The Press Box - The Floods in Texas

Episode Date: July 10, 2025

Bryan and Joel discuss the Texas flash floods, how the story hits them as parents and Texans, the slow trickle of information, defensive posturing from Texas leadership, misinformation gaining traction online, and more. Host: Bryan Curtis and Joel AndersonProducer: Kyle Crichton Texas Deserves Far Better Than This by Joel Anderson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Follow the town on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. Media consumers, welcome to Pressbox. You've got Brian Curtis, you've got Joel Anderson, you've got producer Kyle Crichton. Everybody out there has seen the news about the horrific flooding in Central Texas. And despite the news coverage, six days later, it is still hard to understand just how big and awful this story. is. As Joel and I speak today, 120 people are confirmed dead. That includes 27 staffers and campers from Camp Mystic in Kerr County, Texas. Beyond those numbers, as we speak more than 150 additional people are still missing. Joel, you and I are both from Texas. We decided to

put aside the media intrigues of the week and devote today's show entirely to this story. I'll begin with a question. How do you process a story that's filled with this much grief? Man, well, I mean, we're almost at a week out now. And I think the one thing about it is usually with a story like this is that, you know, there's sort of the devastation and then there's a recovery, right? But this, I mean, as you just mentioned, 120 people are thought to be dead. there's at least 150 more missing.

So there's still the scale and scope of the tragedy continues to grow with each passing day. So I just think the thing is, it's just to be, you know, very sober in the analysis to be, you know, thankful that people are coming together and trying to help each other down there. And also, you know, I guess I'm just, I'm curious. I know that people don't like to politicize, you know, tragedies like this. But I think sometimes people think when you ask questions that it's political, but like I think that we're reporters, like we're journalists. And so naturally we want to know how did this happen and how do we stop something like this from happening again?

So like that's sort of the way I guess I process it. Like and maybe that's, you know, maybe a little too robotic or whatever for some people. But that's how I come to it. How about you? Yeah. I mean, I was like just to walk through how the story unfolded with you, I remember last Saturday morning looking at these posts that were going around social media from parents whose kids were missing. And I got to say, looking at those posts, it almost felt like I was seeing something I shouldn't be seeing. Yeah. What is it that people say, you know, please respect our privacy. at this time.

Right. And here are these parents, Joel, that are so desperate for information about their loved ones, about their daughter, who might have been at Camp Mystic, that they are posting on social media with their phone number in a plea that somebody might see this. They are taking their grief from private to public just in hopes of getting any kind of scrap of information. Yeah. Did you at the when this when it first came out?

Because I felt like the the, the, the early analysis of what had happened there was that, oh, you know, it was like maybe a dozen people that were feared to be dead, but we didn't quite know. Did you, did you kind of have like this thinking feeling, though? Because I was like, oh, their way, their way underestimating, like how bad this is actually going to be. That actually kind of gave, that made me feel a little ill. I was like, man, this is, this is going to be really.

really bad. And we may actually never even understand the scale of it, but did you, did you know even sort of then? It was hard to know because it was so slow. Yeah. And I'm talking about the news here. We saw these pictures on, again, on Twitter and social media of how fast the water was rising. But then the news was so slow to come out. Yeah. Right. And you and I live in this world where we're so used to being able to get any kind of information we want instantly. Right. And yet all of us reading about this have the same questions. What happened to those people? What happened to those girls? And nobody knew the answers. And for 150 plus people, nobody still knows the answers. Absolutely. Of what happened to those people. It's weird because I think part of that is

that that's just how this, how horrible this is, like how big and scary would have, how big and scary would happen is in terms of the flood, but also just like in terms of like for our purposes, in terms of media. This is sort of like a, it's not a newshole because there are media outlets out there, like local people that are doing, you know, really good and important work. But they're not often, not, we're not often reading like the Kerr County Times, you know, or the Kerrville Times. And so that, I think that's also a part of it too.

It's like, all right, who are we supposed to check with here? Like, who knows where are we supposed to be getting our information from? in this moment. Sure. And there's lots of limits on information, even for reporters who are out there really trying hard and really asking lots of questions. You know, we saw early on, you know, you'd see so many sentences where people's, people, they would confirm the number of dead, but would not say who they were, right?

