PressThink: From Deference to Outrage: Katrina and the Press

From Deference to Outrage: Katrina and the Press

Spine is always good, rage is sometimes needed, and empathy can often reveal the story. But there's no substitute for being able to think. What is the difference between a “blame game” and real accountability? If you’ve never really thought it about it, your outrage can easily misfire.

I was away from blogging when Hurricane Katrina hit and New Orleans went down, but people kept sending me stuff. The article most often sent to me was a commentary by Matt Wells of the BBC, “Has Katrina saved US media?” Possibly it has, he said: “Amidst the horror, American broadcast journalism just might have grown its spine back, thanks to Katrina.”

The “timid and self-censoring journalistic culture” in the U.S. is normally “no match for the masterfully aggressive spin-surgeons of the Bush administration,” Wells wrote. “But last week the complacency stopped, and the moral indignation against inadequate government began to flow, from slick anchors who spend most of their time glued to desks in New York and Washington.”

Other observers made the same point: national journalism was awakening after a period of intimidation, and finding its voice by voicing its anger. Typical was this Agence France Presse report: “In the emotional aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, US television’s often deferential treatment of government officials has been replaced by fiercely combative interviews and scathing commentary.”

In the New York Times, a review of TV coverage by Alessandra Stanley was headlined: “Reporters Turn From Deference to Outrage.” Tim Goodman of the San Francisco Chronicle remarked on it:

Bush and his administration have come under withering attack not only from a lengthy and bipartisan list of other politicians but also from anchors on nearly every channel — opinion-makers in the heat of the moment — whose voices abandoned objectivity and rose up in questioning tones as they took Bush and federal department heads to task.

Howard Kurtz saw not just a return of backbone, but a renewal of purpose: “Journalism seems to have recovered its reason for being,” he wrote. It’s a pity he didn’t say what that reason was. But in Kurtz’s mind, the recovery of mission was connected somehow with the display of emotion, like when CNN’s Anderson Cooper interrupted Sen. Mary Landrieu as she thanked some of her fellow officials for their hard work. “Do you get the anger that is out here?” he said. Kurtz:

This kind of activist stance, which would have drawn flak had it come from American reporters in Iraq, seemed utterly appropriate when applied to the yawning gap between mounting casualties and reassuring rhetoric. For once, reporters were acting like concerned citizens, not passive observers. And they were letting their emotions show, whether it was ABC’s Robin Roberts choking up while recalling a visit to her mother on the Gulf Coast or CNN’s Jeanne Meserve crying as she described the dead and injured she had seen.

The repeal of on-air reticence was good, he said. “Maybe, just maybe, journalism needs to bring more passion to the table — and not just when cable shows are obsessing on the latest missing white woman.” Two examples of bringing it to the table: this acid commentary from Keith Olbermann, courtesy of Crooks and Liars (“Let’s hope Olbermann does more ‘op-ed’ type segments on his show from now on”) and this more measured one from CBS’s Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation.

Alessandra Stanley said the renewed aggression is a reflection of public outrage, “but it is buoyed by a rare sense of righteous indignation by a news media that is usually on the defensive.” In this it made a difference that journalists were doing a demonstrably better job than government. “Viewers could see that as late as Thursday, television news crews could travel freely back and forth from the convention center, but water trucks, ambulances and officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency could not.”

Stanley’s colleague David Carr, media columnist for the business section of the Times, also saw a promising switch in direction. In his imagery, the press had hit a low point recently, and was now on the rise.

Mr. Cooper’s well-shaded outrage—he stopped just this short of editorializing—elicited the kind of anger that has been mostly missing from a toothless press. After a couple of years on the run from the government, public skepticism and self-inflicted wounds, the press corps felt its toes touch bottom in the Gulf Coast and came up big.

Big like it used to be, back in the day. Peter Johnson in USA Today: “Some observers say that Katrina’s media legacy may be a return to a post-Watergate-like era of tougher scrutiny of the federal government and public policy issues.” Gal Beckerman at CJR Daily wasn’t one of those observers. “What happened last week wasn’t anything like [Watergate]; it was a lot of agitated, incredulous reporters channeling the anger of the stranded people they were among, and delivering it to those who deserved to hear it.”

From the direction of the political left, the story was not the “recovery of backbone” but how could it take so long? Salon’s Eric Boehlert: “For years, frustrated news consumers have wondered what it would take to finally awaken the press from its perpetual, lazy slumber. Now we know the answer: one ravaged American city and a few thousand dead civilians.” The coverage was timid at first, he said. “Eventually, though, the pictures from New Orleans became too ghastly to ignore and reporters turned angry.”

“We sometimes find ourselves at a loss as to whether we should be more appalled at the Bush Administration’s ideological obsession, its incompetence, its arrogance, its anti-intellectualism, or its dishonesty,” wrote Eric Alterman at his MSNBC perch. “In New Orleans, we see all of these forces at work in a manner that the mainstream media finally finds itself unable to ignore.”

Both Josh Marshall and Arianna Huffington pointed away from backbone recovery to ask how the Washington Post allowed itself to be used by a nameless Bush official peddling the “fact” that as of Sep. 3rd, Lousiana Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency. (Newsweek also had it.) This turned out to be wrong. She declared an emergency on Aug. 26.

“The unquestioning regurgitation of administration spin through the use of anonymous sources is the fault line of modern American journalism,” said Huffington. “It’s time for the media to get back to doing their job and stop being the principal weapon in Team Bush’s damage control arsenal.” It is indeed inexplicable that a false fact from an off-the-record source—charging a dereliction of duty in the opposite party—gets into the Washington Post. That sounds like the behavior of a palace press.

Meanwhile, in the Media Blog at National Review Online, Stephen Spruiell said he expected to see “a lot of these stories about how journalism has ‘gotten its spine back’— by which they mean that journalists are acting like a bunch of know-it-alls to whom the solution to every problem was obvious all along.” In his view, a pre-existing inclination to “blame Bush” was simply allowed more room to express itself.

Spruiell thought it was a highlight that “reporters put a lot of passion into their stories and brought the drama right into your living room.” But then the lowlight: “The reporters put a lot of anti-administration animosity into their analysis, failing to provide the context of state, local and federal failures and settling on the easy story: Blame Bush.”

Why did Giuliani get the credit in New York after 9/11, while Bush gets the blame in New Orleans? That’s what righty Hugh Hewitt wanted to know: “Who is in charge when bad things happen to big cities?”

The MSM’s answer seems to be: Cities, when things go right and the mayor is courageous and telegenic; the President when the locals are in way over their heads. Not a very satisfactory answer, but MSM is hardly searching for answers, only ratings.

“In the wake of a mortifyingly slow government response to the Gulf Coast disaster, the press is demanding answers from the White House with unprecedented vigor,” wrote Dan Froomkin in his White House Briefing column. (See the Tuesday and Wednesday sessions with Scott McClellan.) The “post-Katrina press awakening,” as he called it, “is not the result of reporters expressing their personal or political opinions so much as it is about their asking tough questions based on what they, and others, have seen with their own eyes.” He continues:

Bush and his aides are finding it impossible to wave off the incontrovertible facts and heart-rending images emerging from the lake that was once a great American city. They’re finding it harder to set the news agenda. And the scathing criticism is becoming increasingly bipartisan, freeing reporters from the obligation to make every White House story sound like one with two sides equally based in reality.

A good example is former House Speaker Newt Gingrich: “As a test of the homeland-security system, this was a failure.”

