UPDATED: Ouch publishing material at 3:00am is unwise, some clean up has occured more to come. Sorry for the mess…but I hope the point still shines through, though if you disagree with this I have managed to give you plenty of ammo to use in ignoring me.
UPDATE #2 based on some kind suggestions via email some additions were made. I have added links to the blog making the quote in regards to Crime and Suffering.
UPDATE#3 Well at least one person linked to this post, thanks Bloggers Blog …didn’t think that it would be very popular. But this article scratched an itch that needed scratching for me. Over the course of the days following Katrina I became ever more frustrated with the poor reporting but what drove me over the edge was seeing blogs left and right crowing that it was absurd for the MSM to claim that 10,000 might be dead. One blog even went so far as to declare that we were not the WORST natural disaster in United States history but merely the 7th while we were pulling bodies out. Another claimed that New Orleans had NOT descended into crime and suffering. Neither of these blogs were minor players. Both of these narratives were being driven by a desire to counter the obvious attempts by the MSM to hang Katrina around the neck of President Bush. It would have been better in my mind to attack that message rather than discredit the suffering of New Orleans. So then this over long commentary resulted from those frustrations.
If you want to avoid my commentary and go straight to the pictures taken by myself and my wife when she was touring as part of a group helping FEMA. This post has been a struggle and posting it has me feeling a bit lighter this morning.
Having held back because of how emotional I was regarding New Orleans, let me now take a moment to sound a small cautionary note to bloggers. While the goal of taking down the MSM down a few notches is amusing it cannot come at the expense of the story. We have long complained about the narrative driving the story past the facts in the MSM. We might be wise to remember that complaint ourselves.
The completion of this commentary was inspired by this amusing report of FEMA pulling out of the 9th Ward due to violence and threats of further violence, all without Shepard Smith. I mean, after all according to the Rightside of the Blogsphere all reports of violence were exaggerated to make President Bush look bad. They were the result not of eye witness reports but of hysterical reporters dreaming of bringing down the President. As a cute little twist it was suggested that the MSM was being racist by reporting the crimes. Shepard Smith himself was credited, by a much linked blog during Katrina, with bringing down everything but fire and brimstone in his quest to ruin the President. I was not amused, since all hope for my city’s recovery depends on accurate reporting. I expected the MSM to get it wrong, but I was shocked by how willing the Right Side of the Blogsphere was to distort facts to bring down the MSM, and saddened that anyone would use our tragedy to make gains against their enemy.
Amusingly enough, and it is amusing in a graveyard sort of way, FEMA is still panicked. Even without Shepard Smith. After all according to the Right Side of the Blogsphere there was no violence, or so little as to be of no concern, more on that later! One of the dominant narratives to come out of the Blogsphere’s coverage of Katrina was that panic caused by the misrepresentation of crime delayed help from reaching those in need. It was handy dandy indeed that it was all the press’s fault.
That narrative pulled FEMA’s nuts out of the fire by blaming the news media for panicking FEMA. Those blogs never asked the next question. Why was it that FEMA was depending on the News Media for intelligence in the midst of a national disaster of biblical proportions? Even the National Guard joined in the fun, bashing the press and apparently believing that Shepard Smith was a good substitute for intelligence instead of sending out its own version of Pathfinders to gather intelligence. Though in defense of the Guard the military should never pass a chance to bash the media.
In retrospect, as soon as the MSM decided to use the Hurricane as another tool in its never ending quest to destroy President Bush’s administration, the die was cast for the right side of the blogsphere. The right side would use its influence to discredit the MSM. Caught in the middle was the truth of what happened in Katrina, which was more important than either agenda.
The reporting of the nature and frequency of crime during the Hurricane and its aftermath was one of the stories latched onto by the Right Side Blogsphere to pummel the MSM. Some of the most grievous of the crimes reported at first by members of the Government were in fact exaggerations or, as some on the Right believe, outright falsehoods.