Rescuers working around the clock, just looking for people. And, and again, it's just one of those moments where the information just was not there. You know, sometimes the information wasn't there for anybody, least of all the people who wanted it the most or needed to know it the most. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think that's like one of the things that I think, it's refreshing is maybe the wrong word. But I think everybody sort of understands like we're all waiting. Like we're just, you know, we want people to be okay and we want them to take their time and to, you know,

be dignified in the way that they handle the people that are going through all of this, right? Like there's no rush. Like I'm not, I haven't been rushing to figure out the identities of everybody or anything like that. I'm like, that will come. Like, we'll get our chance to memorialize these people and figure it out. But, like, you know, let's just figure out what's going on. Let's look at the people do what they need to do. And we can ask top-level questions. But in terms of the people there that are going through this, I think that, like, just waiting is probably the only thing we really can do.

You want to tell us a little bit about this part of Texas? Yeah, man, the hill country, man. Are you, I mean, you know a little bit about the hill country, right? Sure. I went school in Austin, so I spent some time there. but I didn't spend a lot of time there as a kid or, you know, any sustained time as an adult even. Yeah, so Curvville is about an hour northwest of San Antonio. And it's, you know, there's a lot of these little towns like Comfort, Bernie, Fredericksburg.

And, you know, unbeknownst to me at the time, and I should let people know, and I wrote a piece about this for the website. My family on my father's side is from Currville. There's a group that's from Currville, Texas, and a group from Hot Springs, Arkansas. So I spent a lot of time in Currville as a kid. Like, I would go multiple times a year. My great grandmother lived there. And I did not know at the time that it was like sort of a resort area. Like, you know, people would go there.

Like back in the day, it was like a bed and breakfast type place. Like you'd get your honeymoon or whatever, that sort of thing. And I think it's grown a little bit beyond that. But it's just a really, for people, like I'm from Houston, it's a very flat place. It's the place in Texas that has like some variety in terms of topography. And you can go through when you're driving. I remember as a kid driving into Curville, you can see these like limestone cliffs, you know, as you come in. And that really always stuck with me.

So it's really actually a beautiful sort of really peaceful, tranquil part of the, part of the world, I'd say. How did this story hit you as a parent? Oh, my God. man, you know, it's interesting because I don't, I try that to do the thing where I'm like, only a parent can know tragedy. You know, like when you lose a child or something like that. But man, when you become a parent, though, it really can kind of help you to understand, like, how absolutely gutting this is.

Because, like, I mean, there's two pieces of it. One, I don't know where my kid is. I can't protect them. Nobody knows. Nobody can give me any information. And that's like a whole sort of horror. And then there's the horror of like, oh, my God, these kids are gone. These parents are like there's this massive scar.

There's so many lives are going to be irrevocably altered because of this sort of thing. Like people are going to like the trauma that is going to come out of this is just going to be unfathomable. So yeah, as a kid, you know, man, just even thinking about your kids having to go. through something like and just imagine them being scared right yeah like that's the thing i think about too like man like not knowing what's going on the water is rising and they're scared um what about you and they want to see you right like those are they call for you they want you right in those moments absolutely man i completely i completely feel all those emotions and the other thing is you know hearing about a lot of these little girls at camp mystic was you're reminded of the purity

of emotion, the simplicity of emotion at that age. You know, we're sitting here in the middle of summer. And, you know, I remember as a kid and I'm now with my kids here near a lake. And, you know, what they think? Swimming is fun. Eating ice cream is fun. Playing with my friends is fun. Yeah.

And, you know, when you heard some of these parents talk about what their daughters were doing in the days. before the flood. That's what they came back to. Those just simple childhood emotions that we as parents, we as adults often forget about because we're worried about our careers or whatever we're worried about on a daily basis. That's not how kids often think, right? Kids, kids, and I'm not going to say the kids don't have complicated emotions and don't grow up in different places, but man, there are just so many simple things that just hit me so hard in thinking about all these girls. getting in touch.

So, like, I think the one thing about being a parent, and I'm sure there's other ways to experience this, you don't quite get to experience childhood all over again, but it becomes familiar to you. Like, if you just sit down with your kid and they're having a flavor of ice cream they've never had before or a snack they've had before, they're like kind of like, what does that taste?

