This really isn't a story about the media.
No-one could seriously expect the media not to report the story of people being raped at the Superdome when that had been confirmed by the Police Chief of the city. If they hadn't reported it, people on blogs and internet forums would have been screaming the place down demanding to know why the story was being supressed.
Likewise, the 'possible death toll of 10,000' (originally came from David Vitter I believe and was picked up by Ray Nagin), was always reported as being conjecture and who had said it - those stories were not 'lies'.
Now, lots of people said things that they shouldn't have (ok, lets be fair, they were under a lot of pressure, etc). Shooting the messenger doesn't achieve much.
"Shooting the messenger doesn't achieve much."
It does when the messenger has been lying to us for years, decades even. If I ran one of the broadcast news organizations, heads would roll. Starting with Smith and Rivera at Fox.
When reporters became "journalist", we stopped getting WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE AND HOW. Now we get blather and speculation.
ABCNNBCBS&FOX are the prime offenders on TV and God only knows which newspapers, if any report the facts anymore and radio is as bad or worse than TV & the "newspapers. We don't get "news' anymore, we got opinions.
I agree with much of what you have said..but the WAY the message was presented was as bad as the content. The MSM think that they did a WONDERFUL job in their coverage, only to now realize they were so wrong. Additionally, their reporters were so breathless and "sure" of what they said rather than being more professional, calm and objective. THEY became part of the story. THEY actually took what was said at face value. They imply that Bush is a "racist," but who reported rapes, killings, gang wars, looting, and fights without double checking their sources or checking out the Superdome themselves? Who were the racists, really? If no media were actually in the superdome as suggested here, they were doing just as a gossip rag would do. There were no "heroes" of the media during those days, though they like to present themselves as such.