The Media Finally Starts Looking Inward Regarding Post-Katrina Problems

It's about time. The media is finally starting to do a little introspection regarding the post-Katrina aftermath in New Orleans and the role they may have played in compounding the problems. The Los Angeles Times has an article today which addresses some of these issues and starts out like this:

Maj. Ed Bush recalled how he stood in the bed of a pickup truck in the days after Hurricane Katrina, struggling to help the crowd outside the Louisiana Superdome separate fact from fiction. Armed only with a megaphone and scant information, he might have been shouting into, well, a hurricane.

The National Guard spokesman's accounts about rescue efforts, water supplies and first aid all but disappeared amid the roar of a 24-hour rumor mill at New Orleans' main evacuation shelter. Then a frenzied media recycled and amplified many of the unverified reports.

"It just morphed into this mythical place where the most unthinkable deeds were being done," Bush said Monday of the Superdome.

His assessment is one of several in recent days to conclude that newspapers and television exaggerated criminal behavior in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, particularly at the overcrowded Superdome and Convention Center.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune on Monday described inflated body counts, unverified "rapes," and unconfirmed sniper attacks as among examples of "scores of myths about the dome and Convention Center treated as fact by evacuees, the media and even some of New Orleans' top officials."

Indeed, Mayor C. Ray Nagin told a national television audience on "Oprah" three weeks ago of people "in that frickin' Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people."

Although not addressed specifically in this article, this last excerpted paragraph demonstrates another big problem in the aftermath of the hurricane - the failure in local leadership. Do you recall hearing any wild stories coming out of Mississippi or Alabama? No. Why not? The local leaders were competent and didn't spend their time whining or passing on every rumor that came their way. When you're a leader you have to be able to control those impulses that might make you say or do things that a leader shouldn't say or do (insert your Bill Clinton intern joke here).

Some of the hesitation that journalists might have had about using the more sordid reports from the evacuation centers probably fell away when New Orleans' top officials seemed to confirm the accounts.

Nagin and Police Chief Eddie Compass appeared on "Oprah" a few days after trouble at the Superdome had peaked.

Compass told of "the little babies getting raped" at the Superdome. And Nagin made his claim about hooligans raping and killing.

The report also makes an interesting claim that race played a part in the spread of rumors and wild charges, but doesn't go on to tell us why:

Times-Picayune Editor Jim Amoss cited telephone breakdowns as a primary cause of reporting errors, but said the fact that most evacuees were poor African Americans also played a part.

"If the dome and Convention Center had harbored large numbers of middle class white people," Amoss said, "it would not have been a fertile ground for this kind of rumor-mongering."

Now why would blacks be more likely to spread and believe these rumors than middle-class whites? Could it be that for decades black "leaders" have been telling their followers that the white man is out to get them (especially white Republicans) and therefore for people who have bought into that nonsense there were no rumors too ridiculous to believe? I don't know, but that seems as good a reason as any to me.

Either that or Amoss is implying that there was an intellectual disparity between the poor blacks and middle class whites, and I don't think he wants to go there - at least not if he wants to continue to live in New Orleans. That would be the height of political incorrectness.

It's nice to see the media doing a little introspection, though I'm sure in the end they'll exonerate themselves as always of any blame for the confusion following the storm.