Like, what is that thing? And yeah, I just, I, you know, yeah, like, just the experience of being, outside. Because also one of the things, like, I mean, again, in media, we talk so much about, like, kids being on phones and being inside and stuff like that. And, like, there's just something sort of ethereal about being outside, being at one with nature, being communing with your friends, like, especially post-COVID, right? Like, the opportunity to be in touch with people, have fellowship with people. And sometimes with kids, you get to experience that all over again and not quite the same way, but it allows you to get in touch with, like, with that would have been, like, like it makes you think a little bit about your own childhood too absolutely cnnons pamela brown was a camper at camp mystic when she was younger and she made this point about the camp and the guadalupe river that river was the source of so much joy and fun for us erika we would spend hours and hours in that river there was this thing called the blob which was like this um inflated balloon type thing that we would jump on and then the person at the end would jump off into the water and it was so much fun

and we'd go looking for dinosaur fossils. And that was where we spent so much of our time at camp. That is what we loved. And to think that that same river is the source of this devastation, it's just hard to wrap my head around. You hear her make the essential point there, the river, which becomes, you know, the source of this tragedy. The river was fun.

The river was the thing you looked forward to screwing around it. Dude, is it, does it, so that part, of Texas in particular. Like, rivers are like a really big thing because, like, I, you know, um, my, my best friend went to school at then Southwest Texas State University, but now it's called Texas State University of San Marcos. And like one of the big things about that school is like going out on the river, man, and hanging out on a, you know, a tube or something like that. And like, that's a big draw in that part of the country, man, like the river is a place where you sort go to, it's not a pilgrimage, but, you know, everybody goes there to commune and you go have fun and

you're drinking and flirting and just doing all the stuff the kids do, man. And so, yeah, like, the river is like a really important part of that part of the world for obviously reasons, you know, great and not so great. Do you ever go to church camp as a kid in Texas? I did not. I can't say I did. I went to a leadership camp before my senior year of high school, which is not quite in that area. So the settings and the trappings of it are familiar to me, but I did not. Did you do the church camp then? Yeah.

I mean, vacation Bible school as a young kid and for the uninitiated vacation Bible schools where you go to church during the hours you would normally go to school and you learn about the Bible. And in our case, by the end of camp, you were expected to be able to name all the books in the New Testament by memory. Really? something that is still burned into my brain. And then I eventually graduated to church camp.

And I was always a day camper, so I never spent the night there. But, you know, what do I remember? Taking the school bus there in the morning, singing songs about being one of God's children, and then doing the most secular things you can imagine. Canoeing, playing tag, and eating crappy food in the mess hall. Oh, man. That was church camp. And it was a very, very common experience, at least among the people I grew up with.

Have you sent your kids to church camp? No. No. No, they're here with me. Well, you know, there's all sorts of different ways to get it done now, right? There's all sorts of different ways to get it done. I was struck to, Joel, by just learning about some of the victims over the last few days of the flooding. I bet a lot of people have seen pictures of Jeff Wilson and his big old cowboy.

hat and his big old handlebar mustache. He and his wife, Amber and their son Shiloh, were in an RV park when all three of them disappeared. Last thing I read is the bodies of Amber and Jeff have been recovered and Shiloh is still missing. That's according to K-H-O-U in Houston. Jeff Wilson was an educator for more than 30 years in public school districts in Texas. He taught collision repair was by all accounts a beloved teacher. Also learned this from the New York Times, which has a very nice feature on the victims. Blair and Brooke Harbor,

two sisters who were 13 and 11 years old. I'm going to try to read this, and you may have to step in here at some point. Blair and Brooke were middle schoolers at St. Rita Catholic School in Dallas. They were kind, had a strong Christian faith, and were energetic, the school said. Blair played volleyball, basketball, and lacrosse,

and was a cheerleader. Excuse me for a second. Brooke played soccer, basketball, volleyball, and lacrosse. The sisters were active in the speech and drama program. Blair was excited to audition for the lead role in the eighth grade play. Brooke had a gift for improv and making people laugh. They were found holding hands, said Jennifer Harper, their aunt. So there you go.

Yeah, man. I mean, look, man, so there's that. There's, I was looking for them right here. There was twin, I mean, Hannah and Rebecca Lawrence, man, eight-year-old twin sisters from Dallas. They had a 14-year-old sister who was there who survived, but I just, they quoted their grandfather, and it's like an unimaginable time for all of this. I mean, because like the kids, like they wanted to be chefs. They really, she wanted one of the kids, Hannah, wanted to open a restaurant that fed people in need for free.