In Peter Johnson’s USA article I was quoted thusly: “Journalists seem to be much more effective than the administration in representing the public’s reactions to the disaster,” Rosen says. “Clueless federal officials seem to know less about what is happening than the journalists do, and sometimes less than an average TV viewer. This tips the balance of power toward the press, which is why we see such aggressive questioning and on-air criticism close to jeering.”

A balance-of-power shift that is specific to the Katrina situation is, I think, more descriptive of what’s happened with the press than the sudden discovery of “spine,” a recovered sense of outrage, or the return of Watergate-era confidence. This part Johnson did not quote from our e-mail interview: What appears to be a struggle between the White House and the press is always a triangular relationship among journalists, the Administration and the public. Each leg—the President and the American people, the White House and the press, the press and the public—counts. If we look at two sides without reckoning with the third we’ll always go wrong.

Froomkin last week pointed to the gulf “between what [the] administration says it is doing and what the American public is watching on television.” This is the kind of explanation that makes sense to me. That visible gulf—which was as wide as it’s ever been last week—changes the balance of power. Sheelah Kolhatkar and Rebecca Dana elaborate in the New York Observer: “The combination of a sudden catastrophe, diminished communications and a lack of any authority on the ground for days to disseminate, filter or spin Katrina’s aftermath has remade the press, and its relationship to the Bush administration.”

That too is getting there. Even more to the point was this from the Observer:

“For the most part, we generally arrive at this type of story either just after or as the first responders are responding,” said David Verdi, a senior vice president for NBC News. “We’re usually standing shoulder to shoulder with the firemen or the policemen or the Marines, which allows us to record the incident. In this story, however, we were here before there was a first responder, and what made this particularly tough was that after Day 2, when it became very apparent to us that there were people in need, there were no first responders that we could see.”

The press gained back some of its missing authority because in this situation public authority was missing.

So that’s what they’re saying about the news media and the Gulf Coast crisis.

Now here is what I think. Spine is always good, outrage is sometimes needed, and empathy can often reveal the story. But there is no substitute for being able to think, and act journalistically on your conclusions. What is the difference between a “blame game” and real accountability? If you have no idea because you’ve never really thought about it, then your outrage can easily misfire. This is from Kurtz:

On television, the frustration boiled over at different times. Fox’s Shepard Smith shouted questions at a cop who refused to answer, saying: “What are you going to do with all these people? When is help coming for these people? Is there going to be help? I mean, they’re very thirsty. Do you have any idea yet? Nothing? Officer?”

PostWatch comments: “I saw that clip live, and kudos to a brave Shepard Smith for charging into the disaster. But the cop he was chasing was obviously entirely out of the loop and in no position to answer any of Smith’s questions.” Did it matter, then, if the questions were tough?

What are the proper reponsibilities for city government, state government and the national government? If you haven’t thought about it, and drawn the necessary conclusions, all the backbone in the world won’t tell you where to aim your questions. The New Yorker’s press critic is Nick Lemann, who’s from New Orleans. He observes:

The wetlands that protected the city on the south and west have been deteriorating from commercial exploitation for years, thanks to inaction by Louisiana as well as by the United States. It isn’t Washington that decided it’s O.K. to let retail establishments in New Orleans sell firearms—which are now being extensively stolen and turned to the service of increasing the chaos in the city.

What is realistic to expect in a chaotic situation like New Orleans faced in the week after the hurricane? It’s not an easy question. An intelligent and nuanced answer to that is worth a lot more to journalists than righteous indignation, because if your rage overcomes your realism you will eventually sound ridiculous even to those who share the feeling.

What are the differences in the way our political system handles a problem that is real and manifest (present to the senses) vs. a threat that is real but not manifest at all (abstract until it’s right upon us)? If you haven’t thought about it, you might find “lack of preparation” inhuman and incomprehensible. If you have, lack of preparation begins to seem all-too-human, and not to plan looks more like a policy choice.

Jeff Jarvis said anger wasn’t the best part of journalism’s performance after Katrina. “I think the best of it is that journalism knows it has not done its best. That is new.”

Last week, as the horror of it only started to rise, Aaron Brown turned his langorous gaze to the camera and tried to ask a correspondent whether we — CNN, reporters, all of journalism — yet had our hands around the story, the size of it. He didn’t get an answer — bad communications got in the way — but that didn’t matter, for the question was the answer. No, we did not nearly know what the story was.

Brown was asking his person to think.

I include in that thinking politically about the press itself. Perhaps an “activist stance” (Kurtz’s term) is a sustainable direction. (Or perhaps it isn’t.) I once asked if we were headed for an opposition press. How can it be avoided if, say, we begin to see the press locked out of New Orleans as the authorities assert control? Maybe scathing commentary should come to the forefront, in the manner of a front page editorial that becomes a permanent feature. Or maybe it’s reporters acting like concerned citizens all the time.

If you can think with the situation it doesn’t matter (for your journalism) if you break down and emote. If you can’t think, and can’t draw conclusions that influence your reporting, then bringing passion to the table isn’t going to change a damn thing. And I don’t believe Katrina has “saved” the news media from itself, either, although I agree that nola.com, by turning itself into an online forum, has been an inspiration.

Finally, the challenge for American journalism is not to recover its reason for being, but to find a stronger and better one. The world has changed. It’s not enough to be tough.

After Matter: Notes, reactions and links…

(Oct. 27, 2005) NBC’s Brian Williams in a documentary months later: “The government couldn’t tell us that things were O.K. We were there standing next to the things that were not O.K.”

“Journalism seems to have recovered its reason for being,” he wrote. It’s a pity he didn’t say what that reason was. Howard Kurtz responds in his Media Notes column (Sep. 9):

Of course being “tough” isn’t an end in and of itself. Just getting mad or yelling at people may make for good television, but it isn’t necessarily good journalism. My point (and I say this during campaigns, wars and other major stories) is that journalists must hold those in authority accountable, and demonstrate (through reporting, not opinion) when they are misleading the public, and that there’s nothing wrong with showing passion in this endeavor. This is harder and riskier than passive, he said/she said reporting. In the case of Katrina, the gap between what officials were saying and what journalists on the ground were seeing was so great that it spurred them on, but that approach need not fade with the storm’s aftermath.

The writer Nora Gallagher in the Los Angeles Times:

We got the story of what is really happening in the United States right between the eyes. We got the story of how poor people live and are treated in this country by watching them suffer and die. We got the story because it happened so fast, and right in front of our faces, and no one could put a spin on it quickly enough. We got the story because television reporters were openly outraged on camera. We got the story because reporters asked real questions and demanded real answers, rather than throwing softballs and settling for the fluff and the spin that pass for news. It was raw, it was awful, and it slid under the skin of our sleepy, numb, feel-good lives.

Bill Quick at Daily Pundit replies:

I think Jay Rosen either misses or downplays a rather obvious prediction as to the behavior of that “third leg.” Every time the media permits itself the luxury of releasing pent-up dislikes in an explosion of Bush-bashing, whether partly merited or not, the result of the over-the-top emotions on display is almost invariably a further hemmorhage of readers and viewers. Does anybody think this abrupt display of “spine,” or, as Jay would have it, a change in the balance of power, is going to do anything to reverse or even slow what seems to be the mainstream media’s inexorable downward spiral?

I did Hugh Hewitt’s radio show (Sep. 8) and we talked about this post. Transcript.

