Hurricane Gustav: Tv's Imperfect Storm

Most star TV reporters carry hairspray in their kit bag to help them look their best on camera. But, for those reporting from the levees of New Orleans this week, the barnet-hardener will have been redundant. This was a rare assignment when the journalists desperately wanted their locks, weaves or toupees to blow in the breeze.

With hurricane Gustav unexpectedly downgraded from a category four to a category one storm, an unruly rug was the only way they had of suggesting that New Orleans was really windy. For the same reason, many reporters kept their jackets open, calculating that flapping cloth might also intimate an impending gale.

"The levees seem to be enough for now," conceded the BBC's Matthew Price, although we all knew he was there in anticipation of the opposite outcome.

We have to be wary of giggling at a news event in which at least eight people have died (although UK and US television paid little attention to the 90 killed as Gustav swept across the Caribbean), but the live coverage of the levees failing to provide the expected excitement demonstrates the biggest risk of all-day live news: the moments when the story fails to do what was written on the planning board.

Television, though, has little choice. Ever since the Kennedy assassination was filmed by a tourist because network crews saw no point in shooting another presidential motorcade, news organizations have been obsessed with being in position. And now nimble equipment and 24-hour networks increase this need to keep going even when the story isn't.

Newspapers also chase false geese, but can quietly withdraw their under-used personnel and print something else. While they bear the bruises of false alarms only on internal budgets, TV is forced to transmit its miscalculations. Stricter health and safety regulations also now keep reporters further from the action: there's no swaying on wave-lashed sea-breaks like there used to be. And so, on Gustav duty, the telly people's special wet-weather gear was at risk of splashing only from tears of frustration.