Posted on 08/26/2006 2:32:31 PM PDT by mcg2000
"And it was in a CNN story where we first saw it. Miles O'Brien was standing in front of the Beau Rivage doing a stand up," said City of Biloxi spokesman, Vincent Creel.
The CNN reporter told his audience that 30 people died in the St. Charles apartment complex on the beach in Biloxi.
Concrete columns and an elevated slab are all that's left of the St. Charles condominiums on Highway 90 in Biloxi. But there were certainly not 30 deaths there.
"We never recovered a single body from that location," said Harrison County Coroner Gary Hargrove.
Hargrove also heard reports of the 30 deaths. He immediately dispatched a search team to St. Charles.
"The minute they reported back and said, no there are not any, I went immediately to the news media and said it's not a true story, we didn't lose thirty of our people in that apartment complex," said Hargrove.
Still, the stories persisted and spread.
Soon, not only CNN, but also Fox News, ABC and others were reporting the "30 deaths" at a Biloxi apartment complex.
Next door to St. Charles condos is the destroyed Sadler Apartments. A neighbor told me the name had been changed to Quiet Water Beach Apartments. No deaths there either, but it was widely reported on the Internet that 30 people died there.
The erroneous report may have started in the Harrison County Emergency Operations Center. During the early hours of Katrina rescue and recovery, EOC spokesman Jim Pollard was asked by a newspaper reporter, "What are you hearing?". His response, "We're hearing that 30 people may have died in an apartment complex", was printed in a story the next day.
"To me, I think it was probably the most infamous urban legend to come out of the storm here in Biloxi," said Vincent Creel.
nice research department at the other networks as well.....
Dear Lord protect us from the tyranny of the MSM.
You can lump Fox News in with the MSM on this one, they were just as bad, if not worse, than the rest.
I believe they ALL get their news from the wires. They just report what they are handed. Reminds of the miners who were lost and reported all to be alive.
We had the same problem here on FR with some of our so-called, self-described "journalists" reporting with hyperbole and hysteria rivaling Geraldo and Shep.
Yo, Shep! While you were out on that bridge every day, did you bother helping any of those folks? No? Why not?
Geez...what is wrong with you people????.....Dan Rather stated it best..."fake but accurate!"....how dare you question the msm...they know almost everything...the only ones who know more are the libs in Hollywood!
Of course not. President Bush, through his advisor Karl Rove, had Halliburton deliver the bodies to the Jews, who then used the blood to make matzo!
Alll CNN had to do to get the real story was to interview people who were actually there in the dome:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1475433/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1476080/posts
But, but, but the lies make for more exciting reporting.
It's a strange scenario when the most credible national television news comes from a network called "Comedy Central."
I've wondered about that for some time. Did we ever have fair and impartial journalism, or did we just not know in the past? Any historians out there who could answer that?
Yeah, that's my point. I think that the news media has never been populated by journalists in shining ink; they have always been scandal-mongers working hand-in-hand with the covertly powerful, and almost never for the benefit of the rest of us.
Perhaps just a wild suggestion....but what if...during the next major hurricane...one or two of us drove down, and sat to prepare for a CNN invasion. As soon as the hurrican runs through, and we know CNN is in the neighborhood...we go out to the truck and get Miles to interview us. We stand in front of some house destroyed, and tell them it was our residence....weeping the whole time of course....and talk about our dead dog that we left...how FEMA never warned us about this hurricane...and tell Miles that it was global "something" (not warming or cooling...but something)...and blame Bush on the air. It goes out over CNN, and you go back up 100 miles...check into hotel and watch how Miles was made a fool of. We'd want a tape of it for FreeRepublic of course....the fool's network at work.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.