Posted on 09/27/2005 6:16:22 AM PDT by Chickensoup
Edited on 09/27/2005 6:24:48 AM PDT by Sidebar Moderator. [history]
Katrina Takes a Toll on Truth, News Accuracy Rumors supplanted accurate information and media magnified the problem. Rapes, violence and estimates of the dead were wrong.
BATON ROUGE, La.
(Excerpt) Read more at drudgereport.com ...
Houston Media had a panic attack with Rita, which helped no one.
Remember the crack baby epidemic? BLAAAAAAAAAAAAK crack babies? Even though there were many more white babies addicted to crack and cocaine the media focused on BLLLLLLLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK babies.
One thing for sure, they had better communications than anyone else....
Better communications is not necessarily helpful communications. I think that the government has relied on the press to disemminate emergency information. I am not sure that some of the press is reliable, and disasters have become places to grind axes and make careers.
What amazes me is that we as a population are letting this slide.
The first reporters of these non-existent atrocities need to be identified. Public officials who made sensastional or inflammatory comments and statements need to be held accountable.
For the life of me, I cannot figure out why we as a nation are not outraged...Incensed at this.
Allegations of media bias begin to sound like beating the same dead horse, no matter how true it is. I feel like we conservatives have been crying foul on the media for so long, now that they do something completely unconscionable, we've become desensitized to it and fail to build this issue into what it really is: Unequivocable proof that the major media (including Fox News) is either completely incompetent at best and treasonous at worst.
The nanny state has produced a class of people who cannot function on their own. They have no sense of, or desire to accept personal responsibility for their own welfare, safety or preparedness.
It was shattering to witness the rugged individual American who once was, but now denigrated into what I witnessed in a major disaster. I have again been forewarned and proved to me, depend on no one but yourself for all you and yours needs in emergencies. If I then fail, I have no one to blame but myself, for the government cannot possibly be of assistance for days, if not weeks or months after the event.
"For the life of me, I cannot figure out why we as a nation are not outraged...Incensed at this."
Because due to years of training and indoctrination, we have the attention span of gnats. ;)
I rarely take a news story at face value, especially if it's a big, overblown story. Come back in a day or so to hear the real story after the hype has died down.
My point was, that while we have heard that many govt agencies could not communicate well, the media, using sat phones, had no problem.
You are not only partly correct, you are 100% correct. I for one, am likely among those you have referenced, and for that I apologize.
I succumbed to the MSM hype of the moment, when I should have known better and reacted accordingly.
This was a shoddy, sorry day for American journalism. Yet, a month later, they turned around and did the same thing with Hurricane Rita.
The news industry is beyond redemption.
Pleeeeeezzz, journalists are people with agendas out to make a buck. It's as simple as that.
I would like to say something please.
I find it disturbing that the President has to oversee Hurricanes and weather related problems, due the incompetence of crack head Mayors and Governors. I think President should have stepped back a little during Rita why should the press dictate what he does. I hope next time he leves it to the elected useless officials of the state!
Now, if it had been Clinton in office, he would have been hailed as a tough-as-nails, rool-up-your-sleeves, hands-on kinda guy who was sensitive to the needs and pain of the poor and down trodden. But since it was George Bush, he was merely a distraction and getting in the way of critical FEMA operations with his photo-ops and entourage.
Perhaps this comment is “Breaking News” for some Freepers. The Main Stream Media (MSM) loathes all things President Bush, Law Enforcement, & the US Armed Forces. Yes, even the beloved FoxNews reporters are spawned from the same cesspool as the remaining MSM.
The disgusting treatment of the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) Officers by the MSM is just another example. NOPD has its problems, but let’s not forget the NOPD has far more good Police Officers on the job, than the bad. But in the eyes of the MSM, most NOPD is bad.
For example, MSM gleefully reported that many NOPD were "AWOL" at the end of work days. However, these Officers were simply showering, then sleeping overnight at a friend or relatives home; in lieu of a sleep over in an overcrowded NOPD station. Not there overnight = AWOL in MSM reports.
Most telling, each morning those AWOL NOPD Officers returned to staging, and were back on the job assisting us out of town rescuers, instead of jumping in front of a news camera for a sound bite. Hardly the sign of an AWOL workforce. Even retired NOPD Officers returned to the job and worked with us, simply to assist us with locating their citizens in need.
And many of those NO streets we so flooded, street signs & home addresses were under water. There were numerous cell phone reports of people trapped at specific addresses. Without the NOPD in our boats, out of town rescuers would have taken much longer to find those addresses, search, and rescue people. The sort of rescue where burglar bars are removed from upper floor windows to rescue people with no where else to go. Out of food, out of water, and nearly out of hope. Twelve days after the storm.
In any disaster, the first thing which breaks down is communications. And Katrina was the largest natural disaster in our Nation's history. The vastness of the overall destruction still remains even beyond my belief.
I can't stand it anymore; I am at the point where I don't even care about the Hurricanes. Sounds terrible because I do care about the poor people but I can't watch the news anymore.
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