The word hurricane after three storms: counts, definitions and limits
Companion to the editorial. The desk’s own day-by-day counts of words in machine transcripts of its CNN, Fox News and BBC World Service recordings, for the weeks of Hurricanes Isaias, Lala and Lowell. The tape is a receipt: no transcript text is quoted here or in the piece.
Isaias: the word hurricane, by Eastern day
| Day | CNN | Fox News | BBC World Service |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wed 7 Oct | 69 | 12 | 0 |
| Thu 8 Oct | 115 | 37 | 15 |
| Fri 9 Oct | 247 | 216 | 37 |
| Sat 10 Oct | 113 | 88 | 63 |
| Sun 11 Oct | 12 | 58 | 23 |
| Mon 12 Oct | 5 | 28 | 1 |
| Tue 13 Oct | 1 | 4 | 0 |
| Wed 14 Oct | 3 | 1 | 0 |
Landfall was the evening of Friday 9 October near Destin, Florida. Tuesday 13 October is the last full recorded day; Wednesday 14 October is a partial day and is left out.
Isaias: power words, by Eastern day
| Day | CNN | Fox News | BBC World Service |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thu 8 Oct | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Fri 9 Oct | 45 | 66 | 6 |
| Sat 10 Oct | 90 | 110 | 12 |
| Sun 11 Oct | 5 | 33 | 1 |
| Mon 12 Oct | 0 | 16 | 6 |
| Tue 13 Oct | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Pattern: without power or electricity, power outage or restoration, outage, restore power, power is or was out, lost or lose power, powerless. Ordinary uses of the word outage about other things are in the count.
Isaias: the name, by Eastern day
| Day | CNN | Fox News | BBC World Service |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wed 7 Oct | 9 | 0 | 0 |
| Thu 8 Oct | 22 | 8 | 3 |
| Fri 9 Oct | 48 | 38 | 8 |
| Sat 10 Oct | 38 | 17 | 9 |
| Sun 11 Oct | 4 | 17 | 2 |
| Mon 12 Oct | 0 | 9 | 0 |
| Tue 13 Oct | 0 | 0 | 0 |
The name Isaias, its accented form, and two machine misspellings (isayis, isayas).
Isaias: banner minutes naming the storm
| Day | CNN | Fox News | BBC World Service | CNN minutes recorded |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thu 8 Oct | 69 | 17 | 0 | 1113 |
| Fri 9 Oct | 68 | 172 | 38 | 633 |
| Sat 10 Oct | 90 | 142 | 59 | 739 |
| Sun 11 Oct | 19 | 25 | 12 | 1059 |
| Mon 12 Oct | 4 | 17 | 0 | 1102 |
| Tue 13 Oct | 0 | 0 | 0 | 937 |
A banner minute is one minute of on-screen text, read by character recognition, that contains ISAIAS. A floor: misreads are not counted.
Lala: the word hurricane, by Eastern day
| Day | CNN | Fox News | BBC World Service |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thu 13 Aug | 18 | 8 | 0 |
| Fri 14 Aug | 9 | 25 | 0 |
| Sat 15 Aug | 80 | 67 | 28 |
| Sun 16 Aug | 44 | 22 | 20 |
| Mon 17 Aug | 20 | 2 | 0 |
| Tue 18 Aug | 15 | 0 | 0 |
| Wed 19 Aug | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Thu 20 Aug | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Fri 21 Aug | 0 | 0 | 12 |
Hurricane Lala crossed Hawaii Island on 15 and 16 August (Hawaii News Now).
Lala: power words, by Eastern day
| Day | CNN | Fox News | BBC World Service |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fri 14 Aug | 1 | 5 | 7 |
| Sat 15 Aug | 3 | 12 | 6 |
| Sun 16 Aug | 18 | 20 | 16 |
| Mon 17 Aug | 15 | 3 | 0 |
| Tue 18 Aug | 7 | 2 | 2 |
| Wed 19 Aug | 0 | 0 | 5 |
| Thu 20 Aug | 2 | 0 | 5 |
| Fri 21 Aug | 2 | 1 | 1 |
Lowell: the word hurricane, by Eastern day
| Day | CNN | Fox News | BBC World Service |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fri 4 Sep | 0 | 9 | 0 |
| Sat 5 Sep | 19 | 26 | 0 |
| Sun 6 Sep | 14 | 16 | 0 |
| Mon 7 Sep | 42 | 63 | 0 |
| Tue 8 Sep | 29 | 33 | 0 |
| Wed 9 Sep | 5 | 7 | 0 |
| Thu 10 Sep | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Fri 11 Sep | 0 | 0 | 50 |
Hurricane Lowell passed west of Kauai in the night of 7 to 8 September.
