This a more considered viewpoint on the way the media have dealt with the current storm and flood events: February 9, 2014 by Simon Dixon The River Management Blog The flooding blighting much of the UK has dominated the news now for two weeks and shows little sign of abating for the next 7-10 days. Initially when the flooding was fairly isolated to the Somerset levels the reporting in newspapers and on television was led, and dominated by, science and environmental commentators who took pains to research their articles and base their conclusions on the best available evidence and advice.

As the flooding story continued, and became more of a national political debate, the coverage has increasing become dumbed down to human interest stories and the excellent reporting from aforementioned science correspondents has been buried beneath coverage of train cancellations and people evacuating their homes. This has had the pervasive effect of needing to condense the scientific explanations of flooding into easily digested throw-away comments in reports. The hugely successful FLAG local campaign group in the Levels have been campaigning for a long time for increased dredging of the Rivers Tone & Parrett. The media love a human interest story and the combination of distraught people, large gatherings with placards and a simple explanation for flooding (which also happens to have a simple scapegoat) proved irresistible …. to read more