Posted on 09/06/2009 9:38:36 AM PDT by Islander7
Three months after Hurricane Katrina, the Sun Herald described in a front-page editorial “Mississippi’s Invisible Coast.” It spoke of the fact that the further removed in time we were from Katrina, the less attention outside news reports paid to the plight of our region and its people, and the more it seemed history was being rewritten in a way that would render South Mississippi no more than a postscript to the greatest natural disaster to befall the nation.
Already the trend had begun for the national media to cover South Mississippi’s part of the story with an add-on phrase to the news of Katrina and its affects on New Orleans. We had been reduced to four words — “and the Gulf Coast.”
That trend has become virtually universal now, and during the recent fourth anniversary media assessment of Katrina, the people of “the Gulf Coast” have receded into the hazy status of non-people whose story is untold.
This is troubling to the courageous people whose world was swept away on Aug. 29, 2005, and who have valiantly sought to recover and rebuild while struggling to survive.
Of course it is not possible to watch all of the national coverage of Katrina, but a substantial sampling clearly shows that New Orleans is THE story. It is troubling for those on our Coast to hear how New Orleans was “Ground Zero” for Katrina, or to see images of destruction in Pass Christian, Bay St. Louis or Biloxi shown while a broadcast focuses on New Orleans.
I will repeat the fact that Katrina’s greatest winds and storm surge of more than 30 feet obliterated the Mississippi Coast and destroyed virtually all of the homes and businesses along its shore.
The terrible tragedy that befell New Orleans was the consequence of levee failures impacted by Katrina. Both New Orleans and Mississippi were the victims of the powerful storm, and both have tried to survive the years since with the individual efforts of our two states and the help of a generous nation.
Could the neglect of media to tell our story derive from the belief that everything is fine here, and there is nothing else to tell? It is possible, but were that the case you would think that would actually become the big story — how this poor little state was able to clean up, rebuild and get on with the business of life so quickly.
Wouldn’t that become the model for all other disasters, the living textbook on how to get such a big job done in so short a period?
In fact, a good investigation of our situation would objectively show that a pretty good job has been done. It is a success built upon a long history of cleaning up and rebuilding after many hurricanes, good regional cooperation between local governments, and excellent leadership, from the governor’s office to city halls across the Coast.
Also, it is in the DNA of local folks to tackle these problems with a strain of personal responsibility and energy that is among the best you will find anywhere.
OK, so the fourth anniversary has come and gone, and the Mississippi Coast is more invisible than ever in the media conversation about Katrina.
Let us be hospitable and issue an invitation to reporters and newspapers and networks to come down next year for fifth anniversary coverage. Come stay a while and examine and report their findings as objective observers on the state of recovery in both places, New Orleans and the Mississippi Coast.
The fifth anniversary will offer a good benchmark to gauge how far each state has come, and, to the extent you discover a distinction in the progress between the two, it will be interesting to probe the reasons for the differences, and to report the combined lessons learned.
But beyond the studies of progress, it seems to many in our part of the world that there is an obligation on the part of the national media to get the story right in both breadth and depth.
There have been notable allies over the years, real advocates for our story — we salute Robin Roberts, Shepard Smith, Anderson Cooper and Kathleen Koch, reporters with roots in Mississippi — but over the sweep of time the media have told our story incompletely, if at all, and in doing so have really missed an important chapter in the history of the nation.
After the storm, this newspaper begged for help, we shouted for attention, we did all we could to draw attention to our urgent plight and to gain support for our needs.
Today we are not asking for volunteers to come or for more financial or material assistance, but what we do fervently wish is that history be recorded fully and accurately. Today’s reporting — print, broadcast and online — will become tomorrow’s history texts, and the evolving Katrina narrative is one of neglect toward our story and is increasingly likely to create a false or incomplete history of the great hurricane and its aftermath.
This is a simple appeal to the better instincts of journalism that an effort be made to expose truth, and fairly report the fullness of human pain and triumph in Mississippi and of our stewardship of the national generosity that was given us.
That seems a modest request.
So, before next August 29, come if you can, and let America see the people of our Coast through the lens of your cameras, the ink of your words and the sound of your voice. There is a wonderful story waiting to be heard and told.
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We've come a long way, but there still a long way to go.
I thank God daily for the good people of this nation who simply showed up and set to work. Tens of thousand came, month after month, year after year.
God Bless you each and every one.
If not for the church groups of every denomination, we could not have survived this.
Thank You! Whoever you are and wherever you are, a heartfelt Thank you!
DNA?
I worked some of the recovery in Gulfport-Pascagoula and I’ll vouch that Hwy 90 to I-10 was devastated.
And the residents didn’t whine a fraction of the losers of New Orleans.
Tiner was always good at what he did. However, in that article he forgot about communities in Alabama that were devastated by the storm and which never got national attention, not even in 2005.
As for New Orleans, well, it looks like their next Mayor will be white so they may have a brighter future ahead.
If the Dimms didn’t make N.O. people helpless non-entities by keeping them sub-serviant on freebies, housing, food stamps and welfare checks they would’ve done what working people do everywhere, got the hell out without waiting for Uncle Sam!
History books about Mississippi are crap.
