Rules I follow when it comes to MSM:
if their lips are moving -- don't believe nothing til its verified.
if it's a MSM written Media -- only blank pages are truth, until its verified.
Posted on 09/27/2005 11:36:58 AM PDT by andyk
NEW ORLEANS
On Sept. 1, with desperate Hurricane Katrina evacuees crammed into the convention center, Police Chief Eddie Compass reported: "We have individuals who are getting raped; we have individuals who are getting beaten."
Five days later, he told Oprah Winfrey that babies were being raped. On the same show, Mayor Ray Nagin warned: "They have people standing out there, have been in that frickin' Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people."
The ugliest reports _ children with slit throats, women dragged off and raped, corpses piling up in the basement _ soon became a searing image of post-Katrina New Orleans.
The stories were told by residents trapped inside the Superdome and convention center and were repeated by public officials. Many news organizations, including The Associated Press, carried the witness accounts and official pronouncements, and in some cases later repeated the claims as fact, without attribution.
But now, a month after the chaos subsided, police are re-examining the reports and finding that many of them have little or no basis in fact.
They have no official reports of rape and no eyewitnesses to sexual assault. The state Department of Health and Hospitals counted 10 dead at the Superdome and four at the convention center. Only two of those are believed to have been murdered.
One of those victims _ found at the Superdome _ appears to have been killed elsewhere before being brought to the stadium, said Bob Johannessen, the agency spokesman.
"It was a chaotic time for the city. Now that we've had a chance to reflect back on that situation, we're able to say right now that things were not the way they appeared," said police Capt. Marlon Defillo.
Sally Forman, a spokeswoman for Nagin, said the mayor was relying on others for his information about conditions at the evacuation sites. "He was listening to officials, trusting that information they were providing was accurate," she said.
To be sure, conditions at both sites were chaotic. Water was rising around the Superdome, home to 20,000 evacuees. Toilets were backing up, garbage was rotting, fights were breaking out. Food was in short supply at the convention center, where about 19,000 people took shelter from the rising waters. The temperature was climbing. The elderly and very young were desperate for food, water and medicine.
Police said they saw muzzle flashes at the convention center, and a National Guard member was shot in the leg when an evacuee tried to take his gun.
A week after the floodwaters poured into the city, an Arkansas National Guardsman told The Times-Picayune of New Orleans that soldiers had discovered 30 to 40 bodies inside a freezer in the convention center's food area. Guardsman Mikel Brooks told the newspaper that some of the dead appeared to have met violent ends, including "a 7-year-old with her throat cut."
When the convention center was swept, however, no such pile of bodies was found.
Lt. Col. Jacques Thibodeaux of the Louisiana National Guard said reports of violence at the Superdome and the convention center were overblown. He was head of security at the Superdome and led the 1,000 military police and infantrymen who went in to secure the center on Sept. 2.
"The incidents were highly exaggerated" _ the result of fear and hopelessness, he said. "For the amount of the people in the situation, it was a very stable environment."
Thibodeaux said his guard unit received no reports of rape.
Bill Waldron, a homicide detective from Florida in New Orleans for a murder trial, was stuck in the convention center until Sept. 1. He said he saw a couple of fights between young men, but "no murders, no rapes." He said that he did see people dying, but that those deaths were most likely a result of the heat and lack of water.
"People were wanting just some type of authority to come in and say, `Hey, this is what's going to happen,'" Waldron said. "People were scared."
New Orleans District Attorney Eddie Jordan said officials at the morgue in St. Gabriel have identified four apparent homicide victims from the city. All were shot and all were adults. Police arrested one person on suspicion of attempted sexual assault but received no official reports of rape.
Judy Benitez, executive director of the Louisiana Foundation Against Sexual Assault, cautioned that it might be too soon to say whether there really were rapes at the evacuation sites. Because the evacuees and any perpetrators have been scattered across the country by Katrina, and now Hurricane Rita, victims may come forward later, she said.
"It is extremely difficult to get good statistics about rape under normal circumstances, and these are certainly not normal circumstances," she said.
