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Why does the Media hate the Cruise Industry?


nealstuber
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So my google home page gave me this gem:

https://nypost.com/2018/01/17/couples-honeymoon-cruise-ruined-by-poop-shower/amp/

I’m not as knowledgeable about ships plumbing as some on this board, but I’m pretty sure the shower drains to a gray water system and the toilets to a separate black water system. I know this to be true because I don’t hear the same “swoosh” when I use my shower drain that I hear from the toilet.

 

This strikes me as fairly obvious, poop can not get to your shower through any plumbing but your own. This makes the headline, well, [emoji90] .

 

There already one or two threads on the CDC thing which is a disturbing but entirely unrelated issue.

 

 

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The media also covers the cruise industry extensively and that includes positive aspects of cruising.

 

Keith

 

 

 

You don’t think the coverage is disproportionately negative? I realize that plumbing that works is not news nor is a fair weather sailing that went off without a hitch. But on any given sailing, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by something.

 

But my beef with this particular article is that there is no way the headline can be true: There was no poop in their shower unless they put it there. They could have headlined that it was Alien Poop in the shower and it would be no more obvious that it was fake news.

 

 

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You don’t think the coverage is disproportionately negative? I realize that plumbing that works is not news nor is a fair weather sailing that went off without a hitch. But on any given sailing, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by something.

 

But my beef with this particular article is that there is no way the headline can be true: There was no poop in their shower unless they put it there. They could have headlined that it was Alien Poop in the shower and it would be no more obvious that it was fake news.

 

 

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Every once in awhile, there'll be a story in the news about a snake making its' way up through someone's toilet at their home. Can you imagine the reaction from a cruiser (and the media) if a sea snake just happened to make it's way through the ship's plumbing and into someone's toilet? (Hmm. Sounds like a good story for April 1st.)

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Well it sells. I turn on the news all I see who died in a fire, who got rob, a shooting, nut job foreign leaders and/or our leaders saying or "tweeting" something stupid and a cruise ship incident. However once and awhile they show a great clips of puppies and kittens and all is well in America.

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Okay, I'll weigh in.

 

The "black water" from toilets are in an enclosed vacuum system, that is separated from any other system or drain onboard, all the way to the engine room. Some toilets on the ship flush upwards, which is another reason the systems are separated.

 

The "gray water" from sinks, showers, galleys, laundries, and deck drains are all gravity drains just like your home, but the big difference is that no toilet is connected to this system. So, no, there was no sewage "reeking of fecal matter" coming back up the shower drain. What is likely is that there was a significant "mouse" (hair ball) in the shower drain trap, causing a partial blockage. This water will come back very black, due to black rust (formed in pipes due to low oxygen) in the steel piping, and also from the decomposing fats and oils from skin and soaps. This merely shows that the cabin steward had not pulled the shower drain grate often enough to remove the "mouse". There could also have been a blockage further down the line, causing back up, but as others have said, anytime you have multi-floor septic drains, this can happen, and the ship's system is always cleaner than a house or land system due to the separation of the black and gray water systems.

 

The article attempts to link a blocked shower drain with the failed sanitation scores that Carnival ships have received lately. I have never experienced a USPH inspector opening a shower drain to see if the trap is blocked, so there is no correlation.

 

While I agree with the unnamed "maritime attorney" who said the rash of failures on Carnival is a rarity, I disagree with his statement that "failed inspections on cruise ships typically occur roughly two or three times per year", which is patently false. A quick survey of scores from 2014-2016 show no failing scores at all.

The cruise industry is a large target. You get a large group of people together and then something bad happens, and no one is really cognizant of what happened, or why, so it is easy to paint a target and sling some mud. And, yes, it sells.

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Did you watch the video? I would be unhappy with what they were offered also. If that is happening, I expect a new room $300 and about 50% off my next cruise. They are wrong about the sewage. Anyone with an RV knows that gray water can be just as bad as sewage though, and if anything is bubbling from my shower drain upwards, you have about an hour to fix it or find me a new room and unless one of those options happens, I am going to be a permanent fixture at guest services.

