Lessons in Disaster for the Next Katrina

By Published on August 31, 2015

It’s been a decade since Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. What were the lessons? Here are a few:

1. The press did a lousy job.  Forget Brian Williams’ “huge lies.” Though the press patted itself on the back afterwards, in fact, as American University Journalism Professor W. Joseph Campbell writes, “it’s instructive to recall how extreme and over the top the reporting was from New Orleans in Katrina’s aftermath.” Reports of wandering bands of rapists, a 10-year-old girl raped in the New Orleans Convention Center, claims that people were shooting at rescue helicopters,sharks haunting the floodwaters, bodies stacked like cordwood all were false.

Though the extremism generated ratings, and satisfied the anti-American urges of the foreign press, it did real harm. New Orleans, a city battered by disaster, was portrayed as, in Maureen Dowd’s words, “a snake pit of anarchy, death, looting, raping, marauding thugs, suffering innocents, a shattered infrastructure, a gutted police force, insufficient troop levels and criminally negligent government planning.” Dowd used this portrayal to take shots at then-President George W. Bush, and I suspect a lot of the media pile-on was similarly motivated, but it had the effect of stigmatizing victims and, by playing up anarchy and danger, may even have delayed the arrival of aid, as rescuers feared to go in without armed escort. Overall, a horrible media performance.

As Campbell notes, a bipartisan Congressional report in 2006 observed, “If anyone rioted, it was the media.” Sad.

Read the article “Lessons in Disaster for the Next Katrina” on usatoday.com.

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