Hurricanes Katrina & Rita: Mainstream Media Biggest Casualty of All

By: Steve Yuhas

When Hurricane Katrina came roaring ashore near New Orleans devastating the Gulf Coast from eastern Louisiana to western Alabama there were about 1,000 people killed as a result of the storm and violence in the streets was purported to be out of control.  Indeed, Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans told a national television audience on Oprah that there were people being raped and murdered right under the nose of National Guard troops at the “frickin’” Superdome and convention center.  There were casualties of Hurricane Katrina, but perhaps the most identifiable casualty is another chink in the armor of every news outlet and the mainstream media for their "reporting" of the events.

When reporters from television are sent to be in the path of a monster storm like Katrina no expense is spared: nobody knows exactly where the storm will come ashore so “team coverage” through the entire cone of possibility is created by people who have often never set foot in the places they are covering.  When the hurricane ultimately comes ashore there are reporters standing in the driving rain with wind gauges in order to get the all important “I’m one brave reporter” shot and anchors in New York are always on alert to issue a cautionary “be careful” safely from their dry pulpits thousands of miles away. 

Hurricane Katrina was no different and just like any other hurricane we all witnessed the obtuse coverage of the winds, driving rain and reporters telling us the patently obvious “it is raining and very windy out here.” (okay, okay - Governor Blanco and President Bush said Katrina was not just like any other hurricane, but you get the point)

Following Katrina, though, America witnessed a new low in mainstream journalism as rumors became fact and facts became blurred as if there was no way to do what a reporter is supposed to do: attribute a story to a source and verify that the story was true before one goes to air or print with it.  It is not as if reporters were fighting the fog of war, but to listen to the excuses for the bad coverage today one would think that reporters were covering a war when, in fact, they were only covering a hurricane and were simply too lazy to be real reporters.

All journalistic rules were blown away along with the homes along Mississippi’s Gulf Coast because the 24/7 media stations needed stories and nothing makes a better story than out of control crime, thousands of bodies and rapes happening right under the nose of the National Guard and local law enforcement.

Since Katrina we’ve watched the media coverage of what was going to be another monster storm, one time Category 5 Hurricane Rita threatened the populated and vulnerable Texas coast, but ultimately hit the low populated border area and eastern Louisiana.  The coverage was the same with the idiotic reporters standing on the beaches or parking structures trying to shield themselves from the driving rain, but this time they were more careful of what they were reporting and it could be because they got it so wrong in Katrina.

During the days following Katrina the 24/7 news cycle on cable news and since network news often dovetails on the successes of cable news every news network in America began going down the road of reporting rumors and untruths as fact and failed many times over to not only attribute the story to the source, but to verify things that would have been easily verifiable.  The mainstream media became a casualty of Hurricane Katrina not because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but because they became indolent correspondents who had no tree to hang on to during ferocious winds.  Instead of hanging onto good reporting and facts, they hung on as rumors spread and then broadcasted them to a captivated public waiting to hear the worst news possible coming out of New Orleans.

Reporters told the world that rapes and murders were taking place in the Superdome and that there were hundreds of bodies stacked in a makeshift morgue.  Instead of reporters asking to see the bodies to verify that they were there, people took to the airwaves and told the world that they were.  The same thing happened with looters, shootings that were allegedly taking place and rapes of women and children that were ostensibly happening right under the noses of public safety officials and the National Guard.  It turns out that none of these things were verified and violence in New Orleans during Katrina was the same as violence during any other typical week, but to keep the story going reporters from virtually every network spread the rumors that were moving around New Orleans to an anxiously waiting world for public consumption.

Public officials like the mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, got in on the act by spreading the same rumors and sometimes adding to them.  As time went by the typical suspects began showing up and doing some more rumor milling, Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton along with members of Congress like Maxine Waters and William Jefferson, and by the time all was said and done New Orleans turned into a big game of telephone where what happened and what was reported in the press looked nothing like what was really going on in the hurricane zone. 

Reporters blame the problem on the lack of communication, but was it really too difficult when a supposed National Guard troop came up and said something like “we have hundreds of bodies in the Superdome” for a reporter to ask to see them?  One wouldn’t think so, but journalism simply doesn’t matter during disasters because as it stands today a sensational and sexy story mattered more during Katrina than reporting the facts.

And reporters and journalists wonder why Americans trust them less than even car salesmen or lawyers?  One word: Katrina.

So morbid were the tales that as panic increased people began to believe the rumors and the more rumors spread; so much so that Louis Farrakhan got in on the action by declaring that he had evidence that the levees that were only expected to be able to handle a Category 3 hurricane were not breached or undermined because an almost Category 5 storm raged ashore, but because the federal government blew them up.  His rumors have been repeated over and over on every network and in most major print organizations because they were sensational and hard to believe, but instead of waiting for fact or proof when Farrakhan spoke – the media dutifully reported on his absurd accusation. (I guess wearing a bow tie and being surrounded by ghetto thugs makes a person credible)

Congress got in on the act by holding hearings on what went wrong during Katrina.  The federal response was slow, at least according to people who want to score political points (Republican and Democrat alike), but the notion that the problem during Katrina was limited to federal response by an organization that depends mostly on volunteers and 5,000 staffers is absurd.  State and local officials are responsible for the safety of their citizens and now there is a push in Congress and the federal government to put large scale disasters in the hands of the federal government.  We saw how well that worked when Ann Coulter described the fact that the first thing firefighters and rescue workers did when they showed up to help was to sit through an eight hour course about how not to sexually harass someone they were going to rescue.

I’m sure the people of New Orleans are thankful that firefighters and emergency personnel were sitting in a classroom learning not to tell a dirty joke or feel someone up while citizens were fighting scorching temperatures on their rooftops waiting for rescue.  That story continues to be ignored by the mainstream press and even with that people are still looking to the feds for answers to the questions.

Hurricane coverage is sexy: winds, driving rain, flying debris and destruction, but in the aftermath of the horrible media coverage by everyone in and after Katrina perhaps it is time to remind the people of the media why they are there – to report the facts!  Maybe having television reporters holding onto a palm tree and falling down just as the cameras start to roll in a driving rain is good for ratings, but what happened following Katrina by reporters and public officials spreading rumor as fact and only inflaming an already out of control situation should never happen again. 

I wouldn’t want Congress to investigate a dog-napping and certainly don’t want them involved in whether or not media coverage was good or bad because of the First Amendment right of the press to make fools of themselves, but the coverage post-Katrina was horrible and it is time that the mainstream media take the blame for reporting rumors instead of verifying facts before they let the world hear that hundreds of people were dead in the Superdome and that snipers were roaming the streets of the Big Easy.

There were many casualties of Hurricane Katrina, but in the long run outside of the cities destroyed by the storm itself the biggest victim is the news media for once again not doing their job.  One would have thought that people would have learned after CBS's Memogate scandal that reporting is taken seriously by many people in the public, but they didn't.  The media is as inept today as they were before Memogate, but this time more than an election hung in the balance - this time it was the lives of thousands of people and at some point the media will have to take responsibility for bad reporting.

I am not going to hold my breath, though, but if I turn blue it is good to know that a fireman and rescue person is trained not to sexually harass me as they save my life.

Steve Yuhas is a columnist and radio talk show host on KOGO AM 600 based in San Diego.  He may be reached at steve@steveyuhas.com or www.steveyuhas.com