Show of hands: who thinks that United States military authorities (who already have checkpoints in place) will close to camera crews and reporters all of New Orleans, thereby taking journalists away from the story of what happened there? See Kurtz on it (Sep. 9). And see this account from a San Francisco Chroncile reporter: “It is essentially martial law in the Big Easy.”

I read several dozen media pieces about Katrina and none of them talked about what my NYU colleague Eric Klinenberg, a sociologist, talked about in Slate: news that was capable of reaching the storm’s victims, the people trapped in New Orleans.

The media coverage of Katrina has been more critical than the coverage of the Chicago heat wave. Yet little of the most valuable coverage, local radio broadcasting, is available inside New Orleans. Without TV, Internet access, newspapers, and telephones, people are depending on radios—battery-powered, in automobiles, or hand-crank—for emergency information. But as of Thursday evening, only one station, Entercom’s WWL-AM 870, had its own reporters on the air.

Klinenberg notes that Clear Channel, which dominates the market (six stations) didn’t even attempt to cover the story, putting virtually no resources into original reporting as New Orleans went down. The radio stations were the only ones who could get through, but only one tried. What does that tell us?

The AP reports as follows: (David Bauder, Sep. 9)

Thirteen radio stations owned by Clear Channel Communications and Entercom have banded together to run a single broadcast out of Baton Rouge, La., with personalities from powerful New Orleans news station WWL-AM taking the lead.
The New Orleans television station WDSU-TV, an NBC affiliate, has signed a deal with Paxson Communications to have its signal carried through next Tuesday on the Pax television station in Houston, which has absorbed many evacuees from the hurricane-stricken city.

Meanwhile, CBS affiliate WWL-TV is having its signal carried on Yahoo and on several digital cable outlets across the country.

Andrew Cline responds at Rhetorica:

Now, one might think that, being communicators of a certain sort, journalists might be pretty good at using the social network as a big brain with which to think. You’d be mistaken, at least in part. This is how I see Rosen’s complaint. I have a difficult time being too critical of journalists working “on the ground” (I hate that metaphor) in horrendous circumstances. But there exists, or should, a social network behind them…

If that interests you—a social network behind them part—you must see Doc Searls, The War on Error in the wake of Katrina. And Jeff Jarvis, Recovery 2.0.

Mark Jurkowitz, formerly of the Boston Globe, now of the Boston Phoenix, wrote a strong piece. The Media Gets its Bark Back.

Down in the hell of New Orleans — where reporters risked life and limb and were literally shocked by what they saw — they finally found the courage to believe their own eyes. CNN’s usually mild-mannered morning anchor Soledad O’Brien roasted FEMA director Mike Brown, who claimed not to know of the despair at New Orleans’s Morial Convention Center until he heard news reports.

I love that phrase: the courage to believe their own eyes. The heart of the story is yet to come, Jurkowitz says.

In the days to come, tougher questions will be asked as journalists switch from chronicling the scope of the disaster to piecing together how it happened. (The new issue of Newsweek describes a “strange paralysis” that set in at the White House, which wasted time in lengthy debates over “who was in charge.”) Even more important than the answers they find is the fact that journalists now smell blood in the waters of Bush’s troubled second term.

Paid content heads… This post also ran at the Huffington Post, which ran it as a featured post, and syndicated it to Yahoo News, where it could move on the most recommended and e-mailed lists, which are all RSS feeds.

“Unashamed to show their outrage.” Nikki Finke in the LA Weekly:

No one could have anticipated that, suddenly, TV’s two prettiest-boy anchors would be boldly and tearfully (CNN’s Anderson Cooper and FNN’s Shep Smith, to their immense credit) relating horror whenever and wherever they found it, no matter if the fault lay with Mother Nature or President Dubya. The impact was felt immediately. The depth of their reporting, along with that of other TV newscasters who were similarly unashamed to show their outrage, bested almost anything written by the most talented and experienced newspaper reporters.

Eric Alterman in The Nation:

Even the infamous media whores of cable news, caught the fever, unapologetically pointing to race and class as fundamental dimensions of the unfolding catastrophe. Perhaps they had no choice but to notice; perhaps their professional shame had grown unbearable during the years—even the post-9/11 years—of covering to death every missing little blue-eyed, blond white girl; perhaps, caught inside the tragedy, their human spirits collided with their professional selves. No matter the reason, it was a sight to behold.

Posted by Jay Rosen at September 9, 2005 1:49 AM Print

It really is difficult to have any respect for you Mr. Jay Rosen.

You've buried a one liner in a mass of bullshit. But then that's your speciality.

'Don't be rash. Think.'

Saves ink, trees and in this case electricity and bandwidth.

But even that bullshit filtered gist of your words is still bullshit. You use an example of a newsperson, Shepard Smith, chewing out a cop over something the cop apparently lacks knowledge about and is powerless to effect. I could embellish on the possible circumstances that might have brought on Smith's (what to you apparently is excessive) emotional questioning. There's no need though. Smith realized that he and the cop could leave at any time. Go back to the "truck" and get some water and a snack and go home to some relatively peaceful and secure circumstances when the shift was over. The mass of people surrounding them could not.

What was that cop doing? Was he helping those people in any way? No. Apparently that cop was doing the exact opposite. That cop was maintaining those people under circumstances that were slowly and surely killing them. No food. No water. No escape. The no escape part was likely that particular cop's job. Other cops and military were doing the job of 'no food and no water.' Get off your vacationing ass and read what has been happening. Read about the military, police and paramilitary units preventing aid from entering New Orleans and preventing victims from escaping. Then think.

And things have changed since that particular event. Now that "cop" would give Smith the butt of his rifle and probably a few boot kicks for added respect. Read about it Rosen. Think. The Mayberry Machiavellis are now controlling the military. Karl Rove is directing the military. Thousands and probably tens of thousands of people will be disappeared rather than have died due to negligence and criminal abuse. The old ghetto line that the police are an occupying army seems strikingly accurate. America is occupied by Rove's army. The "volunteer army" is now obviously a mercenary army with allegiance to the paymasters and no one else.

Think Rosen. Think about the famous scene of a man standing in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square. Rosen the analyst should recognize that there are at least three elements to that scene. The man standing in front of the tank. The man in the tank. And the man behind the camera capturing the scene. (No gender slights implied by "man".) The man in the tank would not roll over his countryman. That military man had some sense of citizen, nation and what his role as a citizen soldier was.

What was the totalitarian government's solution to the Tiananmen Square scene? Bring in military units from other areas. Units with no sense of camaraderie with the local citizens. Also, remove the man with the camera from the scene. What's happening in New Orleans right now?

Can you imagine if National Guard troops from New Orleans were on the scene and saw military or police units actually firing weapons to prevent their brethren from escaping deadly circumstances? Can you "think" of that? Can you think of those people as your own and view yourself watching military like units facilitating their deaths? Can you think of that? That's what's been happening in New Orleans. Wal-Mart tractor trailers of food and water were prevented from entering New Orleans. That's just one example. One fucking example. And escape was also prevented. Now every ugly detail of "no escape from New Orleans" will be disappeared. Rove will tell the story and where will you be?

You're a sorry excuse for a hack and your presentation of yourself as some guidebook for journalistic standards reeks worse than the rotting body and oil slicked feces filled waters of New Orleans. That's not based on emotion. It's based on a thoughtful examination of your thoughtless words.

Posted by: Amos Anan at September 8, 2005 7:57 AM | Permalink

Interesting post, but a lot more bullshit from the self-congratulatory MSM. Despite doing their "best" to make Bush look like the devil incarnate or dumber than a post (kind of mutually exclusive , but hey, who cares?), the results speak for themselves:

Gallup Poll: Who's to Blame?