I'm just, I'm just, you guys think like what an eight-year-old, they're kind of their conception of the world and what they can do and the impact they can have. on it and I can't just imagine like being that parent and going home and being like, okay, we have to start over now. You know what I mean? Like life, how does life go on? Right. Something like that. How does like, yeah.

What do you, what am I living for now? What button do you push? Yeah. You know, what is what does life look like for you after this? Yeah. I can't imagine. And it's a secondary concern at times like this, but I do think of the reporters asking these questions, calling these people up.

Oh, my God. Because on the one hand, it's just the worst. and most seemingly pointless job in the world. Gosh, there's got to be something more important. You know, it's got to be something else you can do. And on the other hand, it's so important, right, to know who these people were and to memorialize them as best we can. Brian, so I was going to actually ask you that

because I remember having to do that a lot as a reporter, like earlier in my career. Like they sent you like something horrible has happened to somebody. And then they send you to their home or you've got to call them. And it feels so invasive. Like this is the part. And it's like, and it's just like sometimes people really get mad at you, right? But often they welcome you because you're talking to them through it.

And they get to remember they get to paint a portrait of somebody they loved. It may be the last time that anybody outside of that family thinks of them ever again. And so like that, that's, I don't know how many times did you ever have to do that coming out? Never, never in my life. Really? Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

I've had to interview enough people who've not necessarily been in that situation, but have had people like kids that have died. And it is gutting stuff. But in that time, you're sort of grateful for the people like the grandfather or the twins or whatever that are willing to talk to you, man, and like put a face with these names and put a, you know, let people know that like this is not, like those are numbers. 120 people. Those are numbers, dude.

like to let people know that there were lives behind those numbers as well. Absolutely. Yeah. And in some of the early New York Times reports, I saw mothers of children who were fortunate enough to make it out of the camp. But they didn't want to put their name in the paper because, of course, they understand, right, there's all these reporters who are just trying to get information, just trying to kind of understand some sense of this tragedy.

And they're thinking, oh, my gosh, if I speak to this, these people are going to look me up and now I'm going to get a million phone calls. of totally understandable impulse at a time like that. And, you know, again, that is this world that we're existing in right now. You nodded at this earlier. Whenever we have a news story like this, there is a very awkward transition for readers and reporters alike from mourning the dead, from finding out who these people were, to then asking, could something different have been done? to make this tragedy less awful. Greg Abbott is the governor of Texas.

He has been in that office since 2015. He was asked that second question, and he said this. You ask, I'm going to use your words. Who's to blame? Know this. That's the word choice of losers. Let me explain one thing about Texas. And that is, Texas, every square inch of our state

cares about football. You could be in Hunt, Texas, Huntsville, Texas, Houston, Texas, any size community they care about football. High school, Friday Night Lights, college football, or pro. And know this. Every football team makes mistakes. The losing teams are the ones that try to point out who's to blame. The championship teams are the ones to say, don't worry about it, man, we got this. We're going to make sure that we go score again, then we're going to win this game. The way winners talk is not to point fingers. They talk about solutions. I mean, the most polite thing I can say about that is those are the words that of somebody who's, first of all, it's just hugely inappropriate.

Like, that's the top line there. The second thing is that's somebody who's never been in a locker room before. Like, accountability is a big deal in a locker room or in a huddle. And have you ever been the reason your football team has? had to run more gassers. Have you ever been the reason your team, you ever committed pass interference? Have you ever held somebody and got a 10-yard penalty? Have you ever blown a coverage? You don't even wait for the blame. Like, you step up and tell your teammates, hey, man, my bad. I'm going to do better next time, bro. My bet. You know, like, Tim Tebow, the reason they have a statue out front of the

University of Florida, I don't know if people remember the Heism Trophy winner, Tim Tebow, after they lost the Ole Miss in 2008, he, like, apologized to the fans for their performance that day and said he would never let that happen again. Like, that is, football is all about blame. What do you think coaches are there for? That's what film sessions are for. You think Jerry Jones is like, when people interview Jerry Jones and they're like, hey, man, we're not here to assess blame today.

That is what football is all about. Finding out what you did wrong so that you don't do it again. I keep coming back to the word losers there. Yeah. Losers, Joel. We are talking about the concept of losers. Yeah. When you have the loved ones and friends of 120 people that have lost their lives.

Right. We're talking about losers. When you have all these girls that can't mystic that were fortunate enough to have escaped, to have been evacuated and have lost part or all of the innocence they once had. Right. Because of that experience. Right. We're going to use the word losers in that context. just wholly inappropriate.

