Mikel Brooks is part of a two-man team putting a new roof on Yolly Seedtibood’s old Chopsticks restaurant in Jacksonville, but three months ago, the Searcy resident, an Arkansas National Guardsman, was falsely quoted as saying 30 or 40 people were killed at Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. A now discredited and fired reporter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune wrote a sizzling first-person account that included great drama, but apparently not much fact — a story that was picked up and repeated around the world by organizations including CNN. But...