Perhaps the most obvious media screwup in my lifetime.
Some bad, and yes some very very bad stuff happened in the aftermath of Katrina — but it appears that we were misled on exactly how bad things got.
To start with this story from the LA Times
Quote:
“No air conditioning, no sewage … it was not a nice place to be. All those people just in there, they were frustrated, they were hot. Out of all that chaos, all of these rumors start flying.”
Louisiana National Guard Col. Thomas Beron, who headed security at the Superdome, said that for every complaint, “49 other people said, ‘Thank you, God bless you.’ ”
Endquote.
Wow.
Here’s another from the same article Quote:
Ed Bush, of the National Guard, said that reports of corpses at the Superdome filtered back to the facility via AM radio, undermining his struggle to keep morale up and maintain order.
“We had to convince people this was still the best place to be. What I saw in the Superdome was just tremendous amounts of people helping people.”
Endquote.
Of course. Fox & CNN can’t sell toilet paper by saying it, but you know this is true — at a very basic and fundamental level most Americans are decent human beings who do rise to the occasion. (Yes, I do actually believe that.)
Here’s another story along the same lines from
NOLA.com.
Quote:
“Some of these guys look like thugs, with pants hanging down around their asses,” Maj. David Baldwin said. “But they were working their asses off, grabbing litters and running with people to the (New Orleans) Arena” next door, which housed the medical operation.
End
Sheesh. It’s pretty obvious why CNN/Fox/etc told the “story” that they did. Perhaps it’s easier to do the job of reporting when you don’t bother to check the facts? Perhaps it’s easier to sell soap and cars by playing on bigoted attitudes and the somehow-still-everpresent fear of race riots?
…This doesn’t excuse the delay in provding help by anyone from the mayor of NOLA up to and including the POTUS… but here we are stuck to a tar baby…this myth of poor black people turning into animals at the first sign of danger.
Are we capable of ever growing beyond this?