I was on a family vacation for the past several days, was offline and stuck with only cable news for information. This was the first time I’d watched any cable news since the 2004 election. My general strategy is to change channels whenever any of them run a commercial, so I got a substantial sampling of all three networks.

MSNBC seemed to be doing a better job than their competitors. The primary exception being Keith Olberman. MSNBC’s discovery of the forgotten NO Convention Center and resulting suffering doubtlessly saved a number of lives.

FOX was dependable for trying to find any positive story in the disaster, focusing on what was being done without ignoring what wasn’t. Their producers seemed out-to-lunch at times, showing the same clips over and over while failing to bring up the shots their on-air people were talking about. Geraldo Rivera is a nerd and often hard to stomach, but he is sincere.

CNN was just horrible. They were hellbent on ginning up a racial angle to the tragedy, going so far on Saturday that they had only black anchors for most of the day. I could be wrong since I haven’t watched CNN in a long time, but it seem that somewhere in CNN, someone made a decision to call in any anchor with dark skin. I would love to hear that decision explained while trying not to sound like the blazingly racist thinking it was.

Several of the networks, perhaps all of them, were guilty of running days-old footage of suffering even after evacuations had been completed.

All of the networks had Touching Montages With Sad Music. I can’t begin to explain how much I hate those, how exploited they make me feel and how trite they make the victims’ suffering seem. The photos should be shown, but silence would be so much more effective and respectful.

There was little coverage of the damage in Mississippi and Alabama, where whole towns were reduced to little more than foundations. Areas outside of New Orleans have also been largely ignored.

I was able to refresh my newsreader (NetNewsWire) a few times over the weekend. 15 minutes of online reading gave me more information than 5 hours of TV news.