Student Journalist Does the Heavy Lifting Legacy Media Won’t-Calls Out CNN’s Abby Phillip and MSM for Failing to Cover Abandonment of Hurricane Helene Victims (Video)

Student journalist Andrew Kingsbury called out CNN’s Abby Phillip and the legacy media for failing to accurately cover the neglect that the victims of Hurricane Helene continue to face.

Kingsbury asked why, given the government’s failure to address the devastating conditions facing Americans, the national media seems uninterested in the story.

Phillip’s response was to essentially acknowledge that FEMA failed in its response but that coverage was also likely muted because of the political implications.

Andrew Kingsbury: Hi, I’m Andrew Kingsbury. I’m an extension school alum. I was recently in Western North Carolina in the Asheville area, responding to the hurricane. I was there for about two weeks, and the sense that I got was that those people were abandoned by their government, but also by, not so much the local media and press, but the national press.

The operation that I was part of is the first time in American history that there’s been an FAA-registered, civilian-run disaster relief helicopter operation because there was such a vacuum that a Green Beret Master Sergeant, he essentially… He lost his wife and daughter for a couple of days. He couldn’t find them. After finding them, he realized, “Where are the helicopters? I’m going to find out why. I’m just going to call my friends and I’m going to ask them to bring their helicopters.”That’s what happened, 35 helicopters at the peak rescuing people.

I stopped at the National Press Club in DC on my way back. I’ve spoken to multiple members of the press here, Washington Post reporters, Katie Couric even, and nobody seems to know anything about this level of abandonment. I’d like to end with this question, which is not my own question.I guess it is my question, and the people that are there.

This is Matt Van Swol if that’s how his name is pronounced, on X, saying, “It’s been 45 days since Helene hit Western North Carolina. There’s still no clean drinking water in the city of Asheville. Trash is swinging from the trees 20 feet high. Kids in Yancey County won’t go back to school until late November. Where are the reporters? We still need help.”

That’s how I also feel, based on my, I believe at this point, objective experience of going to the National Press Club, speaking to various national-level reporters here and around the country, and them not really having any clue as to what’s going on, what happened, and it’s still going on.

So that Matt Van Swol’s question, please.

Abby Phillip: Yeah, I totally take the question and also the critique. I think it’s correct, actually. I wonder the same thing. I think that…

Andrew Kingsbury:Can we get some reporters there? Yeah.

Abby Phillip:No, I mean, look, I’m sitting here thinking, I will take this back, right? Because I can give you a lot of reasons, perhaps, why maybe there has not been a persistent remaining interest in what’s happened there. I think in general, journalists have not been very good about sticking with communities long after they’ve been affected by something. That’s just in general, right?

I think it’s particularly… tt was in this case, particularly challenging because perhaps the remoteness of the location and the way in which the newspapers and television networks are fixated on their urban environments where they are. I think it’s partly the decline of local news. I think it’s partly the degree to which that hurricane became extraordinarily politicized or became part of the political story that was unfolding.

All of those are reasons why, but they’re not justifications. So I don’t want you to think that I’m justifying it. I just think that that is probably why, and I think it’s not right at all, and it should be rectified. I think this is actually, in a way, what we were discussing earlier, which is there’s so much attention on rhetoric and not as much attention on what is actually happening.

What is actually happening in Asheville. I was asking that question after the hurricane hit because I’m sitting at a table and I have Republicans saying, “The Biden administration is intentionally not helping Republicans because they’re Republican.”

And I had to go back to our news desk and say, “What is actually happening? Do we know what is happening?” And the answer was, “We don’t really.”

Because of all kinds of different reasons, including access to some of these places that were inaccessible for a long time. So it’s not okay. It needs to be rectified. When we think back to Katrina and the aftermath of that and the devastation of that, there was a whole generation of people that came out of that thinking that the government treated them differently because of who they were.

It is very possible that this is one of those scenarios, too. It was one of the deadliest hurricanes in the last century. We need to face that, and we haven’t. I think your question is absolutely well taken.

Watch:

Student journalist calls out CNN’s Abby Phillip for neglecting to cover Hurricane Helene. Abby Phillip agrees and responds that the areas were too ‘remote’ for proper coverage:
Andrew Kingsbury: “I was recently in western North Carolina in the Asheville area, responding to the… pic.twitter.com/Gi2szaoTBQ

— Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) November 19, 2024

@abbydphillip
“The same network who will send countless ‘reporters’ to Ukraine like Malcolm Nance, wants to pretend that they didn’t have enough resources to send reporters to Georgia and North Carolina.
It’s not like CNN’s headquarters are literally in Georgia, oh wait…”

— Julia Poppen (@JPoppen) November 20, 2024

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