You want a decent two volume set, buy McLemore’s from the last 60s (I think..maybe early 70s)...
very few books or movies about Mississippi are fair....My Dog Skip maybe...The Reivers too
it’s more of a cultural issue than simply Democrat politcs
I camped with my sister in Grand Bay for 5 months. Bayou La Batre got creamed. I hauled supplies there and to Bay St Louis the first couple of weeks after the storm. Bay St Louis / Waveland were simply removed from the planet. I can't make myself go back, it was that bad.
Mobile was hit pretty hard too, as were many small towns and communities in Louisiana. Members of my extended family were without power or phone for 2 months, in Jones County; 120 miles inland.
NOLA became 'the story' because it gave the leftists media something to beat GWB over the head with.
Ask the folks in Houston their opinion of the NOLA evacuees.
In Tiner's defense, he is writing for the people of the MS Coast; his market.
My Dog Skip . . . . loved that movie.
I treasure my heritage. I believe Southerners are more firmly rooted in the history of our nation than most inhabitants of large urban areas. I’m sure the same is true for most of the rest of fly-over country, as well. Thus we have FReepers from every nook and cranny of the USA.
Thankfully, I got my history in the late 50s and throughout the 60s. But mostly from family who lived it.
What a jokester. I mean really, you're talking about Democrat Party Anti-Bush Template Number One. You might as well tell the culture that water is dry.
Poor Stan.
He just couldn't bring himself to address the real reason for "the neglect of the media to tell our story (vice the never ending 'New Orleans was devastated by Katrina' meme)".
Yo Stan, here's a clue: It doesn't fit the leftist media's agenda (but then, you knew that already didn't you Stan).
If you're going to write a hand wringing article Stan, at least have the honesty to tell the truth about the leftist media's agenda while you do it.
I spent four nights in a quanset hut at Bay St. Louis with a church group in early April of ‘07. It was still just beginning to be cleaned up and rebuilt. The devastation was amazing. The only sign of the former buildings was often just a poured concrete slab that remained after all else washed away.
I drove over to Biloxi the first time after the storm that November. By the time I arrived at my destination I, as were my parents, was in tears. It was absolutely heartbreaking. Now you go over, and these hard working Mississippians, who never held their hand out or got on TV crying about how bad they had it, have brought back a newer, better Biloxi. Yes, there are still signs & scars of that awful day but they didn’t sit on their asses with their hands out - they got out there and starting working to rebuild. Keesler AFB sustained close to $1B (yes, billion) in damages and is still not completely rebuilt. You folks need to come on down and visit - the people are great, we’ve got casinos there and then you can go to Ocean Springs and “get fed at the Shed” bar-b-q and blues joint!
Funny thing is that when I went there the National Guard was running check points and I recognized one of the units from my time in Iraq and they recognized the logo on my company truck! It was like a reunion even though we’d never actually met.
In Pascagoula I stood where pavement had been scoured from the road at 29 feet above sea level and water lines on the buildings were about hip high...so the force of the surge was like a tsunami and settled about 33 high long enough to form stains on brick.
I chose to spend time in Pascagoula after the storm because my parents had lived in an apartment complex just three blocks from the beach and I am very familiar with the area. The apartment complex where they lived was built in the 60’s and withstood the storm with virtually no damage at all except from the flooding.
To this day the thing that sticks out in my mind about the time I spent there was how hospitable the people were who had lost almost everything. They would never fail to insist I take a glass of ice water from them!
I spent a day or two in New Orleans and the difference in the attitudes couldn't have been more striking!
The other thing I remember was how many church vans I saw, from churches all over the US. I have no idea how those people took care of themselves for the weeks they were there without water and electricity, but everywhere you went there were vans of people, frequently youth, doing all sorts of physical labor.
My family moved to Grand Bay in Sept. of 1958. She lives in Mobile now, but all of her children and their children still live in Grand Bay. What a surprise to see Grand Bay mentioned, especially by someone who knows someone there!
I used to work in the watermelon fields and at the cucumber shed on Hwy. 90, and paid for my high school class ring picking up pecans. Then I got a real job with the local well driller. Then right at the end of my senior year I got the glamor job of working for the crop duster who came down from Montgomery every season.
When I was in high school there the school bus drivers were all kids from the school. They paid them $90 a month to drive the bus. They used kids who lived near the end of the routes so the could keep the bus overnight and be near the route the next day.
Thanks for jogging the memories!
Self-righteous MSM prigs seem to think of MS and AL as nothing but back-water swamps, each with a little man-made corridor that somehow reaches the gulf! They hate the off-shore drilling rigs as well as the refineries and chemical companies of Biloxi and worship and defend the wretched excess of the welfare state in LA!!!
The MSM hates the best parts of it's own nation!!! The parts that stimulate the economy that they are so reliant on for advertising dollars!!!
They insult the common man/woman of non-metro-sexual America as well as all of "fly-over" country!!!
Then they yell to high heaven that the country is "polarized!" Well, I say they are Bi-Polar, which is just another supposedly politically correct description of CRAZY!!!
I spent some of my winter refuge time in Ocean View, if it weren’t for weather anomalies I would have retired their.
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