Posted on 10/02/2005 2:35:48 AM PDT by mal
Media deserve blame for New Orleans debacle
And the ones who fed them some of the b*ll s**t like Ray Nagin. Mustn't forget that lying SOB.
"The chief of police confirming the story? Who provided the original report if not the chief of police?"
Original reports were from eyewitnesses at the Superdome. Check back and read the stories. Here is one example:
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/9/1/230732.shtml
The story about a 'pile of bodies' came from a National Guardsman.
"And why not go to the Dome?"
They did.
There is a pretty good summary of the situation here:
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/orl-pubcol10020505oct02,0,3755121.column?coll=orl-opinion-headlines
"News organizations regularly receive bogus information -- from people who, themselves, have been deceived as well as from those who hope to deceive others. Journalists' job is to sift through debris to find -- and publish -- the truth.
They do that by finding others who have witnessed the same phenomenon, checking information against official records and seeking out official confirmation.
Performing those tasks in post-Katrina New Orleans proved an unusually difficult challenge. Power was out. Telephone service had broken down. Police had walked off the job. Many public records, like most everything else, were under several feet of water.
Still, for anything they couldn't slog through water to see for themselves, journalists went to eyewitnesses and government officials for corroboration."
LOL - perfect!
I understand that the MSM could not get everything right. But it now turns out that they got most of the big story wrong. Moreover, the over-riding theme was that poor, black New Orleans residents were rioting, robbing, raping and murdering each other. AND, this is was because FEMA, part of George Bush’s Federal Government didn’t give a damn because the people of New Orleans were black..
There are two things wrong with this theme. First, it was wrong with regards to the people, second, it was wrong with regards to FEMA.
One of the reasons was that the MSM is basically racist. They BELIEVE that black people, given the right circumstances will revert to savagery. Randall Robinson even accused them of reverting to cannibalism. Thus they had no buffer against believing reports of mass murder and rape. According to the MSM, blacks may not eat watermelon and friend chicken (that would be racist), but they rape, murder and riot at a moment’s notice.
Second, they were ready to believe the mayor and chief if police of New Orleans when they came out with the most outrageous claims because it fed into their belief that FEMA was designed to swoop in and defend against natural catastrophes. In other words, they were stupid. And when the mayor accused the feds of failing the people of New Orleans, they were ready to believe. It also fed into the theme that Republicans don’t care about black people and since over half of New Orleans is black, the federal government, run by Republicans, was lackadaisical about rescuing the people of New Orleans.
You can defend the MSM all you want, but the truth is they botched the Katrina story. I don’t care where they got some of their untruths; they failed to provide the truth. That means they failed. Excuses may be part of a confession of failure, they are not fine as part of a media denial of their failure. Especially when their lies and distortions libeled some good people and are in the process of re-writing the history of the biggest natural disaster to hit the US in the last century.
By the way, I would think that one of the first things the MSM would examine is why or how the reports they broadcast to the nation were so wrong. Why did the doc in the Newsmax story (via Fox) provide incorrect information about the number of murders and rapes? Note I did not say he lied, just why was he wrong? If you were part of the news business, would that not be part of your "lessons learned" after-action analysis? The military does it. Is the news business less professional than the military?
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
Ping
Just as a follow up to this, I did mail to Mark Steyn with some similar criticisms as I posted here which he posted on his site with the following reply:
"MARK REPLIES: Well, of the three examples cited in that paragraph, two did in fact occur: cops did smash the Wal-Mart cabinet to steal the stuff, gangs did fire on the children’s hospital and on rescue teams. And the information for the third example – events in the Convention Center – came from Police Chief Compass, now relieved of his duties. But, yes, you’re right. I helped peddle false information in that paragraph, too. And I’m annoyed about that – not because, when a mayor and police chief state something as fact and it’s universally reported as fact, I should have been able to rely on it. But because I failed to appreciate in those first days that the combination of factors – the utter incompetence and corruption of local officials, the media’s urge to stick it to Bush – would combine to give us one of those stories where everything subsequently turns out to be bunk. I’ve been alert to it in exotic climes ever since the brutal Afghan winter and the brutal Jenin massacre. But I failed to spot it coming closer to home. I apologise."
http://www.steynonline.com/index2.cfm?edit_id=66
Well done! Do you know that he responded to your particular comment?
Yes, it's a reply to, and printed with, the mail I sent. Credit to him for posting and responding to the criticism, of course.
For folks inclined to media-bash, there's no winning. If the rumors of chaos had emerged on the Internet and had not been reported in the MSM, there would have been a wave of Freepers -- and you know who you are -- accusing them of whitewashing the story to cover for Nagin. Check the threads on the OU bomb if you have any doubt about that.
Nonsense. A cursory Google News search found a story on most major news sites, many of them picking up a Sept. 27 AP story on the official declaration that the rumors of widespread killings were false. The Guardian (UK) had stories as early as Sept. 6 indicating that some of the more lurid stories were fishy. The Dome and the Convention Center were fully evacuated by Sept. 5, and officials were already reporting that they hadn't found all the murdered bodies they expected.
I thought he would. I wanted to tell you to write to him, but I forgot. He can't answer every criticism but he's quite candid on his website. (And in his columns if he feels particular need to address it. He's frequently chastised himself over false predictions.)
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