Hell Hath No Fury Like the Media Unmasked
October 10, 2005
by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor
People used to say that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. But we are seeing an even higher order of fury demonstrated by a news media finally caught up in their excesses and failures in the continuing reporting of the impact of Hurricane Katrina in September.
Were print and broadcast media misled by some of their sources? Sure!
But that was because the reporters and their editors already had a theme in place for their ongoing coverage and they focused on the most lurid reports and images.
The media largely focused on the failures of government and even volunteers from all across the country who came to help. The reporters tried to justify the looting of entertainment equipment by equating such thefts with the taking of survival necessities by starving, homeless people. They fueled the ravings of conspiracy theorists who blamed the shortcomings of government at all levels on racism and class indifference.
New Orleans became their central focus to the almost complete exclusion of what happened in Alabama, Mississippi, the rest of Louisiana, and even earlier in Florida. In fact, as the almost incessant New Orleans epic continued, the media glossed over Hurricane Ophelia’s impact on the coasts of the Carolinas, and while they prepared for another major disaster story when Rita headed for Texas and Louisiana, they quickly lost interest.
Truth Seeps Out
In the meanwhile, the truth started to seep out regarding Katrina’s impact on New Orleans and neighboring parishes. The failures of local and state government suddenly came into focus as the media discovered that they had been so eager for a scandal story that they listened to the wrong lies.
The general media largely ignored the story of the minority of the New Orleans police who either went AWOL during the height of the hurricane or joined in the looting. They also ignored the later order to confiscate the guns of law-abiding survivors, and seem at this point to be overlooking the story of the successful Second Amendment Foundation and National Rifle Association lawsuit to stop the city’s gun grab. (See Page 1.)
But, because they went wrong, the media has begun to provide realistic numbers about casualties and in doing so has turned their fury on New Orleans officials.
People like New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, who previously had been portrayed as a heroic figure who had been abandoned by the federal government, suddenly became a subject of furious criticism. Examples of his failures before the hurricane hit are now coming into focus.
Because Nagin has tried to shift the blame for all his failings on others, his former friend, the Police Superintendent Eddie Compass III has quit.
The hearings on Capitol Hill continue even as this column is written, but the media has unleashed its fury on its former sources, and unless it is distracted by a bigger story, will continue to try to save its own reputation at the expense of officials it once lionized.
Media Admissions
Associated Press (AP) reported from New Orleans on Sept. 27 that “some reports of violence in the city were exaggerated.”
The same day, The Los Angeles Times reported from Baton Rouge, that “Katrina had taken a toll on the truth and news accuracy.”
To its credit, The LA Times reported that rumors supplanted accurate information and the media magnified the problem. “Rapes, violence and estimates of the dead were wrong,” the newspaper said.
CNN interviewed people the same day that provided new and unflattering information about Nagin.
The AP story began by noting that on Sept. 1, with desperate Hurricane Katrina evacuees crammed into the convention center, Compass reported: “We have individuals who are getting raped; we have individuals who are getting beaten.”
Five days later, he told Oprah Winfrey that babies were being raped. On the same show, Nagin warned: “They have people standing out there, have been in that frickin’ Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people.”
The ugliest reports—children with slit throats, women dragged off and raped, corpses piling up in the basement—soon became a searing image of post-Katrina New Orleans, AP reported.
The stories were told by residents trapped inside the Superdome and convention center and were repeated by public officials. Many news organizations, including AP, carried the witness accounts and official pronouncements.
But now, AP reported, a month after the chaos subsided, police are re-examining the reports and finding that many of them have little or no basis in fact.
They have no official reports of rape and no eyewitnesses to sexual assault. The state Department of Health and Hospitals counted 10 dead at the Superdome and four at the convention center. “Only two of those are believed to have been murdered,” AP said.
One of those victims found at the Superdome appears to have been killed elsewhere before being brought to the stadium, according to AP.
Sally Forman, a spokeswoman for Nagin, said the mayor was relying on others for his information about conditions at the evacuation sites. “He was listening to officials, trusting that information they were providing was accurate,” she said.
Body Count
A week after the floodwaters poured into the city, an Arkansas National Guardsman told The Times-Picayune of New Orleans that soldiers had discovered 30 to 40 bodies inside a freezer in the convention center’s food area. Guardsman Mikel Brooks told the newspaper that some of the dead appeared to have met violent ends, including “a 7-year-old with her throat cut.”
When the convention center was swept, however, no such pile of bodies was found.
More recent official assessments conclude that newspapers and television exaggerated criminal behavior in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, particularly at the overcrowded Superdome and Convention Center.
The Times-Picayune on Sept. 26 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.”
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.
The wild rumors filled the vacuum and seemed to gain credence with each retelling. Follow-up reporting has discredited reports of a 7-year-old being raped and murdered at the Superdome, roving bands of armed gang members attacking the helpless, and dozens of bodies being shoved into a freezer at the Convention Center.
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.