38% No One
25% State/Local Officials
18% Fed. Agencies
13% Pres. Bush

People just aren't as dumb as the MSM thinks. Maybe some day you'll all wake up and see this, but it will take a thorough house cleaning and that ain't going to happen. This hurricane coverage isn't going to stop the slide, just accelerate it. You people need to look outside your little circle or your irrelavance will continue to grow.

Posted by: Mike in Colorado at September 8, 2005 9:34 AM | Permalink

Wow, Amos Anan, "America is occupied by Rove's Army." Yup, oooooooookay, I really value your opinion a lot---NOT!--- but please do keep carrying on like that because people like you are forcing us NORMAL people to stop being invisible.

Interesting post, Mr. Rosen. I've been watching and reading all the news coverage and it has been fascinating to see the way emotion has gotten in the way of truth seeking. It makes it hard to be just a simple interested news reader or watcher. All I heard the first few days was "Bush, Bush, Fema, Federal, Bush, Federal, Brown, Bush, Chertoff, Fema..." etc. But now, interestingly, we're starting to hear some coherent questions and we're getting a bigger and better picture, although it will be quite awhile before we get to the truth, if we ever will. I just wish the media would hurry up and get its act together because, man, it's really painful to sit through the Keith Olbermanns of the world. (Oh, I forgot, I don't actually have to do that anymore because I have my trusty internet for REAL news and commentary.)

And, BTW, I'll add that I'll keep reading your blog. Thanks for keeping at it.

Posted by: Kristen at September 8, 2005 10:05 AM | Permalink

Hi Jay. Welcome back. I guess you jumped into the fire.

So the first week is marked by outrage, horror, the overwhelmingness of it all. Geraldo could hold babies and weep and it was all good. I'm not sure, though, that reacting strongly to a major disaster is any great feat for the media. There seemed to be a kind of "emotion quotient" or a notion that ringing up outrage and shock and horror were good journalism by themselves.

The real work comes now. The horror recedes with the water. Now what?

The blaming is tiring already. It won't solve problems, although it will fill column inches. And it doesn't actually get to the real questions that perhaps the press should consider:

Can the government be relied on to save people in situations like this? And more to the point, SHOULD the government be relied on to save people?

What do we think is an appropriate level of risk and responsibility for individuals, and for a city? Should we fund construction of city that will inevitably be destroyed in a flood, or earthquake? Do individuals bear the risk of living in such places?

How are state, local, national governments supposed to work together?

But these issues aren't sexy. You can't weep over them holding infants. There are no "pictures." There is no horror. On the other hand, considering them seems to be much more important than showing yet another panaroma of the stinky Superdome.

Posted by: JennyD at September 8, 2005 10:37 AM | Permalink

I'm bowing out of this discussion and this forum for a while. I was in SE Louisiana for four days, returned home for a day, than made a whirlwind trip to New Orleans, courtesy of the Air Force.

Nothing I reported, nothing anyone has seen on TV or read anywhere can begin to capture the scale of the damage, the unrelenting smells and sounds of suffering and the legions of people with 1000-yard stares who have lost anything. It's bigger than our ability to recount.

It's certainly larger than another partisan pissing match or an unending screed on media bias. If this is the reaction to press coverage on Katrina, it's just too tedious for words.

It was tedious before, my words included. But now, it's past time to realize just how meaningless and trival this discussion has become.

Later.

Posted by: Dave McLemore at September 8, 2005 11:08 AM | Permalink

Steve: I added in the Gal Beckermen piece. (I said this post wasn't totally done!) Dave: I agree that nothing could be more meaningless than another bias discussion, but then I have been saying that and saying that.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 8, 2005 11:16 AM | Permalink

Here's an example of something I hope the press does more of in coming days. It's a story from the Washington Post about the sizable amount given to Louisiana for Army Corps projects--except local officials directed it all to spent on projects other than levee improvement.

Before the fingerpointing, maybe a little understanding what happened. That's why I like this piece--it looks beyond the ideological howling.

Posted by: JennyD at September 8, 2005 11:46 AM | Permalink

Jay:

I don't own a television and get most of my news from various sources (left, right, center and other) online as well as through NPR. I would urge everyone to listen to the "All Things Considered" interview with Secy. Chertoff by Robert Siegel from September 1 (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4828771).

It is fascinating on many levels -- the relative non-response from Chertoff to Siegel's rising dissatisfaction with the answers. Siegel does an admirable job restraining himself and luring Chertoff out in the following way: The Secretary basically confirms your earlier post wrt 'starving the beast' in deflecting (ignoring?) the stories and statistics from media personnel in the trenches, and there so well before First Responders of any sizeable kind; Chertoff takes the stance that "he won't argue" about what reporters are saying in true 'stay the course' fashion.

It seems obvious to me that Siegel says without saying that the response was inadequate, and Chertoff responds in kind without saying it -- that the Federal Gov't planned, but didn't react appropriately, and, when faced with the opportunity to do so, stonewalls the tough questions.

Sure, that's my take, but it's still illustrative. I hope you find it worthwhile as I have.

Posted by: Michael at September 8, 2005 12:13 PM | Permalink

Sorry, Jay. Should have checked back before I pulled the trigger.
To me, what was fascinating -- and different -- is that for two or three days the reporters' eye-witness accounts were unmediated by any sort of official filter, so we got not only their raw emotion, but we also got real-life scenes that our government wasn't telling us about, because our government wasn't even there.
Or, as Beckerman put it, "And, just like that, at long last, we had reporters telling the news to government, not the other way around."
We're used to one vertice of the triangle (government, press, public) informing the other two vertices.
What we're not so used to is that vertice being the press. And that speaks more to a press that had been, well before Katrina, reduced to stenography than it does to any rosier future that said press might have.
(I speak not of McLemore, of course, God bless him. He's been out doing it, while the rest of us ponder it.)

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at September 8, 2005 12:23 PM | Permalink

Shepard's Smith's questioning of a cop may (or may not) have been 'over the top', but what was not 'over the top' was his impassioned reporting about conditions in the convention center, and the fact that people were neither being allowed to leave the city nor being provided with food, water, and sanitary facilities. Smith's finest moment came when the shameless Sean Hannity tried to downplay the tragedy to "put it in perspective", and Smith shot back "this IS the perspective"....

****************

The current right-wing spin on Katrina coverage is that its all about "Bush-bashing" and "the blame game" --- which, of course, is pure nonsense. One of the other highlights of the coverage was Anderson Cooper's interview with (Democratic) Senator Mary Landrieu --- Cooper spoke for every American when he pointed out to Landrieu how pathetic,disgusting, and obscence it was that politicians like her were patting other politicians on the back for the great job they were doing when it was obvious to everyone on the scene that there was an ongoing catastrophe that was getting worse, not better, while Landrieu spouted platitudes.

Meanwhile right-wing gasbags like Max Boot lie about the coverage. Boot wrote No sooner had Hurricane Katrina roared through Louisiana and adjacent states than every blockhead with a microphone or a word processor felt compelled to spout off about What It All Means -- and, more important, Who Is to Blame when, in fact, the immediate post-hurricane coverage of New Orleans was of the "city dodges the bullet again" variety. Journalists didn't start asking tough questions until days later when they were confronted with the fact that tens of thousands of people were living in unspeakable conditions and there was no evidence of an evacuation plan or attempts to provide food, water, and sanitation)

Posted by: ami at September 8, 2005 12:47 PM | Permalink

In my opinion. the failings of FEMA pale in comparision to local a state failings. There is a ongoing human tragedy in New Orleans only because humans were in New orleans when the Hurricane struck.

