A Whale of a Story
Of course, I'm talking about Delta and Dawn, who are a pair of ... humpback whales. The mother and daughter wandered through the San Francisco Bay and then 90 miles further, eventually finding themselves lost and stuck in the Port of Sacramento. Local police authorities and the United States Coast Guard spent much of the past few days trying to turn them back around to the ocean.
And the media swallowed it whole, Jonah-style. According to a Google news search search this morning, the "Wrong-Way Whales" had received 1,021 stories worth of attention, compared to the 180 stories detailing the Iraq Study Group's newfound relevance – or the 736 stories on how two gunmen killed 7 passengers in a minibus in Baghdad.
This reporter first encountered Delta and Dawn on Wednesday morning, when a cable network interrupted a segment on the previous night's GOP presidential debates to show "live coverage" of the whales … uhm …. floating around. (Who needs Ron Paul when you can get your Captain Ahab on?)
I'm not a complete scold, I'd like to note here: I admit this is a fun story. It's just that it's ultimately a minor one, not worthy of Constant Updates and a 24-hour WhaleWatch. And the disproportionate coverage turned out to be counterproductive, if not irresponsible: The local authorities had issued an announcement that spectators should stay away so that they could direct all their resources towards the whale rescue effort. Unfortunately, the breathless coverage only publicized the story and attracted around 10,000 onlookers/marine rubberneckers, resulting in the Sacramento police having to direct traffic, enforce crowd control and install portable toilets.
The whales have recently turned around on their own, with the siren song of tugboats giving them impetus to leave. But it's not a stretch to consider a scenario where this lack of journalistic restraint might have given this fish story a less happy ending.