Why are members of the media fighting over shoes?

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Focusing on the wrong thing

When I logged back on to Twitter yesterday morning, I noticed several members of the conservative media-sphere on the right complaining about mainstream media coverage of First Lady Melania Trump's attire during her tour of the Hurricane Harvey damage.

Most of the Harvey-related coverage I was seeing in my feed was focused on rescue efforts, and so those tweets were the first I had heard of this so-called scandal. The obvious hypocrisy of these complaints is that the conservatives gave the Obamas holy hell for what they wore.

Thankfully, it's not the whole media engaging in this non-story. The rescuers, which have included members of the media, are engaging in a life-and-death herculean effort.

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Rescue is coming

The Harvey Relief rescue project, a volunteer effort, on the otherhand, tweeted out on Tuesday evening that over 6000 people whose calls for help were tracked on its map still needed rescuing.

| Image: Screenshot for Harvey SOS Tracker | Source: Harvey SOS Tracker | Rights: Fair Use |

At time of that tweet, 835 people had been marked as rescued, which is incredible because four hours prior, Harvey Relief tweeted out that 500 people tracked on the map had been rescued. And four hours prior to that tweet, they said 191 people out of the 2500 people tracked had been rescued.

And the amount of charity being extended to the victims, both through official efforts like those mapped and linked below, or AirBnB's disaster response program (currently activated for flood relief in both Texas and India) is reassuring to see.

| Image: Screenshot for Harvey Relief Map | Source: Harvey Relief Map | Rights: Fair Use |

At the time of this posting, Reuters is reporting that at least 17 people have died.

God bless every one of the rescuers, the victims, and their families.

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Josh Peterson is a 2016 Robert Novak Journalism Program Fellow and a writer living in Denver, CO. Follow Josh on Steemit and Twitter. Keybase for secure chat. PGP Fingerprint: 4507 3000 1A40 2691 DAB8 ED65 A3EA 3629 73FD B7FF

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