1. Who decided that mandatory evacution only applied to people with the means to evacuate? There seems to be 2 classes of people - those with cars who are in terrible danger and must evacuate, and those without cars who are somehow immune to the danger.

2. Who decided not to stock several days worth of food, water and hygeine stuff at the Superdome and Convention Center?

Sure, other things went wrong at the local, state and federal level, but without number 1 and 2, there would be no massive human tragedy for journalists to be re-cutting their teeth on.

Posted by: Jeff Hartley at September 8, 2005 12:53 PM | Permalink

*******I left off last part of my above post.*****

So, why aren't these miscues at the local level a big part of the story? After all, New Orleans has person in charge of disaster preparedness. His incompetence toppled the first domino.

Posted by: Jeff Hartley at September 8, 2005 1:00 PM | Permalink

So, why aren't these miscues at the local level a big part of the story?

because the catastrophe that occured as a result of the levees being breeched AFTER Katrina had passed through was not because of inadequate disaster planning on the part of local officials, but a result of the complete failure of the Federal government to do what was necessary.

No major city in this country has the capacity to evacuate (let alone house) all of its citizens, especially its poorest citizens (and that's thanks to taxpayers like yourself, who care far less about the lives of poor people than about lower taxes.)

The "plan" for New Orleans made perfect sense --- in the event of a potential catastrophe, get as many people as reasonably possible out of the city --- and provide temporary shelter (the Superdome) for those who could not get out to "ride out the storm." If the potential catastrophe was not realized, those in the Superdome would return to their homes. If the potential catastrophe was realized, the city would depend on the state and federal government to evacuate those left behind.

Its sad to see the efforts of people like yourself to shift blame for what happened in the aftermath of Katrina. I suppose that if New Orleans had been subject to a chemical weapons attack by terrorists, you would be demanding to know why the Superdome was stocked with a couple of hundred thousand "chemical weapons suits" for the people to wear while FEMA took its time with an evacuation.....

Posted by: ami at September 8, 2005 1:29 PM | Permalink

Welcome back!

It has been a trying and telling period for the Administration, the MSM and America. It was hard not to be struck by the timidity with which the MSM dipped its toe into the waters of controversy, the temerity with which they began to question the Administration response. I had the distinct sense that Bush got off his ass only when the political storm threatened to engulf him, as he seemed content to let the natural storm run its course over the peoples of the Gulf Coast, no matter what the cost. In that sense, press coverage was critical to spur the Administration on to act.

But this Administration has alway been first about politics, specifically about message control and information suppression. In Katrina, they finally met their match. There was no way to cover it up, or to control access to the unfiltered, unembedded imagery. Of course, the Bush Administration was woefully inept at responding to the crying human need under siege in N.O., but they were also flat-footed and out-of-water in responding to the news. The story outstripped their ability to spin. Without the ability to restrict access and levee off the flow of information, they were naked and exposed in all their self-dealing ineptitude. With the Administration staggering and lurching stiffly around, the MSM were, for the first time in years, without their daily spoon-feedings and discovered they could feed themselves.

The attempted open lie about the timing of the Governor's declaration of emergency was revealing, in that its brazenness spoke to the routine and confident use of this device by the Administration in the past, but also, the ability of a sentient MSM to deflate a Big Lie. A similar attempt was made with regard to the state of Administration knowledge about the forecasts of Katrina's landfall strength, but again, that was quickly and emphatically put to the lie, rather than coated in false ambiguity. The NHC Director had the video to back him up, but even that smoking gun would have gone unheard and unseen prior to this.

You can tell the Bush people worry that this will have been a sea-change, by the way in which FEMA and DHS have tried to shut down the coverage of the recovery of the bodies. In evacuating N.O., they are also closing down the pirate station of a newly independent MSM. It will be interesting to see how the MSM responds to this challenge. The Adminstration has regained its footing enough to start spinning again, and the effort to misdirect responsibility is making headway.

Posted by: Mark J. McPherson at September 8, 2005 1:40 PM | Permalink

Jay, I particularly like the fact that Dem Gov. Blanco did declare a state of emergency; and Josh linked to it; and in Section 2 it states:
"The state of Louisiana=s emergency response and recovery program is activated under the command of the director of the state office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness to prepare for and provide emergency support services and/or to minimize the effects of the storm's damage."

I am disappointed that there is no name of this director of the state office of HS. Chertoff? Not clear.

I am disppointed, but not surprised, that your list fails to mention any outrage that Dem Mayor Nagin had hundreds of NO busses available, but unused -- and then flooded; that there was a video of the looting of a Wal Mart, including a black cop that was supposed to be maintaining law & order, but was clearly allowing the looting, and other black cops that were joining in the looting.

I haven't read much of Nagin's power, authority, and responsibility on a day by day basis; nor of Blanco's. Carl Pope of the Sierra Club has a reasonable, more subtle Bush-bashing timeline of "what could have been" -- best I've seen so far, but utterly failing at the reality of cat 4 levee break; now what.

I read that NO and LA had plans, but did not follow them. I haven't heard of tough questions by reporters about those plans, and who was responsible for implementing them, and what was followed and what not followed. (Plans are available on-line)

I read (via anti-media) that NO had no plan for the prisoners -- so let them go. Have you heard this? If true, and not widely reported, isn't that a HUGE failure of the press? (Haven't checked on it myself yet.)

It's unPC to mention the fact that so many looters are black, and so many of those who stayed behind are black, and so few of those blacks are effective at taking care of themselves.
Yet this preponderance of incompetent actions by black people has already been accompanied by attack-dog charges of racism by many of those "professional victims" -- maybe more of the facts about the worship of "victimhood" in poor black areas are about to be honestly addressed by the press (but since it doesn't fit with a Bush-bashing agenda I won't be surprised if not.)

Two weeks ago, the fact that the NO levees were rated at Cat 3, but not Cat 4, were known to all who were interested. At that time there was some probability of Katrina destroying NO. At that time the unknown future could be described by the probability of NO being flooded, and the probability of it not being flooded. The probability stayed below 50% (how to measure?) until Katrina hit Biloxi as Cat 4.

Maybe the fact that the future is uncertain, and is best described in probabilities, will get more news time. But I won't be surprised if it doesn't much. Too complex. (long. boring. Like me? at least I'm real, in an uncertainty oriented way.)

Posted by: Tom Grey - Liberty Dad at September 8, 2005 1:42 PM | Permalink

The press simply don't have the analytical framework to sustain their temporary, impassioned breakout - nowhere is that more evident in the unrelenting, noted-in-passing, but barely questioned racism which framed the entire coverage, and the statements of public officials: the characterization of anarchy among the victims - who in reality self-organized fairly well considering the circumstances - false reports of cannibalism, false reports of shots fired at helicopters, shoot-to-kill orders for "looters", the cowardice of the police, the focus on law and order, and on and on.

Posted by: boingo at September 8, 2005 2:14 PM | Permalink

Somewhere in these last several days I read a report about an amateur meteorologist in some other state who, two or three days before the hurricane hit the coast, foresaw the possible effects. (Despite far-reaching Google searches, and an attempt to mentally re-trace my online steps these past days, I haven't been able to find the article again, and can't remember on which of the many sites I visited I read it.) As far as I remember from what I read, he sent an email to the mayor of New Orleans and posted on his weather blog a warning that this storm would very likely break the levees. The young man (the meteorologist) was quoted as saying that the mayor ignored his warning to immediately warn the citizens and begin an evacuation.