And it's a deflection. It's a way to make you think that the victims here are Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick, you know, the Kansas City Mayor, Joe Herring Jr., the Kerr County Sheriff, all these, that they're the victims here, right? And not the people that have actually endured this unfathomable, unimaginable loss. They sent their kids to camp. And then, like, they got lost in something that is a tragedy,

but there was actually foreseeable. and that maybe something could have been done about it as reporting comes out. But anyway, yeah, that is not a news clip that Greg Abbott is going to want to have to ever revisit again, I imagine. You want to hear in that quote, something you and I heard growing up in Texas, which is this idea of Texas exceptionalism. Oh, man, yeah. When non-Texans come to write about this state, they say, everything's bigger in Texas. But inside the state, you hear a different cliche. You hear everything's better in Texas.

We're better than New York. We're better than California. Every political ad to this day that you and I see on Twitter is like, we're not going to let Texas go the way of California. Yeah. Yeah. This idea. And it's not just that Texas is better than those places. It's that Texas doesn't have anything to learn from other places. Yeah, that's a really, yeah, that's really bright. That's, it's such a thoughtful way of saying it. Because yeah, I mean, I was, I'm like, are you, I'm a tech. My wife used to call me a Texas supremacist, right? Well, I would just sniff, you know, I was like, you'd think that, you think that's Mexican food. You think that's barbecue. Oh, look at your football stadium. this is, this is, this is, this is puny. You know, you're doing that sort of stuff to people all the time. Oh, it's like, look at the houses you can have in Texas compared to where we live. Look how cool those houses are.

But yeah, I think there's just sort of an absence of humility that maybe we all from Texas need to sort of grapple with because in a world where most reasonable people understand the limits of human intervention against the effects of climate change. Disasters are going to happen. And today, Texas is no different than Arkansas, no different than West Virginia, no different than Louisiana, no different than Florida. Like, a catastrophe has happened and you need help, right? And maybe there are places in other, in this country or outside of this country that are doing things that can prevent this. And yeah, so don't like, I mean, it's just a way to thwart off questions and like to rally Texans to it. Oh, yeah. He's right. We do like football here. We don't blame each other. Get the fuck out of here, man. Oh, my God. And by the way, my wife's the same way. I remember the first time I took her back to Texas when she was my girlfriend and we were still dating. And she's like, look at all these Texas flags.

She's from California. He's from California. He's like, I don't see California flags, or at least we didn't until the ice raid started. Yeah. But it was like, you know, it's one of those things. And I think I'm with you, man. It's like, I love Texas. I like the idea that there is this shared identity of being a Texan. Oh, yeah. Even the football part of that, if we stopped somewhere short of the way Greg Abbott's using football. I like that idea. It's different than other states. But this idea that when you have more than 100 people dying and you cannot even leave open the possibility that some small part of this tragedy.

might have been somebody or something else's fault. You cannot investigate that idea, even entertain that idea. That is Texas exceptionalism gone berserk. It is. I mean, again, like, I mean, remember that was that when, and this was when Rick Perry was governed or more the Texas miracle. And people always talk about Texas is sort of the example, you know, open for business. People could come here and start their life over.

bring in, and there was a real recruiting effort to get people out of California. And again, like you said, we love Texas, man. Like, that's home for me. No matter where I live for the rest of my life, I will identify as a Texan. But it doesn't mean it's the best place in the world, or it doesn't mean that, like, it's not worse at some things in other places. And that, like, and the problem is that if they continue to engage in this lack of introspection, if they don't think about how things went wrong, where are our weaknesses, where do we need reinforcements. You can see how that can just continue a situation where Greg Abbott has to stand up in front of people again and have another press conference and tell people, hey, man, we're not here

to ask, we're not here to think about and ask questions about and engage with questions about where things went wrong. Because you can do that open over again. Yeah, that's what losers do. We don't think about stuff that went wrong here. Yeah, you mentioned tragedy. I mean, another way to put it is another tragedy. It was like four years ago that people couldn't get heat. during those winter storms. That was four years ago. Four years. That's not ancient history.

Yeah, man. I also watch his little soundbite, and I'm like, who is this for? Is this for the governor's meeting so that you can have quote-unquote scoreboard over everybody else in the room? Like, what parent that had a child who was in harm's way? What parent that might send a child to camp next year and wants to be reassured that their child will be safe? would take any solace from that little moment. That's a great question. Yeah.

