“Don’t Believe Everything You See and Hear On TV”

For many years I was the most gullible person in the world. If I read it in the newspapers or heard and saw it on TV then it had to be true. I was a true believer in anything and everything, and that was probably dumb on my part. Even after I learned that everything you saw, heard or read was not necessarily true I still got suckered into a few things. The latest being the impact of the oil spill on the Gulf Coast beaches.

Now nothing that follows is supposed to take away from the hardships the people of the Gulf have suffered. They have had a rough time and I am sorry for their pain. What bothers me is the way the media has treated their situations. Night after night for the last few months I have seen reporters standing on deserted beaches bemoaning the fact that no one is coming to the area(s) on vacation.

Well last week my family went to Panama City, Florida on vacation. Imagine our surprise when we looked out on to the beach and there were hordes of people there and in the water. I was expecting it to be virtually deserted. It wasn’t. There were people all over the group of condos where we stayed and they were packing the mall down from us.

One night we decided we wanted to go to “Margaritaville” for dinner. When we arrived we noticed there was a line out front, but we thought maybe it was just people milling around. Duh! They were all waiting for a table. We learned this when we were told there would be a two hour wait if we wanted to partake.

We left and went to another restaurant where the wait was not as bad. It was crowded but not that crowded. I asked the waiter who was assigned to our table if this “crowd of people” was something new. He replied it had been that way all summer long. So much for the deserted beaches and non attendance.

The point I am trying to make is if people had just taken the news media’s word for it all they would have stayed away because of the “tar balls” and other inconveniences. I had heard horrible stories about the odors the oil was causing and the impossibility of going into the water. Wasn’t happening at Panama City!

The Gulf oil spill has been a horrible disaster, but it might have been made worse by the negative reporting by the media. I am sure there were people who changed their vacation plans and didn’t go to Florida, Alabama, Louisiana or Mississippi like they usually do. They believed what they heard on television or read in the papers and stayed away or went to another vacation spot.

The Florida coast is alive and well. The beaches are beautiful and the water is delicious. If you still have vacation days left then you should consider a “beach trip” to top off the summer. It is all fine down there. I know. I saw it with my own eyes!
 

 

 

 

 

©2010 Jackie K. Cooper

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