This isn't directly related to this discussion about press coverage/newly recovered backbones/administration blame, but the fact that this element of the whole story is but one small, lost part amongst the thousands of swirling others makes me wonder how any journalist could up to this point grasp enough of them to present any kind of coherent picture.

I agree that retaining the ability to think coherently and cogently is critical, but in situations so horrific, how difficult is it for a journalist on the spot to quell his or her humanity and compassion enough to keep thinking? There has to be a breakdown at some point; the key, I guess, is to recover in time to take advantage of the breakdown in the administration's "spin machine" and extract the information that begins to answer the important questions.

I don't know. I haven't been there and Dave McLemore's post makes me wonder what is the point of all this. It is important in the long run, but seems trivial be discussing right now.

Posted by: Jane Richard at September 8, 2005 2:42 PM | Permalink

Jane, it's still important. This disaster isn't over by a long shot. I've seen a lot of reports calling the water in New Orleans a toxic stew, but very few asking what will happen to Lake Pontchartrain and the Gulf as that water gets pumped out of the city. I haven't seen anything at all on the Centers for Disease Control and the US EPA. So there's a lot of substance to the question of what reporters are doing and what they're thinking about, because there is a whole helluva lot to think about and do.

Posted by: weldon berger at September 8, 2005 3:05 PM | Permalink

Jane: Reading and writing press criticism blogs is trivial compared to the situation on the ground in the Gulf states, and reporting from it.

I wasn't trying to say to journalists who were struggling just to report what they saw that they should stop and "think" instead. I'm not addressing them at all. I wrote my post because nine tenths of the journalism remains to be done, and a massive act of accountability has yet to be undertaken, and there is no guarantee that it will be undertaken, but for sure it won't happen because moral indignation was suddenly okay to show on air.

What happens during a breakdown in a civil order like Katrina not going to "restore" any lost anything for the press-- whether it's spine, purpose, reason for being, courage, authority, credibility, or getting Scott McClellan to answer a question.

But there's an opportunity to think with the crisis and perhaps strengthen journalism.

Show of hands: who thinks that United States military authorities (who already have checkpoints in place) will soon close to camera crews and reporters all of New Orleans, thereby taking journalists away from the story of what happened there?

Link.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 8, 2005 3:35 PM | Permalink

Well Jay, after reading this (from Brian Williams NBC blog) I think my hand is going up...

While we were attempting to take pictures of the National Guard (a unit from Oklahoma) taking up positions outside a Brooks Brothers on the edge of the Quarter, the sergeant ordered us to the other side of the boulevard. The short version is: there won't be any pictures of this particular group of Guard soldiers on our newscast tonight. Rules (or I suspect in this case an order on a whim) like those do not HELP the palpable feeling that this area is somehow separate from the United States.

At that same fire scene, a police officer from out of town raised the muzzle of her weapon and aimed it at members of the media... obvious members of the media... armed only with notepads. Her actions (apparently because she thought reporters were encroaching on the scene) were over the top and she was told. There are automatic weapons and shotguns everywhere you look. It's a stance that perhaps would have been appropriate during the open lawlessness that has long since ended on most of these streets. Someone else points out on television as I post this: the fact that the National Guard now bars entry (by journalists) to the very places where people last week were barred from LEAVING (The Convention Center and Superdome) is a kind of perverse and perfectly backward postscript to this awful chapter in American history.

Posted by: ami at September 8, 2005 4:04 PM | Permalink

Personally, I don't think our national press is mature enough to handle these photographs. You'll notice the Reuters story linked Katrina Death Photos to Flag Draped Coffins. Any rational person would guess that MSM will print photos of Katrina deaths with the caption of BUSH KILLED THIS PERSON!.

But for all this hysteria, you'll notice that MSM has put a lock box on 9/11 photos with people jumping out of windows and has suppressed photos recovered last summer of Saddam Hussein's torture rooms. What is the MSM reason for suppressing those photos? Too disturbing, I guess, not like dead people floating in flood water. As usual, the press only wants us to know what they want us to know. Whatever.

I don't know anyone who is for FEMA suppressing photos of dead people, but I think the government is correct if it believes that the MSM is too immature to use the photos wisely.

Again, let me say I am NOT for the suppression of photos of the Katrina flood victims, but I certainly understand the paranoia the government must feel. Also, I have many relatives in the NO area, who thankfully got out OK, but I'm not sure how I'd feel about a photo of my Uncle Don floating in sewer water beamed all over the universe, and the subsequent hosannahs for the photographer who took the picture and won the Pulitzer (or whatever photojournalists win). All this is more complex than what journalists "want" and "need". Sorry, it needed to be said.

Posted by: kilgore trout at September 8, 2005 4:32 PM | Permalink

I think that showing victims needs some kind of more general approach.

For example, should you show victims whose families might not know they are dead, and might find out through TV?

Is there a level of gruesomeness that is acceptable?

On the History Channel you can see the terrible film from the first soldiers to arrive at Dachau, in which bodies are piled like cord wood. That is powerful footage, and the point was to illustrate the horror and cruelty of the Nazis.

Would the point of showing victims be to demonstrated the killing power of a hurricane? Or to show that the Bush Administration sucks? Or to embarrass the mayor and governor who couldn't protect citizens? Or is to sell papers or get people to watch a cable news channel?

I don't know the answer. I'm curious what people think.

Posted by: JennyD at September 8, 2005 4:52 PM | Permalink

I think that the feds will try to shut off media coverage if they think they can get away with it. Hey, call me cynical. The moonbattier segments of Blogtopia argue that this will happen for two primary rasons: 1) to protect the Administration from embarrassment; 2) to further the allocation of relief/rebuilding money to federal administration cronies (rather, I would add, than to state/local admin cronies). I buy Point 1; I'm agnostic on Point 2, absent more information.

There certainly is a lot of blame to be apportioned, to both parties at all levels of government. But as someone who has been living with hurricanes his whole life and working in them since Gloria in '85, take it from me: There are good and bad responses, and the federal response to Katrina screwed the pooch so badly my dead cat needs a cigarette. Anyone who claims otherwise is living in a different dimension, and I say that knowing full well all the important people it encompasses.

Posted by: Lex at September 8, 2005 5:08 PM | Permalink

Jay, welcome back. As I just wrote on my blog, that'll teach you to go on vacation during a holiday weekend:)
I spent much of the weekend blogging about the best and worst coverage I saw.
Steve, thanks for the link to the CJR piece. I just linked to that one too.

As for FEMA, looks like they are already spinning about the dead photos order, calling it more request than order.

Posted by: Scott Butki at September 8, 2005 5:38 PM | Permalink

"I love that phrase: the courage to believe their own eyes."

Courage may be the wrong word. Graham Greene wrote a novel called The Quiet American about a journalist who loses his sense of disengagement. He pays the backhanded compliment to another character: "he could see suffering when it was in front of his eyes."

That's no real achievement.

Posted by: martin at September 8, 2005 5:48 PM | Permalink

To answer JennyD's question directly: At bottom, the dead bodies ARE the story of this hurricane. Government (at all levels) performed ineffectually and/or corruptly -- for whatever reason, less well than we had been led to believe it would perform -- and PEOPLE DIED AS A DIRECT RESULT.