The rapes inside of the Superdome are a classic case of the Right Side taking a report and twisting to their advantage, even at the risk of minimizing actual crime. What is the truth? Likely to be somewhere between the dismissal of such crimes by the right and the obvious exaggerations by the Mayor’s office. Which entity has more of an excuse for its actions? As much as I hate to say it, there is every reason to forgive the Mayor’s office for its exaggerations since a crime as heinous as Rape demands a measure of urgency in stopping it. The Right Side had only its desire to hang the MSM as motive for completely ignoring that some rapes occurred inside of the Dome.
Do we have evidence of those rapes? Not in the form of police reports. Given the state of the police inside of the Dome expecting police reports was expecting too much. Especially since many of the victims were either foreign visitors in a state of shock over their circumstances or blacks for whom reporting crime to the police can cause retribution for perceived collaboration with the police. We do have Professionals who reported such incidents. Doctors inside reported several rapes and attempted rapes, were they imagining those rapes or attempts? Well one of them is my mother in law who talked to one of the victims and whose group gave shelter to the group so they could avoid any further attempts. I believe that this is the group of foreigners who may have taken refuge with my Mother In Law’s group.
Th Convention Center was another favorite tool for beating the MSM over the head. Some reports had major acts of crime being played out there, gunfire, rapes, robbery, vandalism and looting. No one that I heard or read suggested that every single person huddled there was engaged in thuggery, indeed no one even suggested that it was anything but a few roving bands of thugs. In the end that is exactly what it turned out to be a few roving bands of criminals. The question of whether it was a nightmare is subjective but the clue may lie in considering, how many people firing a weapon near your family does it take to create a nightmare? In addition not only do they get to fire their weapons but it doesn’t look like anyone can do much about stopping them, right, feeling safe yet? The Right took a report by a SWAT team leader that they only found one gun to mean that there all the other reports were false. Completely ignoring the reports from an NOPD officer, Dumas Carter, who was stationed directly across from the Convention Center. Here is a couple of tastes of his view on the situation, naturally read the whole thing after you read this.
The majority of the people were staying outside. We were hearing all kinds of horror stories from inside, murder to rape to robberies to shootings to beatings. There was no way to verify any of that stuff. Ninety-seven percent of these people were behind us. They wanted us to be the police and they loved that we were still there. We were the only police they saw for four or five days.
And this snippet makes it all sound like Disney World eh?
There were guys running through the crowd shooting at us and shooting at the crowd. And they would disappear back in the Convention Center. There wasn’t much we could do. How about shooting into a crowd of 20,000 people to kill one person? At one point, there’s a guy in a stolen Jeep Liberty who’s shooting at us with an M16. It jammed on him–he didn’t know what he was doing–and we were able to persuade him out of the vehicle the way I normally persuade people out of vehicles, and we were able to subdue him. We weren’t technically the most polite in subduing him. We did this in front of 20,000 detainees. I call them detainees because the city sent them to a place where they could be detained, and that’s all that happened, they were inconvenienced and detained. Anyway, we do this in front of the crowd and you hear this fucking roar from the crowd, this fucking standing ovation. We handed him over to the feds–who, by the way, are very good at making ID cards, and have really pretty uniforms.
Wow who wouldn’t want to be near that situation! Was there exaggerations? Absolutely in the heat of battle first reports are always wrong. But what is the blogsphere’s excuse they weren’t there and had plenty of time to carefully research the situation. And with all that time they come up with brilliant quotes like this one, from my friend Jeff Goldstein.
And Shepard Smith did just that. Thanks to his reporting, we believed the absolute worst about the federal response. We believed the city had descended into anarchy-with crime and suffering the rule.
Maybe things are a lot tougher in Colorado than I have been led to believe but in New Orleans when 80% of the City is underwater, when thugs are running through the crowds where you have evacuated to firing weapons, where you have no food and water, that is the definition of crime and suffering. Could it have been worse? Sure. Instead of saying thank god there wasn’t more dead the Right claimed it was all a lie because we didn’t find piles of bodies.
To me a somewhat biased observer in Baton Rouge, with extensive family in New Orleans, all of a sudden the Blogsphere got so caught up in attacking the MSM they forgot the story. In the drive to push the narrative that the MSM is worthless we had some bizarre pronouncements from Bloggers who, up till they decided that attacking the MSM was the story, were doing a marvelous job. What factors drove the bloggers narrative in that direction certainly bears some thought. Let’s put aside the defense of President Bush. Most bloggers would admit to reacting badly, as well they should have to the smear campaign against President Bush, by the MSM.
