The Flood in American News

Yesterday, someone on Facebook asked me about American coverage of the flood. Then this morning, I saw from Statcounter that there were other people wondering the same thing.  

It's a hard question for me to answer.  Well, it's not hard. It's just what I know....anyone could know, even if they're all the way in Australia.

We don't get a newspaper delivered to our house.  I don't watch a lot of news on television.  If Tim and I watch news on TV, it's usually The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.  That SORT OF counts as news.

I get my news primarily from the Internet.  On my iGoogle page,  I have:

A) An Australian news widget. It carries headlines from The Australian, The Age, The Herald Sun, and The Telegraph.   

B) A CNN Widget.  They carry three headlines at a time.  Right now there is no mention of the flood. Apparently, the fact that Jewel is pregnant is more important. Yeah.  Whatever.

C) A Top News widget.  I wasn't sure what that came from, but I just clicked on it, and got Google News.   Tim had this on his iGoogle too, but it had much more headlines than me.  I didn't know why. Now I see it's because I had opted for three headlines only.  Right now, the flood IS one of the headlines. I don't know if this counts as an American news source though. It might be more international.  

Most times that I check my mail, I give these widgets a quick glance. 

Once a day, I check Google News.  BUT I have my Google News set to Australia.  You know, you can pick a filter.  So if an Australian wanted to gets news from an American perspective, they could change their filter to the United States. 

I don't really know if the flood is big news in America. I know it's been mentioned, but I don't get the sense that it's huge news.

Only one of my American friends has mentioned it on Facebook. But that was really to me directly.    No one has brought it up in a general sense. You know how some people link to news articles......

I checked out a few American news websites yesterday to see what was mentioned.  I'm going to check again.  

Let's try CNN first.  Right now, the flood is mentioned along with other headline news items.  

I'm not seeing anything on FOX, at least not on their front page.  There are five world news items.   The flood is not one of them. If I click on world news, and go to that page, the flood is mentioned.   And there's even a big photograph.  

MSNBC mentions it on their front page as a top news story.   

ABC (the American one) mentions it on their front page.  

I think that's enough. That gives a general picture.

It's news here, but it's not the BIG news. Right now that goes to the Arizona shooting.  

It would probably be better if that changed.  What can people do with the Arizona news, except be inspired to hate and blame others?  I'm not saying it shouldn't have been reported.   But I don't think it's doing much good to report on it excessively.

If the flood was bigger news in America, maybe more people would be inspired to send in donations.

I do wonder how much money Australia is getting from America. Are there any campaigns along that line?   
  
Anyway, that's really all I know. And that's not much. Sorry.

Now I'm going to go read the Australian news for myself, and get more information about the flood.

Before I go.....

I posted this earlier, but I'll be annoying and do it again. Here's a place to donate money for the flood.  You do NOT have to be in Australia to make a donation.