninth Ward, the California wildfires affected the most affluent neighborhoods, ranging from star-studded Malibu and high-income Orange County areas to the tinder-dry hills of San Diego.
As a result, the media had a tendency to focus on the rich, white residents who built their lavish homes in these danger areas. In particular, there was heavy concentration on celebrities and other Hollywood glitterati, in sharp contrast to the focus of the Hurricane Katrina disaster - poor, black residents.
Rather than focusing on the extremes and running pieces on beachfront homes and hilltop mansions on fire, the media should have been more balanced, equally covering other areas that were affected, such as the mostly Hispanic city of Chula Vista just south of San Diego.
Instead of discussing whether Suzanne Somers' multi-million dollar abode was in danger from fires yet again, the national and global media should have highlighted how university students throughout San Diego organized relief efforts for those affected by the fire. There was more involved with this disaster than collagen-lipped, second-rate actors.
Though nowhere near the same scale as Hurricane Katrina, the fires in California are tragic nonetheless, and like the case of New Orleans, the whole story needs to be told.
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