Simple accountability -- hell, simple justice -- dictates that you show the pictures. Doing this story without pictures would be like talking about 9/11 and not talking about death.

Posted by: Lex at September 8, 2005 5:54 PM | Permalink

Reporters were literally shocked?

By downed power lines? Argh.

Anyway, that's not imporant. Just: notice how the press gets the public on its side and changes the balance of power. Not by apologizing for itself, not by moving right, not by being less critical of the administration--but by reporting truthful information that government officials are not acknowledging.

Posted by: Katherine at September 8, 2005 5:59 PM | Permalink

Here's the real story of the racist response to the disaster from two paramedics who were trapped in New Orleans:

http://www.emsnetwork.org/artman/publish/article_18337.shtml

This is the ball the press is going to drop in favor of the local/federal repuglican/ democrat blame game. And it's because they won't find public support for the race/poverty angle because people are in denial that the US is a racist country waging war on the impoverished.

Posted by: boingo at September 8, 2005 7:11 PM | Permalink

Hey, Tom Grey, this is right up your alley.
Consider one Jimmy Reiss, head of the New Orleans Business Council, as quoted by the Wall Street Journal:

The new city must be something very different, Mr. Reiss says, with better services and fewer poor people. "Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completey different way: demographically, geographically and politically," he says. "I'm not just speaking for myself here. The way we've been living is not going to happen again, or we're out."

Perfect, isn't it ?

Reduced federal money for the Army Corps of Engineers to shore up those levees every year for four years in a row, combined with the fury of Mother Nature, have combined to eliminate thousands of those blacks "who stayed behind" and who were were so ineffective "at taking care of themselves," to use your words.
File in that "genocide" folder of yours; it fits right in.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at September 8, 2005 8:56 PM | Permalink

ami,

the catastrophe that occured ... was not because of inadequate disaster planning on the part of local officials...

The Red Cross disagrees (watch the video.)
http://thepoliticalteen.net/2005/09/08/garretredcross/

The facts are diverging so far from the "blame bush" narrative that it would be comical in less serious circumstances. Now,it's just pathetic.

taxpayers like yourself, who care far less about the lives of poor people.

I haven't paid taxes since 2002. I don't make enough money. That makes me a poor person. That makes you an idiot.

Posted by: Jeff Hartley at September 8, 2005 9:16 PM | Permalink

"... he pointed out to Landrieu how pathetic,disgusting, and obscence it was that politicians like her were patting other politicians on the back for the great job they were doing when it was obvious to everyone on the scene that there was an ongoing catastrophe that was getting worse, not better, while Landrieu spouted platitudes."

And now many in the media follow suit.

Posted by: Rascoe at September 8, 2005 9:28 PM | Permalink

I, for one, think its funny the way media people are congratulating themselves on what they think is such a fine job, just because they've showed their biased outrage at President Bush. With the Internet, we can once again see all the information the media leaves out and their complete lack of interest and curiosty about anything that doesn't fit their template - in this case, the ongoing attempt to somehow "get" President Bush.

I don't know who gets the award for the biggest media buffoon in this. There have been so many of them. Keith Olberman I just have to turn off. All of CNN was despicable.

But Tim Russert was a complete A.. on his show this past Sunday. Holding up the Homeland Security Plan and cutting into the the head of homeland security. Well, we've all seen on the net the New Orleans and Louisana Hurricane Response Plan and it was not followed at all by the state and local officials. Russert and all his media buddies could just have easily held up that document and asked a few hard questions of Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin. Instead, they've let these weak leaders get up there and cry on the their program and curse and generally make fools of themselves in an effort to direct all attention away from themselves and their failures and to project blame onto the federal government and President Bush.

I have the lowest opinion of the media I've ever had in my life. You never get the truth from them. They use their platform to try to "create" the perception they want people to have to suit their agenda. I wasn't amazed that the first "poll" to see if their effort was working came out only a few days into the hurricane. And when it showed that only 13% of the people blamed the President despite their best efforts, that should have been the banner headline, but of course, it wasn't. They buried that bit of information in the story and have gone right on with their gameplan.

It was interesting in the poll too that President Bush was the only specific name polled. They grouped Blanco and Nagin in as nameless "state/local" officials. What could better illustrate their agenda in the poll and their purpose for their coverage. They are so full of themselves and their own sense of importance and their own political views It's sickening.

I wonder why the media never conducts a poll to ask people what we think of them and their performance?

I also think the media themselves have can share in some of the blame for the hurricane loss of life. They go wall-to-wall with coverage of every hurricane with no context. Then when the hurricane goes somewhere else or isn't as bad as they trumped it up to be, people start to tune out the media and the warnings. I think that is why many people stayed in New Orleans. They had just heard it all before so many times.

And the media helps to create a divide in this country by the sensational and one-sided way they cover stories.

Posted by: Lisa at September 8, 2005 9:29 PM | Permalink

There are a lot of stories to tell, too bad the media has gotten just about every one of them wrong up to this point. One meme that's still going strong is the levees. I'd like to see an in-depth report that covers levee funding - who's been for it, who against. Have it start in 1977 when the blueprint was passed by Congress. Then moving forward, presnt us with the voting records of each state's Congressional delegations. Better still, given us a breakdown of media support or opposition. Somehow I think that's a story that will never see the light of day.

Posted by: MaDr at September 8, 2005 11:12 PM | Permalink

I think these two intriguing quotes are the key to placing into perspective our dominant media's indignant reporting about New Orleans, particularly when attempting to augur what it means about other (political) matters in the future:

"What appears to be a struggle between the White House and the press is always a triangular relationship among journalists, the Administration and the public. Each leg—the President and the American people, the White House and the press, the press and the public—counts. If we look at two sides without reckoning with the third we’ll always go wrong." - Jay, above.
"...the gulf “between what [the] administration says it is doing and what the American public is watching on television.” This is the kind of explanation that makes sense to me. That visible gulf—which was as wide as it’s ever been last week—changes the balance of power." - Jay, in part quoting Dan Froomkin, above.

In the case of Hurricane Katrina's aftermath in New Orleans, reporters' outrage at the lack of a well planned response to, and in some cases abdication of responsibility for, refugees' needs was fueled by reporters' proximity to the suffering. That suffering and consequent righteous outrage was communicated clearly through television to viewers (and to anchors and editors). Thus, the feelings about this matter held by many in the press was shared in large part by the public who watched (which during this spectacular rare event was most of us).

Can our dominant media say that about their feelings on most other matters of import to viewers and readers? Put another way, does the public share the ideology (i.e. how one feels about political issues) to which members of our dominant media admit they overwhelmingly adhere? The answer to that question likely determines whether media agitation about future matters will stoke commensurate feelings in the public.

For example, laudatory media coverage of gay marriage has not translated to majority public support for it - - yet. By controlling in large part (through their programming, news and otherwise) "what the American public is watching on television", our dominant media can greatly influence the (perhaps causal) relationship between press and public feelings, including political feelings. For my part, I think the more that Americans are aware of that relationship the better.

Posted by: Trained Auditor at September 8, 2005 11:52 PM | Permalink

Yes, I saw that too, and I agree--that was a fine moment for Shep; for Sean, not so much.

My main thought at PostWatch about Shepard Smith chasing that particular cop wasn't that it was "over the top" but rather, as Jay suggests, that it was pointless, since this was likely some grunt who knew nothing (and, to add more here, was likely staggering close to the end of his own endurance).

