Lies & Distortions: MSM Made A Mess Of Katrina Coverage
September 27, 2005
http://66.154.39.102/archives/2005/09/27/173834.php

The title is the understatement of the year. While I was working in the Astrodome, Kit was keeping me up-to-date on what was going on in the media. Some of it raised my ire to fever pitch (as displayed in my curse-laden rant about the race-baiting), but most of it left me scratching my head.

The rumors of the atrocities being committed in the Superdome were too far-fetched, unsubstantiated, and gruesome to be believed. I personally hated the thought of all blacks being painted with such a sordid brush. That's not because I was in some kind of naive denial, but because I simply didn't believe it of the people of New Orleans - or anyone, for that matter! Plus, I was among the Superdome evacuees everyday and every night, and everyone told me their stories. It was bad and pitiful and scary, but if the rapes and murders were going on like Nagin and his police chief sobbed to a teary Oprah, there is NO WAY there wouldn't have been evidence of such.

I remember having that exact conversation with Kit, as she filled me in on the MSM's frenzy. I had the phone pressed to my ear to try and hear above the constant din inside the Astrodome. I kept saying, "No. No way!" as Kit enumerated one rumor after another that was being reported by the press as FACT. I didn't believe it then, and now we all know it was BS.

The MSM is now forced to report on it's own irresponsibility in sensationalizing Katrina's aftermath. An article yesterday in the Seattle Times, Reports Of Anarchy At Superdome Overstated states: "The vast majority of reported atrocities committed by evacuees at the Dome — murders, rapes and beatings — have turned out to be false, or at least unsupported by any evidence." Really?? How false?

How many dead bodies in the Superdome?

Reported: 200
Actual: 6 (4 died from natural causes, 1 from a drug overdose, and 1 apparent suicide)

How many murders inside the Superdome & Convention Center?

Reported: 40-50
Actual: Superdome = 0, Convention Center = 1

    Orleans Parish District Attorney Eddie Jordan said authorities have only confirmed four murders in the entire city in the aftermath of Katrina — making it a typical week in a city that anticipated more than 200 homicides this year.

The MSM rumor mill, at its peak, was churning out "news" such as:

    ...news of unspeakable acts poured out of the nation's media: People firing at helicopters trying to save them; women, children and even babies raped with abandon; people murdered for food and water; a 7-year-old raped and killed at the Convention Center.

    Police, according to their chief, Eddie Compass, found themselves in multiple shootouts inside both shelters, and were forced to race toward muzzle flashes through the dark to disarm the criminals; snipers fired at doctors and soldiers from downtown high-rises.

    In interviews with Oprah Winfrey, Compass reported rapes of "babies," and Mayor Ray Nagin spoke of "hundreds of armed gang members killing and raping people" inside the Dome. Other unidentified evacuees told of children stepping over so many bodies "we couldn't count."

    The picture that emerged was one of the impoverished, overwhelmingly African-American masses of flood victims resorting to utter depravity, randomly attacking each other, as well as the police trying to protect them and the rescue workers trying to save them. The mayor told Winfrey the crowd has descended to an "almost animalistic state."

Look at who is starting and perpetuating the rumors and mass panic - the police chief and ever-incompetent mayor!! I have to ask- is this a case of racial self-hatred? Why was it so easy for those guys to feed hysterical rumors of "animalistic" black evacuees? I hardly need to say that if they had been white, such generalizations would've gotten them arrested for HATE SPEECH!

Let's take a look at the feeble CYA excuses from both Compass and Nagin, for the mass mis-characterization of their own people. Keep in mind the damage has already been done, but this is what they offer in the way of explanation:

    "The information I had at the time, I thought it was credible," Compass said, admitting his earlier statements were false. Asked the source of the information, Compass said he didn't remember.

    Nagin frankly acknowledged he doesn't know the extent of the mayhem that occurred inside the Superdome and the Convention Center — and may never. "I'm having a hard time getting a good body count," he said.

    Compass conceded that rumor had overtaken, and often crippled, authorities' response to reported lawlessness, sending badly needed resources to situations that turned out not to exist.

Much needed resources were diverted on wild-goose chases - really. As if there weren't enough problems, the city leadership created more, vastly worse conditions, because of their own asininity. With such feeble-minded nincompoops in charge of New Orleans, is there any question at all why chaos reigned? And I can't wait to hear what Oprah has to say about her overt help in the creation of an "animalistic" stereotype of her own people in the aftermath of Katrina. That deserves an Emmy, don't ya think?

    Military, law-enforcement and medical workers agree that the flood of evacuees — about 30,000 at the Dome and an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 at the Convention Center — overwhelmed their security personnel.

