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September 02, 2005
Katrina and the Media: All Wet?
"Journalists Begin to Fear for Their Own Safety in New Orleans." From Editor & Publisher:
On Thursday afternoon in New Orleans, a 'Times-Picayune' reporter and a 'New York Times' photographer witnessed a deadly shootout, got roughed up by police, hid in fear, and now plan to flee the city to save their lives.
That awful situation helps explain why the growing number of poor Americans is largely ignored by mainstream media. Reporters and editors don't live in those neighborhoods. They visit them, only briefly, under duress. And who can blame them?
The horrifying aftermath of Hurricane Katrina has resulted in the kind of video that I associate with third-world countries, not the United States. Today the BBC has shown crowds of sweaty, hungry, thirsty and mostly poor people surrounded by filth and destruction. A few women, weeping, have begged for help, begged not to be left to die like some others who survived the flooding but waited in vain for rescue. The government isn't God but people are dying. How are TV broadcasters responding?
I wish I knew. I live abroad and don't get network TV news. But I do get CNN, which is transmitting CNN America. There the gloves are off. On a taped special this morning, Anderson Cooper was asking hard questions on behalf of the victims of the hurricane. At first I was struck by how blunt and direct he was, so like British newscasters and so unlike most American ones. Then I realized I was comparing this story to the mostly meek coverage of Irag. Since this particular disaster occured in the U.S., maybe Cooper believes he can afford to be blunt and ask why American families are going without water. Maybe he doesn't have to fear, at least for the moment, that his patriotism will be challenged over aggressive reporting.
As it happens, there's a continuing shortage of safe drinking water in Iraq, a problem that's existed for some time. That's not the only thing that links New Orleans to Bagdad, according to a piece by Will Bunch in Editor & Publisher (thanks, Tim):
New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA. ...... Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.
Newhouse News Service, in an article posted late Tuesday night at The Times-Picayune Web site, reported: "No one can say they didn't see it coming. ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."
In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness.
On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."
Not everybody buys that argument (In a letter to Editor & Publisher, Professor Larry Schweikart of the University of Dayton says it's "absurd to think that because we spend money that is legitimate by constitutional standards -- for national defense against terrorists in Iraq -- we 'don't have enough' for levee projects.") Should be interesting to see how the mainstream news outlets frame the issue. Bloggers, sez the Financial Times, are all over this question and so are the Democrats, according to the Washington Post.
That might spur some he-said/she-said type of supposedly balanced reporting. After residents are no longer in immediate danger, I'd like to see a well-reported, detailed and accurate analysis of the response to Katrina by local, state and national governments both before and after the hurricane arrived. American taxpayers and, especially, the victims of Katrina deserve that much.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at September 2, 2005 07:18 AM