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Did you watch the video? I would be unhappy with what they were offered also. If that is happening, I expect a new room $300 and about 50% off my next cruise. They are wrong about the sewage. Anyone with an RV knows that gray water can be just as bad as sewage though, and if anything is bubbling from my shower drain upwards, you have about an hour to fix it or find me a new room and unless one of those options happens, I am going to be a permanent fixture at guest services.

 

 

 

While it’s certainly true that gray water can smell bad, can we agree that it’s not [emoji90]?

 

 

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Yes, I watched the video. I didn't see any "black water" (whether the definition or the actual color) coming up the drain. Yes, its a problem. Yes, in your house it can be simple to find and repair the blockage (this periodic "spitting" of a drain shows that there is a partial blockage in a near horizontal run and with the ship rolling it blocks up with water preventing proper venting of the drains) by snaking, but on a ship this can take a while to get to the culprit. No mention is made whether or not the problem was remedied during the cruise, how long it was a problem, or anything. Nor was there apparently any questions asked about this particular incident by the paper to Carnival (like the things mentioned above, as to the extent of the problem), but only to link this to the failed inspection score.

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You don’t think the coverage is disproportionately negative? I realize that plumbing that works is not news nor is a fair weather sailing that went off without a hitch. But on any given sailing, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by something.

 

But my beef with this particular article is that there is no way the headline can be true: There was no poop in their shower unless they put it there. They could have headlined that it was Alien Poop in the shower and it would be no more obvious that it was fake news.

 

Such misinformation is not surprising coming from the New York Post. According to https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/ :

 

"The New York Post is a daily tabloid type newspaper from New York City. This source can swing very far to the right, but does occasionally provide a balanced account. Not a very credible source overall. (7/16/2016)"

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and if anything is bubbling from my shower drain upwards, you have about an hour to fix it or find me a new room...

 

 

So if they are working on the problem, and they Ship is full, who would you have them throw overboard to get you a new room?

 

As KP noted, the article makes no mention of how long the problem took to fix, for all we know it could have been an hour.

 

The reason we don’t know how long it took us because the paper never bothered to contact Carnival for their side of the story. It is also the reason that the paper does not know that the video does not show [emoji90] as anyone with a smidge of common sense who ever flushed a toilet on a ship would know without asking.

 

Thus the title of this thread.

 

 

 

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The media - like any other industry - likes easy money. Disasters, crime, terrible weather are all fodder for "news" stations. Advertisers pay for air time - which is only of value if there is an audience - which only exists if there is something to watch or listen to. Stations pay big bucks for drama and comedy and "reality" shows --- but disasters, crime, weather, cruise ship problems, etc. all represent free "material".

 

So, what's the question --- of course they love bad news from the cruise industry.

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Every once in awhile, there'll be a story in the news about a snake making its' way up through someone's toilet at their home. Can you imagine the reaction from a cruiser (and the media) if a sea snake just happened to make it's way through the ship's plumbing and into someone's toilet? (Hmm. Sounds like a good story for April 1st.)

Without rereading the article, IIRC, it was on the Triumph, wasn't it? So that's a guaranteed click no matter what. "Raw sewage on the Triumph again!" Like another Costa cruise sinking or something. It's also timed well to the CDC flunking three Carnival ships.

 

 

A sea snake in the toilet would be a thing to see/sea, though, especially as some of them are among the deadliest animals on earth. Snakes on a Ship doesn't have the same ring to it, although you could always work in some passengers choosing to swim for shore and getting unrealistically eaten by the countless giant man-eating sharks that roam every square inch of ocean [/s]. XD "Thank god, we're safe from the snakes, honey!... Something just brushed past my leg..."

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So my google home page gave me this gem:

https://nypost.com/2018/01/17/couples-honeymoon-cruise-ruined-by-poop-shower/amp/

I’m not as knowledgeable about ships plumbing as some on this board, but I’m pretty sure the shower drains to a gray water system and the toilets to a separate black water system. I know this to be true because I don’t hear the same “swoosh” when I use my shower drain that I hear from the toilet.

 

This strikes me as fairly obvious, poop can not get to your shower through any plumbing but your own. This makes the headline, well, [emoji90] .