Bill Ellis, a folklorist at Pennsylvania State University, said rumors in an environment like that at the evacuation centers are to be expected, given the frightening circumstances and paucity of authoritative information.
"Rumors become improvised news. You become your own anchorman," he said.
The chaos also seemed to affect some reporters and editors, said Kelly McBride, who teaches ethics to journalists at the Poynter Institute, a journalism research and education center in St. Petersburg, Fla.
"You get so hung up as a reporter on what the big picture is that you use generalizations that become untrue," McBride said.
I think the truth will eventually distill itself out and we'll find that what the MSM reported is one third to half right. Not all wrong and not all right either. And yes they played the nation and world for suckers, fanning lots of Bush hatred and race dividing which they love because it means $$$$$$.
I'm pretty careful about putting something that bluntly on somebody, but the exaggerations sure gave fuel to any fear or suspicions people might have had.
Of course you do...all Pretty Boy Kappas got to represent!
Rescue workers were shot at and stores and homes were looted- bunches of innocent people were scared to death of getting shot at- for a couple of days and had to endure a different American than most people here can even imagine. ( Nothing says depressing like seeing crowds of National Guard in riot Gear in your neighborhhod- at your favorite newstand.)
Why are so many people willing to look past that?
I saw this same phenomena go on in the media after the LA riots -when we read how it wasn't so bad afterall.... Yeah right.
No.
It's just that I never see an end to this stuff.
The distrust and resentment seems worse than when I was a boy.
There are all sorts of racism. I've never really thought it was an end all...
But....I have learned that how folks view racism regardless of which race is "racsiming" the other is dependent on thier own perspective as much as the truth.
I really wanted to stay away from this crap. I have avoided these threads for a few weeks but...it's not mystery to anyone here where I stand on this topic.
There is no reason to believe that all the "murderers" were black in a city that is known for drug addicts and pushers of both colors.
One of the things we are going to have to remember about all of this is, when the media is right there, and they haven't seen it themselves and easily could, don't believe it.
Honestly? I don't know who to believe at this point. I freely admit that I believed a lot of what was going around about the Superdome and the Convention Center being violent during Katrina. Hey, I fell for it, because the sources seemed like they should be reasonable ones--you'd think the police chief and the mayor would know what was going on in their own city, right?
So now we're hearing, basically, "well, it was uncomfortable, but it wasn't Lord of the Flies there." But why would that Arkansas National Guardsman lie about seeing those bodies? Maybe some of those early stories did have a basis in fact? Who started the rumors?
Hell, man, at this point, I think the only certain casualty in New Orleans was the truth.
}:-)4
Why?
Rules I follow when it comes to MSM:
if their lips are moving -- don't believe nothing til its verified.
if it's a MSM written Media -- only blank pages are truth, until its verified.
Come to think of it, the very question is IRRELEVANT in the context of this thread which is about the MSM lying.
Forgot to address to you...Dang helmet and sweat in muh eyes!
THere are people with all kinds of agendas and who are playing all kinds of games- disrupting these threads and calling out people for fights- where they are going to be defensive. I know real life isn't that bad- there are some hot spots in our country that really need some help- and those places are inner cities. It has as much to do with the "leadership" and politicos as it does with the welfare programs and the low expectations of the citizens in those places.
No there is no end to it tho- I used to be idealistic as well- but there is no future in it. :] Hey wardaddy- it will be alright- in time.
:] I didn't think you had Cy.
I didn't answer no I have not because it's not true. Hence, you cast a wrong assumption upon me. The question is pointless anyway since you are the self appointed goddess of social work and you're older and supposedly know better and no matter what I say, you'll find some smarmy response to put me in my place. Duly noted though. I'm off this thread.
I know riots- not from what I have read by the MSM- from living thru them.
So now you are insulting me and running off again?? Don't worry someone over at Clownposse will cut and paste it for you so you can read it there. I like how you are using all of their buzz words now. Y'all got quite a tight group don't you?
Sorry for the thread crumbs....must be tired.
Whatever happened in NO, it was not good. Eventually, the truth will surface and then we will know the facts.
Glad you're still here...riots are always ugly.
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