[yoe]

"Leonard Downie Jr., the Washington Post's executive editor, says the paper's reporting was hampered by communications problems caused by the hurricane. "Unfortunately, where our communication was good was where it wasn't flooding," he says. "All the media were hampered by the fact that people on the ground didn't know what happened."

If people on the ground did not know what happened or was happening, why print or say anything as fact? Filling air time and filling print space can get you in a whole lot of trouble.

[Cboldt]

If people on the ground did not know what happened or was happening, why print or say anything as fact? Filling air time and filling print space can get you in a whole lot of trouble.

The point is that people on the ground were making reports, and the media grossly misapprehended the significnace of the reports.

Article Published: Saturday, September 10, 2005 - 2:04:52 PM PST

Though several government agencies were certain by 6 p.m. on Monday that New Orleans' levee system had given way, no official screamed for urgent help when daylight hours might still have permitted a rescue effort.

By that time, water had been pouring from the damaged 17th Street Canal for perhaps as long as 15 hours. A National Guard Bureau timeline places the breach at 3 a.m. Monday and an Army Corps of Engineers official said a civilian phoned him about the problem at 5 a.m., saying he had heard about it from a state policeman. But officials sounded no alarm until Tuesday morning, after the city had been flooding for at least 24 hours. ...

Perhaps the most startling failure came in the reaction or the apparent lack of one from federal, state and local officials to the discovery that New Orleans' fragile levee system had collapsed hours before Katrina even made landfall. Engineers and emergency planners had warned for years that such a collapse would be catastrophic for the below-sea-level city and the people who lived there.

Yet reports of the breach failed to spark action. The commander of the New Orleans district of the Army Corps of Engineers, Col. Richard P. Wagenaar, finally confirmed that a breach had occurred between 3 and 6 p.m. Monday and reported it to headquarters in Vicksburg, Miss.

The mayor had told reporters during a 1 p.m. news conference that there was an unconfirmed report of a levee break, but he quickly turned to other topics. Shortly before nightfall, a FEMA official, back from a helicopter survey of the city, reported the breach to his colleagues in Baton Rouge, then broke the news to the mayor.

Still no concerted effort was made to reach the thousands of people whose houses were rapidly filling with water. As many crawled from their flooded bedrooms into attics, and some hacked their way onto their roofs, much of the world went to sleep thinking that New Orleans had survived the worst.

Not until Tuesday dawned, and morning news show anchors expressed surprise that the once-dry streets around them were filling with water, did the magnitude of the disaster become evident.

http://www.presstelegram.com/Stories/0,1413,204%257E21474%257E3049016,00.html

The National Weather Service published an official bulletin at 8:14 AM on Monday, regarding a breach in the Industrial Canal levee. The media misapprehended the significance of that official report, as well.

The New Orleans office of the National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning at 8:14 a.m. Monday, saying "a levee breach occurred along the industrial canal at Tennessee Street. 3 to 8 feet of water is expected due to the breach." The media largely ignored it. The NWS's source of information was ham-radio transmissions by the Orleans Levee Board, a city-state agency. The 8:14 warning was the last one the local office issued before its communications were cut off. The statement was repeated only once more, at 10:52 a.m., by the National Weather Service office in Mobile, Ala.

Yet some government officials certainly appeared aware of a breach and said so on network television. At 7:33 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 29, Gov. Kathleen B. Blanco said on NBC, "I believe the water has breached the levee system, and is -- is coming in."

In its Aug. 29 online edition, the New Orleans Times-Picayune first reported a breach in the 17th Street Canal levee at 2 p.m., citing City Hall officials. No other major news outlets picked up that report. The newspaper's Web site also reported massive flooding near the Industrial Canal, writing that city officials "fielded at least 100 calls from people in distress in the Lower 9th Ward and eastern New Orleans." At about 2:30, it reported that the Industrial Canal had been breached, citing a National Weather Service report.

WSJ.com - Why Levee Breaches In New Orleans Were Late-Breaking News