 

There already one or two threads on the CDC thing which is a disturbing but entirely unrelated issue.

 

 

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Consider the paper where the article appeared. That plus the fact that they threw in the sanitation inspection issue, which was totally unrelated to the issue, makes for sensationalized new. ie., FAKE NEWS

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Consider the paper where the article appeared. That plus the fact that they threw in the sanitation inspection issue, which was totally unrelated to the issue, makes for sensationalized new. ie., FAKE NEWS

 

Considering who the audience is for this tabloid newspaper, it's not surprising that recognizing truth or facts is not part of their core values.

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The passenger takes their side of the story to a newspaper or TV station and that's what the media will run. A couple of years ago a woman gave birth prematurely and her telling of the story sounded as if she had to instruct the incompetent medical staff on how to keep the baby alive. Ditto with a belligerent passenger who got put off a ship while the media ran his daughter's rant about what a horrible thing had been done to this "pensioneer".

 

What did somebody in the media say recently? "If it rings true, if it feels true, it is true"?

 

Yes, having sludge come up my cabin shower drain would really be a downer. But I don't think that I would be screaming for compensation unless there was no apparent effort to fix it.

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So my google home page gave me this gem:

...

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If their stories aren't read they will go away. So much "media" writes to generate clicks. (<--- period) The bias is to what gets them noticed. Your link generated income for them (and no royalty to you I assume :)

 

Question the story source, maybe change your news provider (home page). Try Bing (interesting photos) or Mozilla (a few targeted and very interesting story links. No fluff for me yet anyway)

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If their stories aren't read they will go away. So much "media" writes to generate clicks. (<--- period) The bias is to what gets them noticed. Your link generated income for them (and no royalty to you I assume :)

 

Question the story source, maybe change your news provider (home page). Try Bing (interesting photos) or Mozilla (a few targeted and very interesting story links. No fluff for me yet anyway)

 

 

 

The google home page on my I phone automatically populates based on my search history and then moves the topics I click on up the page. I do a lot of google searches on various cruise topics. But the overwhelming majority of news articles are negative, so that’s what I get on my home page.

 

 

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Did you watch the video? I would be unhappy with what they were offered also. If that is happening, I expect a new room $300 and about 50% off my next cruise. They are wrong about the sewage. Anyone with an RV knows that gray water can be just as bad as sewage though, and if anything is bubbling from my shower drain upwards, you have about an hour to fix it or find me a new room and unless one of those options happens, I am going to be a permanent fixture at guest services.

 

 

 

Had 4 motor homes over 16 years and never once did I feel gray water anywhere near close to black.

 

 

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The google home page on my I phone automatically populates based on my search history and then moves the topics I click on up the page. I do a lot of google searches on various cruise topics. But the overwhelming majority of news articles are negative, so that’s what I get on my home page.

 

 

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Oops, I should have noticed the ad from Forums referencing your iphone added to the bottom of the post. I do so little on my phone I forget at times. I mostly use it as a phone, sort of a neo-luditte. I far prefer the control of my PC browsers. I use three flavours, each with specific purposes. Get less googley targeting unless wanted. But that is just me, I know I am not, err, normal. I'd prefer "usual"

 

I am sure most of all news served up is negative. I know the news tile on my tablet has little positive news; especially on politics, gossip, entertainment and other such "news". Tech and science topics do skew more to a great new hopeful thing than the bad. Probably has little following.

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Considering who the audience is for this tabloid newspaper, it's not surprising that recognizing truth or facts is not part of their core values.

 

So only sources that conform to your views are deemed reliable? Sounds awfully presumptuous...

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So only sources that conform to your views are deemed reliable? Sounds awfully presumptuous...

 

Talk about being "awfully presumptuous". Seems like you are quite adept at passing judgment on others if you don't like what they say. :rolleyes:

 

I do not rely on sources that habitually post inaccurate or deliberately deceptive information. I don't rely on sources that have proven they can't be trusted to post the truth or the facts. I don't rely on sources that have an agenda and will resort to lies to achieve it.

 

Not sure why I should be insulted for using good judgment. :confused: :mad:

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