I mean, because I guess the thing is, is that Greg Abbott is just sort of counting on the idea that he will never face any accountability for any of this stuff ever, right? That, like, he's been remarkably resilient. He's in his fourth term as governor. A lot of things have happened in Texas. Like, you mentioned the freeze, you know,

the school shootings, things like that. And as all that stuff has happened, like he's basically retained his popularity. And so it may be a point where he just says, well, you know what? Like, I don't really have to adjust for circumstances anymore. Like, I can run out to use a football term. I can use the same playbook. I can run the same play over and over again until somebody stops me from doing it. There's the use of football I can get behind.

Yeah, right. And again, it's not in favor of easy finger pointing or jumping to conclusions the other way. It is us coming out and saying it's worth investigating. It's worth asking questions. And, you know, when I see the news on Wednesday that Greg Abbott is part of this emergency or special session of the state ledge wants to talk about warning systems and emergency response. I'm like, does Greg Abbott even believe that? What he's saying? Yeah.

Is that, I'm sorry, does that kind of something winners would do? Right. Yeah, what are they, I mean, what are they going to do? I guess that's the thing. I mean, the thing that's really been infuriating about the last week or so of coverage is that there have been so many stops along the way where people were like, oh, our flood warning system is not adequate here. Like, we should do something about that. And people were just reluctant to do it, whether because of money, whether because the politics, like maybe they don't believe that they needed to do anything about it. they didn't think that it was it was urgent enough until things were too late.

And so, yeah, I don't, like, is that a ploy to get people to stop asking questions and to sort of, you know, hey, we'll have this special session and we can deal with it there and stop asking me questions because we're going to talk about it in a couple of weeks. I don't know. Yeah. And by the way, we can do some self-accountability here too. You and I can pile on that soundbite. You wrote a terrific piece today at the ringer about all this, which I would encourage people to go read. But, you know, are you and I going to be coming back in a year and two years and doing the investigative work about what flood warning systems are like in Central Texas? Are you and I going to be doing segments about that, writing about that? I understand that.

So what it is really about more is not what he says, but what they do, or do not do, in this case. I was thinking about this piece of it. You know, nothing beats local news for accountability and sunlight. And I was thinking of the most important reporting I ever did in my career was in Street, Port Louisiana, sitting in city council meetings, zoning board hearings, candidate forms, hearing what people had planned. Like, we take for granted that, like, people are out there reporting about trash sanitation deals. You know what I mean? Collective bargaining by your firefighters union and things like that. And I've had a chance to sort of like kind of dig. in a little bit and read some of the local newspapers. And they've been trying, man. They've been

trying. And I hope that people turn to, to the extent that they can, to the extent that there's these places. And I mean, there's other great resources like the Texas Tribune, which is just amazing. They've done a great job and covering this sort of stuff. But I hope it's just, you know, that's where people are holding people accountable or they're saying, hey, look, they didn't want to fund a study to look into whether or not they needed to improve their flood warning system in this County. Like, you know, this is your chance to engage public, right? So that's one of the things that I think about. And I hope that, like, you know, again, I know, I know we're just sort of, you know, wishing into the wind or whatever, but I would hope that it is a reminder to people

that, like, they can a way to hold people accountable and a way to learn about what is going going on in your community is in those local media outlets. Before we go, I want to talk to you about flooding and misinformation. Yeah. I read this from Brian Stelter's, over at CNN. He writes this, a life-affirming account about two missing girls found alive in the Texas flood zone quickly circulated on social media, but the girls didn't exist. And the episode filled people with false hope and sparked understandably angry reactions against the news outlets that had reported it as fact. This is what happened, according to Stelter. Apparently, the first online account of a rescue came from an Austin-based volunteer, Cord Schifflett, who was posting disaster

updates on his popular Facebook page. Quote, overwhelmingly thrilled to report two young girls were just found alive, he wrote, and posted a video about it too, borrowing both the, quote, reporting language and the visual rubric of the news industry, as so many people do nowadays. That story, Joel went from the Kerr County lead to local TV to even the New York Post. Eventually, Representative Chip Roy from Texas comes out and says it's 100% not verified. the lead in Kirk County does a retraction and Shifflett for his part, according to Stelter,

posted another video profusely apologizing, was I too quick to share it? I don't know. I was so excited it made my whole day, he said, attributing the false story to public safety officials who told them about it. Now, there's a media critique here that you and I can almost do in our sleep.