    The 400 to 500 soldiers in the Dome could have been easily overrun by increasingly agitated crowds in the Dome, but that never happened, said Col. James Knotts, a mid-level commander there. While the Convention Center saw plenty of mischief, including massive looting and isolated gunfire, and many inside cowered in fear, the hordes of evacuees for the most part did not resort to violence.

Oh well. Nevermind the truth. I have to add, that at this point in the story, while National Guardsmen were patrolling the Superdome, they were being vilified by the press as randomly shooting people in the streets. I heard one rumor in the Astrodome about a 16 year old boy approaching some soldiers for help and being shot in the head for his trouble. Why is such a lie so easy for the media to believe and report? Because, in the mass media's value system, American soldiers are murderers and criminals. This goes back to the hysterical reporting of so-called tortures and murders - but that's another story we've already covered ad nauseum.

Let me tell you what the evacuees in the Astrodome were saying about the media's coverage - they started to believe it. I can't tell you how many times I heard someone curse Bush for his "hatred of blacks" (thanks for that crap legacy, Kanye) or mutter about the country's "abandonment" of our poor blacks. It made me sick to my stomach, but with the way the media was pounding away at those themes, it was impossible to refute!

In an article today in the LA Times, Katrina Takes A Toll On Truth, News Accuracy confirms more of the media's irresponsibility in reporting unconfirmed rumors as FACT.

    The National Guard spokesman's [MAJ Ed Bush'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."

So, let's play the blame game for a sec. Who does the media blame for their shoddy, sensationalistic rag reporting? Why, the telephones, of course:

    Journalists and officials who have reviewed the Katrina disaster blamed the inaccurate reporting in large measure on the breakdown of telephone service, which prevented dissemination of accurate reports to those most in need of the information. Race may have also played a factor.

I emphasized that last sentence because it was slipped in there as if the authors almost wanted the reader to overlook it. But that single statement is probably the most truth that's come out of the media in a looooooong time. Yes, of course, race played a factor. Racial prejudice is what lay at the root of the media's creation of the myth of blacks in New Orleans as out-of-control "animals". The reports coming out of New Orleans highlighted the racial prejudice of the reporters THEMSELVES! All that race-baiting they were doing, "Bush hates blacks", etc., was really nothing more than a sanctimonious cover for their own deeply-seated prejudices!

And in the case of Nagin, Compass, and Oprah - what is their excuse? What made it so damn easy for them to instantly believe those grossest of rumors, when someone like me [a bad old Whitey] heard them and immediately said, "No way!"? Don't even get me started on asshats Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, and all that stupid talk about the holds of slave ships. All those self-anointed black leader from Oprah to Compass to Jackson need to look deep inside at the ugly truth - they dealt their own people mortal PR wounds. They, themselves, set their own "movement" back about 200 years. How much sunshine and daisies will they have to produce to overcome the animalistic stereotype of their own people that they created out of thin air?!!!!

    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."

    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.

Yes, yes, yes - we got that now. But... what of the liberal media itself? What does their overtly sensationalized reporting say about them?

    Hyperbolic reporting spread through much of the media.

    Fox News, a day before the major evacuation of the Superdome began, issued an "alert" as talk show host Alan Colmes reiterated reports of "robberies, rapes, carjackings, riots and murder. Violent gangs are roaming the streets at night, hidden by the cover of darkness."

    The Los Angeles Times adopted a breathless tone the next day in its lead news story, reporting that National Guard troops "took positions on rooftops, scanning for snipers and armed mobs as seething crowds of refugees milled below, desperate to flee. Gunfire crackled in the distance."

    The New York Times repeated some of the reports of violence and unrest, but the newspaper usually was more careful to note that the information could not be verified.

    The tabloid Ottawa Sun reported unverified accounts of "a man seeking help gunned down by a National Guard soldier" and "a young man run down and then shot by a New Orleans police officer."

    London's Evening Standard invoked the future-world fantasy film "Mad Max" to describe the scene and threw in a "Lord of the Flies" allusion for good measure.

How on earth does the media think they have an ounce of credibility with anyone anymore? They got caught up in their own hype and frenzy! It was an ugly self-perpetuating cycle.

I saw it happen again with the non-stop Rita coverage. There was that same breathless, eager overtone to ALL the reports of Rita's path of destruction. I know - the media lives for this stuff. Death and destruction are the money shots for them. They're always thinkin', "Show me the money!"

But for you liberal moonbats out there - doesn't this stop you short when you listen to the news reports coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan?! I mean, c'mon - you simply cannot believe the absolute crap the media reports as truth.

The media's hidden biases have been exposed by Katrina the way nothing else could have. In the case of the New Orleans coverage - Katrina exposed the majority of the media as racist bastards, at a time when they were calling the rest of red America "racists". Is that a generalization? Hell yeah, it is! And a fair one, too- supported by the actions and shenanigans of the media itself!