Sick of hearing/seeing news reports about how "much of New York City is without power." Bullshit. Most of New York City has power. Saying "Some of NYC is without power" is more accurate. Even "A good number of New York homes are without power." But when you use a word like "much" it suggests the word "most". And that's clearly not the case. Incidentally, I got the 8 million number from Wikipedia. When any news source says something like "much of New York City is without power," it causes people to be concerned/worried/afraid for nothing. It essentially does the opposite of what the news media is supposed to do. It uninforms people.
In fact, I've been pretty surprised to see the amount of sensationalism going on in the mainstream media over the past couple days. I mean, this storm provided plenty of it's own spectacle and will for a while--there's no need to exaggerate it by making stuff up or failing to confirm what you are about to report. I saw an AP report claim that Sandy had caused "much" of the city to lose power. Not true. Most of the blackouts were caused by ConEd cutting the power on purpose, before flooding could cause bigger problems like fires or, I'd imagine, electrocutions. Sure, there was one sub-station explosion that cause some power to go out for 250,000 NYers, according to an NPR report I heard this morning, but what about the other 500,000?
It's so funny to me--reality is exciting, and at times scary, enough all by itself. Why do we have to sex everything up so much?
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