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Hurricanes: Does the Media Coverage Really Reflects the Gravity

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Lucas EavesLucas Eaves
Published: 29 Oct, 2012
1 min read

Hurricane Sandy, renamed Frankenstorm, is covered minute by minute by all the media channels. And once more, it seems like this hurricane is the worst in the history. Broken records in term of flooding, wind speed are announced every hours.

Is the media coverage a real indicator of how destructive a hurricane is? The following infographic analyzed the 20 hurricanes that received the most media coverage since 1980 and compared it their gravity in terms of damage and casualties. The result is that their is no direct link between media coverage and gravity. The most striking example is that Hurricane Katrina, while being the worst hurricane in the recent history by far, is only 14th in terms of media coverage.

What do you think can explain the disparity between the two?

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