Hurricane Katrina and the Media
It seems like a lot has been written in the last few days about the media’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina. It’s coming in the light of former FEMA director Mike Brown’s testimony before Congress. It’s also coming in the wake of New Orleans police chief Eddie Compass resigning. It appears that the media, in its rush to use the hurricane to bolster ratings, failed to do its job.
From an Associated Press report:
But now, 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.
One of those victims — found at the Superdome — appears to have been killed elsewhere before being brought to the stadium, said Bob Johannessen, the agency spokesman.
Now, no one is saying that the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina wasn’t terrible. It was a tragedy easily in the same realm as September 11, regardless of what the body count may be. People are suffering terribly. However, in the days after the hurricane struck New Orleans and the levees broke, the media latched onto a number of rumors that quickly became popular. This is troubling for a number of reasons.
Chiefly, the news media exists to separate fact from fiction. They are tasked with telling us what happened, and to a certain degree, what it means. Because of this, members of the media are granted special access and privilege to reach certain people and places. If I want to find out what’s happening in Washington, I turn to a media organization who has a reporter stationed there with access to elected leaders. That person spends his or her time sifting through the rumors, speculation, and allegations looking for the truth. Much of the media’s ability to do this rests in their proximity to the subjects that they cover.
In the case of Hurrican Katrina, the media found itself severly handicapped. With the evacuation of New Orleans and the subsequent failure of the city’s infrastructure, the media didn’t have the proximity and access that it normally enjoyed. With the normal lines of communication severed, the media found itself several steps behind. The typical plan of attack for cable news channels during a hurricane consists of tethering a reporter to lightpole and watching them twist in the wind until the storm passes. In this case, that plan of attack failed. The story shouldn’t have been about the hurricane as much as it should have been about the effects of the storm and the region’s lack of emergency planning. With that story developing rapidly in the days after the storm and with a communications blackout in the area, the media started to take some shortcuts.
The notion of murders and rapes happening inside the Superdome must have left news directors salivating. It’s just the right mix of anarchy, lawlessness, and tragedy that audiences are supposed to love. It’s somewhere in the same neighborhood as car chases, building fires, and celebrity divorces. The major problem was that in the light of its own inability to perform and the endlessly ticking clock of the news cycle, the media began to swallow rumors and urban legends as if they were fact.
That began a weird cycle of really sad news coverage. Geraldo holding up babies, Shepherd Smith screaming about the National Guard, Bill O’Reilly coordinating relief efforts on the air … and that was just FOX News.
The coverage of this hurricane, more than any event in recent memory should serve to illustrate the shortcomings of our media.
As a sidenote, I don’t understand all the love for CNN’s Anserson Cooper. I think he’s pretty medicore in his role as an anchor on CNN. He wa great as the host of ABC’s The Mole. But he lacks the gravitas that a credible anchor really requires. It’s something about his delivery that drives me crazy. I can’t put my finger on it.