Lowell: power words, by Eastern day
| Day | CNN | Fox News | BBC World Service |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sun 6 Sep | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Mon 7 Sep | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| Tue 8 Sep | 9 | 22 | 4 |
| Wed 9 Sep | 0 | 5 | 13 |
| Thu 10 Sep | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Fri 11 Sep | 1 | 0 | 0 |
Share of the peak day still said (CNN plus Fox, hurricane)
| Day | Peak-day count | +1 day | +2 days | +3 days | +4 days |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Isaias | 463 | 43% | 15% | 7% | 1% |
| Lala | 147 | 45% | 15% | 10% | 1% |
| Lowell | 105 | 59% | 11% | 1% | 0% |
Peak day: Friday 9 October (Isaias), Saturday 15 August (Lala), Monday 7 September (Lowell). Each is the day with the most combined uses.
By channel, two days on
SHARE OF THE PEAK DAY STILL SAID TWO DAYS ON, BY CHANNEL, HURRICANE: CNN Isaias 5%, Lala 25%, Lowell 12%; Fox Isaias 27%, Lala 3%, Lowell 11%.
BBC WORLD SERVICE AGAINST ITS OWN PEAK DAY, HURRICANE: Isaias peak 63 on Sat 10 Oct, then 37% / 2% / 0%; Lala peak 28 on Sat 15 Aug, then 71% / 0% / 0%.
Sunday check
SUNDAY CHECK, OUTSIDE STORM WEEKS (a fixed list of twelve news and politics words (the list is kept with the desk's script), per 10,000 words; Sunday rate divided by the mean of the Saturday and Monday around it; median and range over the Sundays tested): CNN 0.99 (0.85 to 1.2, 9 Sundays); Fox 1.16 (1.0 to 1.22, 9 Sundays); BBC 0.79 (0.64 to 1.1, 8 Sundays).
THE SAME LIST DURING ISAIAS WEEK (per 10,000 words; CNN / Fox / BBC): Fri 9 Oct 76 / 55 / 42; Sat 10 Oct 77 / 79 / 61; Sun 11 Oct 128 / 82 / 42; Mon 12 Oct 144 / 63 / 46; Tue 13 Oct 144 / 71 / 36.
CNN, SATURDAY 10 OCT TO SUNDAY 11 OCT (times said): democrats 79 to 257, senate 55 to 172, race 34 to 143, election 51 to 124, power 201 to 55, storm 174 to 47, florida 119 to 22, alabama 99 to 9, trees 62 to 1.
Isaias: the same count, program blocks only
| Day | CNN | Fox News | BBC World Service |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thu 8 Oct | 105 (107k words) | 27 (104k words) | 14 (138k words) |
| Fri 9 Oct | 202 (93k words) | 172 (92k words) | 19 (119k words) |
| Sat 10 Oct | 49 (75k words) | 40 (83k words) | 54 (101k words) |
| Sun 11 Oct | 11 (97k words) | 46 (108k words) | 23 (139k words) |
| Mon 12 Oct | 4 (100k words) | 19 (99k words) | 1 (127k words) |
| Tue 13 Oct | 1 (105k words) | 1 (104k words) | 0 (135k words) |
Only blocks the labeller marked program. The labeller leaves part of each day unmarked, and on some days in the Lala and Lowell weeks it marked little or nothing (for example 8 September, with about 5,000 program words on CNN), so the headline counts use all recorded blocks and this table is a check, not the source.
Method
METHOD: Eastern calendar days; machine transcripts of SiriusXM audio for CNN, Fox News and BBC World Service, 16 July to 14 October; a word is counted when it matches the pattern for the term (hurricane or hurricanes; Isaias, its accented form and two machine misspellings; power words = without power or electricity, power outage or restoration, outage, restore power, power is or was out, lost or lose power, powerless). All recorded blocks are counted, ads included; the program-only version is on the data page and has labelling gaps on some days. 14 October is a partial day.
Feeds: SiriusXM channels carrying CNN, Fox News and BBC World Service; a Whisper-family machine transcript; blocks labelled ad, promo, program or unknown by a model. Peak day is the Eastern day with the most combined CNN and Fox uses of hurricane. The Sunday list is fixed in advance and applied to Sundays outside the weeks of Lala, Lowell, the late-September peak and Isaias, where both the Saturday and Monday around the Sunday had at least 120,000 recorded words (the late-September peak, 24 to 28 September, is also excluded). Queries and the counting script are kept by the desk with the receipts for this piece.
What the desk could not verify
- That any outlet chose to cover less. The tape counts words.
- Whether the television channels said the same things. The tape is satellite-radio audio.
- Outage counts after Monday night, 12 October: the desk fetched none.
- The power status of Hawaii Island and Kauai on days after those the cited releases give.
- Any storm other than Lala, Lowell and Isaias. A late-September peak in the word, on 26 September, was not examined and no outage figures were frozen for it.
- MS NOW: its recording before 11 October is not comparable, and no MS NOW claim is made.