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Viewpoint: Has Katrina saved US media?
BBC News ^ | Monday, 5 September 2005 | By Matt Wells

Posted on 09/05/2005 2:02:41 AM PDT by F14 Pilot

As President Bush scurries back to the Gulf Coast, it is clear that this is the greatest challenge to politics-as-usual in America since the fall of Richard Nixon in the 1970s.

Then as now, good reporting lies at the heart of what is changing.

But unlike Watergate, "Katrinagate" was public service journalism ruthlessly exposing the truth on a live and continuous basis.

Instead of secretive "Deep Throat" meetings in car-parks, cameras captured the immediate reality of what was happening at the New Orleans Convention Center, making a mockery of the stalling and excuses being put forward by those in power.

Amidst the horror, American broadcast journalism just might have grown its spine back, thanks to Katrina.

National politics reporters and anchors here come largely from the same race and class as the people they are supposed to be holding to account.

They live in the same suburbs, go to the same parties, and they are in debt to the same huge business interests.

Giant corporations own the networks, and Washington politicians rely on them and their executives to fund their re-election campaigns across the 50 states.

It is a perfect recipe for a timid and self-censoring journalistic culture that is no match for the masterfully aggressive spin-surgeons of the Bush administration.

'Lies or ignorance'

But last week the complacency stopped, and the moral indignation against inadequate government began to flow, from slick anchors who spend most of their time glued to desks in New York and Washington.

The most spectacular example came last Friday night on Fox News, the cable network that has become the darling of the Republican heartland.

This highly successful Murdoch-owned station sets itself up in opposition to the "mainstream liberal media elite".

But with the sick and the dying forced to sit in their own excrement behind him in New Orleans, its early-evening anchor Shepard Smith declared civil war against the studio-driven notion that the biggest problem was still stopping the looters.

On other networks like NBC, CNN and ABC it was the authority figures, who are so used to an easy ride at press conferences, that felt the full force of reporters finally determined to ditch the deference.

As the heads of the Homeland Security department and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) appeared for network interviews, their defensive remarks about where aid was arriving to, and when, were exposed immediately as either downright lies or breath-taking ignorance.

And you did not need a degree in journalism to know it either. Just watching TV for the previous few hours would have sufficed.

Iraq concern

When the back-slapping president told the Fema boss on Friday morning that he was doing "a heck of a job" and spent most of his first live news conference in the stricken area praising all the politicians and chiefs who had failed so clearly, it beggared belief.

The president looked affronted when a reporter covering his Mississippi walkabout had the temerity to suggest that having a third of the National Guard from the affected states on duty in Iraq might be a factor.

It is something I suspect he is going to have to get used to from now on: the list of follow-up questions is too long to ignore or bury.

And it is not only on TV and radio where the gloves have come off.

The most artful supporter of the administration on the staff of the New York Times, columnist David Brooks, has also had enough.

He and others are calling the debacle the "anti 9-11": "The first rule of the social fabric - that in times of crisis you protect the vulnerable - was trampled," he wrote on Sunday.

"Leaving the poor in New Orleans was the moral equivalent of leaving the injured on the battlefield."

Media emboldened

It is way too early to tell whether this really will become "Katrinagate" for President Bush, but how he and his huge retinue of politically-appointed bureaucrats react in the weeks ahead will be decisive.

Government has been thrown into disrepute, and many Americans have realised, for the first time, that the collapsed, rotten flood defences of New Orleans are a symbol of failed infrastructure across the nation.

Blaming the state and city officials, as the president is already trying to do over Katrina, will not wash.

Black America will not forget the government failures, and nor will the Gulf Coast region

Viewpoint: US shamed Beyond the immediate challenge of re-housing the evacuees and getting 200,000-plus children into new schools, there will have to be a Katrina Commission, that a newly-emboldened media will scrutinise obsessively.

The dithering and incompetence that will be exposed will not spare the commander-in-chief, or the sunny, faith-based propaganda that he was still spouting as he left New Orleans airport last Friday, saying it was all going to turn out fine.

People were still trapped, hungry and dying on his watch, less than a mile away.

Black America will not forget the government failures, nor will the Gulf Coast region.

Tens of thousands of voters whose lives have been so devastated will cast their mid-term ballots in Texas next year - the president's adopted home state.

The final word belongs to the historic newspaper at the centre of the hurricane - The New Orleans Times-Picayune. At the weekend, this now-homeless institution published an open letter: "We're angry, Mr President, and we'll be angry long after our beloved city and surrounding parishes have been pumped dry.

"Our people deserved rescuing. Many who could have been, were not. That's to the government's shame."


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Government; News/Current Events; US: Louisiana; US: Mississippi
KEYWORDS: alabama; black; bush; dems; katrina; louisiana; media; mississipi; moonbatalert; nixon; white
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To: Hess28

I did but they didn't publish!


21 posted on 09/05/2005 2:46:41 AM PDT by F14 Pilot (Democracy is a process not a product)
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To: F14 Pilot

They screen them I guess. Bloody BBC.


22 posted on 09/05/2005 2:48:50 AM PDT by Hess28
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To: F14 Pilot

"As President Bush scurries back to the Gulf Coast, it is clear that this is the greatest challenge to politics-as-usual in America since the fall of Richard Nixon in the 1970s."

Ohmigosh.

If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times: avoid hyperbole!


23 posted on 09/05/2005 2:50:11 AM PDT by jocon307
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To: F14 Pilot
Tens of thousands of voters whose lives have been so devastated will cast their mid-term ballots in Texas next year - the president's adopted home state.