Very early in the hurricane reporting, I put up a post praising the media for the job it was doing. In my mind, the stark arrival of the storm snapped everyone to attention and forced journalists to just tell us what the heck was going on. As events turned everything into a far worse disaster, they had to tell us about that, too, and to try discovering why. But I think it's a pity now, with reporters catching their breath, that we're just going back to the default mode of partisan sniping--with most reporters definitely manning their customary anti-Bush side of the barricade. That may be merely another dreary contention of media bias, but that's what it feels like from where I sit and it definitely affects the quality of life in the public square.

Posted by: Christopher Fotos at September 9, 2005 12:23 AM | Permalink

Contrary to Jay, I think this story demonstrates the continuing evolution of the public's view of the press from "objective voice of the people" to self-interested political party. (Ie., it is not a sign that there can be better times for the press ahead.)

Jay's summation of the press-on-press coverage, I think, proves this view; the press is very concerned with how it played--how it is seen--in the living rooms of America on its coverage of this disaster. And it is looking at its coverage as a potential PR "victory." When it describes the coverage, it does not praise itself for getting the story "right" but for writing stories that stand up to Bush, for getting "spine" and challenging administration officials. That may be a great thing, but I think that would be only incidental to the true first order of business for a truth estate, which is presenting an accurate view of reality. Instead, this pride in "standing up" to Bush is the way a political party thinks, and I think the general public gets that, on some level.

Next, if you look at the polls--the vast majority of Republicans think Bush did OK on this disaster, while the vast majority of Dems think it performed horribly. Now, I am not saying Bush did a great job, but I am saying that the press's "standing up to" Bush, getting a "spine" when it comes to going after him (or whatever it means when one says the press has gotten "spine"), has not had much impact on most of the citizens of this country.

In other words, the "spine" shown toward Bush has been utterly unconvincing to one set of voters (Repubs) and has just reinforced what the other set (Dems) would have believed anyway. Quite simply, the reporting has had little to no effect on public opinion.

One would imagine that a press respected for getting the story right would move a good sized majority of the people, independent of party, toward some view. Instead, we see a partisan divide in perception as if the only information out there was partisan and one-sided and viewer's were merely self-selecting info sources that in some biased fashion reinforced what they already believed.

The press: thinking like a political party (or a couple of them) and being regarded that way.

Is this a wrong view?

Posted by: Lee Kane at September 9, 2005 12:41 AM | Permalink

Lee: My view is that the "recovery of backbone" is not the event that people in the press say it is.

But the reason it's celebrated so much has to do with a deeper tenet in newsroom religion that was there before Bush ever won elected office. It's the idea that politicians help us prove our value to the public because, as a journalists, we "hold their feet to the fire," asking tough questions and "demanding answers."

One of my points in this post, Lee, was that instead of being able to think, politically, Big Journalism has "hold their feet to the fire."

"That may be merely another dreary contention of media bias," Christopher wrote. (And thanks for dropping in, Chris.) Dreary is the day when a top media blogger (Mark Hamilton, a Canadian journalism teacher and new media hound) announces his

reluctant decision that I will no longer read the comments to Jay Rosen’s PressThink posts. It’s not that there’s no value in the comments, it’s that it has become too tiresome to struggle through the garbage to get to the gold....
There are a number of people who respond to Jay’s posts, people who care deeply about journalism, who make for a lively, interesting, sometimes combative and always thought-provoking conversation. I’ll miss them.

And then there are the others.

They use the comment section for shrill, mindless, repetitive posts that are creatures of the ugly political divide in the States. They apparently read everything as an issue of partisan politics and react to it as partisan politics, not originally or thoughtfully, but in knee-jerk manner and with phrasing that varies only with their position on the political spectrum. The same tiresome claims, arguments and wild assertations are repeated endlessly, regardless of the topic they are responding to.

It's sad.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 9, 2005 1:40 AM | Permalink

So Jay, that's why I ask the question about showing piles of dead bodies. What for? I think there are good reasons for doing so, and equally good reasons for not doing so.

But the reasons depend on the position and intent of the press.

Several posts above, someone noted that the laudatory coverage by the press of gay marriage had not changed public opinion. Wait a minute. Is that the goal of the press...to change public opinion? Or is the press objective, fact tellers?

Then let's think about the pictures. If the point is to impress upon the public that hurricanes are very dangerous, that's a good fact. If it's to show that FEMA blew it, or Nagin blew it, or Blanco blew it, well...I'm not sure those are objective facts.

All of this transcends the tiring ideological screeds and fingerpointing that have leaked into this thread, as usual.

I used to think an opposition press was a good thing--at least there would be transparency. But wouldn't it just throw more gasoline on this fire that consumes all public discussion. The us versus them, pinning blame. The tendency of public officials to see cooperationg as weak, despite the damage to the community.

On the other hand, objectivity is hopeless, particulary when holding up babies and stirring up emotional response is good for the media business.

I don't know. It requires looking at the press not as arm of some political party, or a cavalry that rides around on white horse. You have to look at the press as part of the larger system of public discourse. I'm not sure that's a easy or as fun as screeching about ideology.

Posted by: JennyD at September 9, 2005 7:50 AM | Permalink

"(...)Reduced federal money for the Army Corps of Engineers to shore up those levees every year for four years in a row(...)"

A: "(...)But overall, the Bush administration's funding requests for the key New Orleans flood-control projects for the past five years were slightly higher than the Clinton administration's for its past five years. Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, the chief of the Corps, has said that in any event, more money would not have prevented the drowning of the city, since its levees were designed to protect against a Category 3 storm, and the levees that failed were already completed projects. Strock has also said that the marsh-restoration project would not have done much to diminish Katrina's storm surge, which passed east of the coastal wetlands.(...)"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/
2005/09/07/AR2005090702462.html

Largess in Louisiana
Money Flowed to Questionable Projects
State Leads in Army Corps Spending, but Millions Had Nothing to Do With Floods

By Michael Grunwald
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 8, 2005; Page A01

Posted by: LL at September 9, 2005 9:05 AM | Permalink

"You have to look at the press as part of the larger system of public discourse. I'm not sure that's a easy or as fun as screeching about ideology."

Exactly. And the larger discourse is shot through with racism and contempt for the poor. And since polls show that the majority of Americans believe that race had nothing to do with the failed response to Katrina, the public crutch that journos require, ongoing, to prop up the knocking knees of their recent "rebellion" will be swept away by the flood of public ignorance.

"My friends, some years ago the federal government declared war on poverty — and poverty won." - Ronald Reagan

Posted by: boingo at September 9, 2005 10:13 AM | Permalink

In case you didn't see it, Howard Kurtz answered me in his Media Notes column today, explaining his “Journalism seems to have recovered its reason for being...” observation.

Of course being "tough" isn't an end in and of itself. Just getting mad or yelling at people may make for good television, but it isn't necessarily good journalism. My point (and I say this during campaigns, wars and other major stories) is that journalists must hold those in authority accountable, and demonstrate (through reporting, not opinion) when they are misleading the public, and that there's nothing wrong with showing passion in this endeavor. This is harder and riskier than passive, he said/she said reporting. In the case of Katrina, the gap between what officials were saying and what journalists on the ground were seeing was so great that it spurred them on, but that approach need not fade with the storm's aftermath.

Also I did Hugh Hewitt's radio show and we talked about this post. Transcript. Excerpt:

JR: Well, when you say that the bureaucracy failed, I think that's too low a bar. That's a very low standard of intellect for a professional journalist.
HH: I agree.

JR: Because we ha