These are the dangers of crowdsourcing news. Yeah. Of information, making it to the public's eyes, before anyone has even had a chance to vet it, or there's some kind of professional or semi-professional newsroom that might say, wait, whoa, whoa, who's that and who was this and who made the rescue? Because there were, by the way, amazing stories of rescues that you should also read about, including one helicopter pilot who was woken up in Corpus Christi.

I read this at times, wound up on the ground in Camp Mystic and was saying, no, no, no, I'll stay here because if I stay, more girls can fit on the chopper and get out of here and get to safety. Amazing stuff. But when I read the story, you know what my first feeling was like, what a human emotion? What a recognizable human emotion, right? To say in all of this horror, ah, there it is. There's a miracle.

There is something to latch on to, right? There is something that makes us feel something other than abjectly awful right now. Yeah. And of course, we're looking for stories like that, right? I think you and I would probably like patrolling social media for the rest of the week. just tell me something happened. Right. Because I know there's so much unhappy here.

And it just, again, it feels like such a, I can happily do the press critique for you, but it just feels like such a human emotion. Right. However it was delivered to look for that kind of moment. Absolutely. Man, look, we've got the Cajun Navy. You know what I mean?

We don't have to make up heroes. You know what I mean? Like, there's people, there's plenty of people out there that are doing great work and people are writing about it without having to make stuff up. But that's just sort of the atmosphere. And before we got started here earlier, Brian knows I sent him. There's like an AI page on Facebook that's showing pictures of Brian Kelly and LSU football players rescuing people in the North Texas and the floods there.

And it's just like, you know, these are AI generated images just so everybody. Everybody understands here. Yeah, Brian Kelly's not actually out there. Harold Perkins is not, you know, fishing people out of the water, anything like that. But it's just, yeah, I mean, that's just, you know, again, without, you know, dwelling too much on the current media environment we're in, it's just really easy to manipulate people or to do, like, goofy shit like that. And it's really discouraging because, I mean, imagine the high that you read this great story, man, like, oh, man, they saved these two girls. And it's like, oh, well, actually, no. So, you know, we all have to be smart about the news we consume, but even more so, like the people that are passing that stuff along, man.

It's just like, bro, tighten up. Please tighten up. You have any closing thoughts, Joel? Man, I, first I wanted to hug you, man. I felt with me too. This was a tough day for people that care about Kerrville, Kerr County, the Hill Country in Texas, and those are resilient folk.

I know that it may not be the same, but they're going to recover, they're going to come back, and I just hope people can put their arms around to people that have been, that have gone through this and, you know, help the media does a good job in bringing the light, you know, the lives of the people that were lost, the lives of the people that are there, um, doing the, you know, the God's work of helping and trying to rebuild those people's lives and get people out. And I'm also hope that, you know, media holds people accountable for what went on here, man. I'm sick of this shit, man. I really am.

I'm just really tired of, uh, my home state, man, this kind of shit, you know, going on over and over again. I just, I want, I want better for us. And I hope we, I don't know if we're going to get into my life term, but I want my kids to get it if I can't get it. What about you? That is so well said. That is so well said. That is the press box. He's Joel Anderson. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Kyle Crichton. A couple of things to put on your radar. We got a couple of fun podcast next week, part of our 25 for 25 series. On Monday, we're going to talk about the future of physical media, Joel, what's going to happen over the next five to ten years to books, to magazines, to newspapers, to Blu-Rays and DVDs? There was one person I wanted to have that

conversation with, and he is, let us say, a collector like myself. Sean Finnessy and I taped that conversation. It went all kinds of interesting directions. There's media parts of that conversation, the very personal parts of that conversation. You're not going to hear anything like that. Did you want to talk about cassettes? Because I have a bunch of cassettes that I need to know what to do with. We need to have you kind of drop in at the moment with an Andy Rooney like opinion about the cassette. I got like 200 of them. I don't know what to do with them. So yeah. And then Thursday on this podcast, Zach Barron, celebrity profile writer extraordinaire from GQ is going to be here talking about the past, present, and future of the celebrity profile. He's talked to

everybody, Ben Affleck, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Andre 3,000. He has stories from all of those journalistic encounters. That's Thursday. Joel, we'll talk to you soon with more lukewarm takes about the media. Looking forward to it, buddy.