The president's adopted home state?????????????????????????

24 posted on 09/05/2005 2:51:43 AM PDT by bad company (what the hell happened to the 11th commandment?)
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To: uncitizen; All
How 'bout "schoolbusgate"?

For those who haven't seen the pictures: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1477527/posts?page=31#31

And the press release by the Governor of Louisiana on Thursday Sept. 1st regarding the use of school buses (three days after the buses were under water!!!)

http://www.gov.state.la.us/Press_Release_detail.asp?id=991

Press Release Date: 9/1/2005

Governor Blanco Announces Executive Order

Baton Rouge, LA— Governor Blanco today announced the following

Executive Order:

Executive Order NO. KBB 2005- 31- provides that pursuant to the Louisiana Homeland Security and Emergency Assistance and Disaster Act, R.S. 29:721, et seq., grants emergency powers to the governor, where, she has in consultation with school superintendents, utilized public school buses for transportation of Hurricane Katrina evacuees. As you are aware most public school districts will not begin school until Tuesday, September 6th 2005.

25 posted on 09/05/2005 2:54:20 AM PDT by ajolympian2004
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To: Hess28

I send them the link to this thread!


26 posted on 09/05/2005 2:57:12 AM PDT by F14 Pilot (Democracy is a process not a product)
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To: F14 Pilot

Three days after the hurricane!?!?!?!?!?

WOW! Blanco and Nagin are going down for this. You see, competant leaders would have executed that order three days BEFORE the hurricane.

Your right, SchoolBusGate is just beginning. Let's see how the media responds.


27 posted on 09/05/2005 3:02:20 AM PDT by Hess28
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To: Hess28

Media outlet are all disgusting freaks


28 posted on 09/05/2005 3:06:02 AM PDT by F14 Pilot (Democracy is a process not a product)
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To: Hess28

The BBC screen all posts, but must "print a representative sample". Now obviously this gives them a lot of room to advance their own agenda, but if we send a lot of messages then the minions behind the message board will quickly get what is going on.

Keep writing to the BBC. The truth will break through as long as we keep telling it.


29 posted on 09/05/2005 3:11:15 AM PDT by agere_contra
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To: F14 Pilot
The BBC is in for more major disappointment...

The BBC has no concept of states or state government. They think the Fed runs everything down to your banana curl like they do there.
30 posted on 09/05/2005 3:12:17 AM PDT by DB (©)
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To: agere_contra

agreed


31 posted on 09/05/2005 3:16:28 AM PDT by F14 Pilot (Democracy is a process not a product)
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To: agere_contra
There are some pro-Bush posts up there, so it really is a matter of representation.

Here's what I left in the BBC queue:

I'm British and even I know this is nothing to do with Bush. Governor Blanco and Major Nagin failed to evacuate New Orleans at the three-day mark. They have been desperately blaming everyone but themselves ever since. And the BBC seems to be on their side. Why is that?

32 posted on 09/05/2005 3:18:15 AM PDT by agere_contra
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To: agere_contra

Ahhh, aI remermber in my youth, how revered the BBC
was for it's integrity and honesty...how sad that
it has become so diseased, that it;s reputation
is changing, to reflect it's new management and
socialist pervert "writes". of being a pile of
Pigshyte yellow journaists.

The BBC we once knew, is llong dead. All that
is left, is a leperous leftist walking corpse.


33 posted on 09/05/2005 3:22:32 AM PDT by NickatNite2003
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To: NickatNite2003

And the maggot "writers" that are feeding off of it.


34 posted on 09/05/2005 3:24:42 AM PDT by NickatNite2003
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To: F14 Pilot
No.

As the truth about what happens gets out each minute, hour and day after all of lies and smearing of our president, the MSM has wounded itself again.

Below is an example of how reality is on the internet and lies and spinning are coming from the MSM. More photos re the buses and the short distance from the N O's bus yard to the dome.

Thanks to Paleo Conservative for compiling this sequence of very damning photos:


35 posted on 09/05/2005 3:29:37 AM PDT by Grampa Dave (Jamie Gorelick is responsible for more dead Americans(9-11) than those killed in Iraq.)
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To: Grampa Dave

1.2 miles and three days to get there. well done Mayor.


36 posted on 09/05/2005 3:31:55 AM PDT by Hess28
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To: tommix2
This brazen propaganda is so ridiculous that it may well back fire on the MSM.

The liberal lefties of the BBC are at it again ... they hate Tony Blair & they hate GWB ... it would make them very happy indeed to see one or both gone. The BBC is populated by foppish British socialists left over from the 1950's.

37 posted on 09/05/2005 3:35:17 AM PDT by BluH2o
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To: F14 Pilot
Business as usual for the pompous, leftist BBC.

It is amazing that the MSM can not put aside their hatred for Bush, and work to rally the morale of people.
38 posted on 09/05/2005 3:38:47 AM PDT by AlexW (Reporting from Bratislava)
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To: F14 Pilot

BBC venting against America. Nothing new except that they're actually gloating about Kristina. No words exist to describe the shame they should feel. And don't.


39 posted on 09/05/2005 3:41:08 AM PDT by hershey
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To: F14 Pilot
Amidst the horror, American broadcast journalism just might have grown its spine back, thanks to Katrina.

Unreal. I have seldom been more pissed! The truth is quite the opposite!

40 posted on 09/05/2005 3:42:35 AM PDT by beyond the sea ("I was just the spark the universe chose ....." --- Cindy Sheehan (barf alert))
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