Self interest no doubt is in play and to a degree as long as the truth comes out, self interest is a mighty fine reason. But where self interest becomes unseemly is when you distort the story to make your point. It’s especially unfortunate when you are making the claim that the MSM is not to be believed. It is almost callous to the extreme, when upwards of a million people are suffering a tragedy of almost biblical proportions, to distort their story for your own benefit.
For instance do you really want to make the point that Katrina wasn’t the worst natural disaster the country has suffered when at the point you make the claim bodies are still being pulled out of attics? And when it is discovered that 10,000 people didn’t die do you feel real comfortable crowing about the fact that ONLY 1,000 people died? Is it that important to bash the Media our body count when those of us who are down here know full well that it was certainly well within the realm of possibility that 10,000 could have died. Check Red Cross estimate prior to Katrina. Surely y’all must believe them since they are but an arm of that Government Agency that all of a sudden is so fashionable to defend, FEMA. It was mildly ironic to see Libertarians and Conservatives defending a Federal Bureaucracy so vehemently. Mayor Nagin as crazy and idiotic as he is and was, certainly didn’t pull those numbers out of Shepard Smiths ass or vice versa. By the grace of god we didn’t have 10,000 perish, but it wasn’t an exaggeration to expect it considering how fast St. Bernard and Plaquemines flooded. Finally doesn’t anyone feel just a bit shy touting death tolls when last I checked near the end of November over 5400 adults and 1400 children were still missing? No they are not all dead but still…could you look any of those families in the eye and tout
Some of the reporting was flat out wrong, not the MSM’s reporting, but the bloggers. To claim as some did that New Orleans had not descended into crime and suffering was simply wrong. Don’t want to pick on just one blog because even though those exact words were not used in other blogs the sentiments were the same.
When in fact New Orleans experience should be a poster child for the Second Amendment with over 250 police officers deciding that this was a good time to leave; citizens were left to defend themselves. These stories were not the third hand stories that we should perhaps be a bit skeptical of but first hand reports of bands of citizens forming groups to protect their property. If New Orleans was peaceful as some blogs tried to claim, then who were all these armed folks protecting themselves from? Did Shepard Smith panic them all? Check out this story for confirmation of my point.
One of the most popular and effective blogs during the Katrina Tragedy was Gateway Pundit. That blog did some excellent work right up till they too got caught up in the attack the MSM narrative. Check my version of the top Myths regarding the Myths of Katrina.
Fiction: Katrina was the 7th worst natural disaster in the nations history.
Fact: Katrina is actually the 5th worst and there are still a bunch of people missing. Plus lets not forget that we just had a major modern city destroyed with a complex of ports facilities that is reported to be the largest in the world and through which all of our wheat passes…that counts for something. And a final cheery note, we are still finding bodies.
Fiction: The claim of 10,000 possibly dead being a wild exaggeration perpetuated by the Mainstream Media.
Fact: Actually every organization charged with studying a major hurricane hitting the New Orleans area predicted far worse. Red Cross being the most familiar predicted between 25,000 to 100,000 dead. NOAA’s estimate was 50,000 dead in a scenario similar to Katrina.
Fiction: No shots were fired at any helicopters
Fact: An arrest was made in that incident (note that the claim appears to be centered on the Superdome so this may not be totally fair)
Fiction: No snipers hindered any hospital evacuations (Charity Hospital).
Fact: Indeed first hand reports of witnesses at Charity Hospital saw the weapon and the man shooting saw the man shooting.
Fiction: No rapes occured in the Superdome
Fact: Even the reporter making this claim mentioned several possible rapes. But rapes are traditionally underreported and given the situation in the Dome where the authorities were overwhelmed its pretty hard to believe they can make this claim in the face of so many eye witnesses.
Fiction: No Police officers were shot
Fact: Actually one of the officers is just returning to duty. This points to a bigger problem and that is depending on the Guard for confirmation of reports. There was simply not a big enough presence in the city prior to Friday to have any idea of what went on in the city. This is not to take away at all from the Guard but to state a simple fact; they weren’t there when others who witnessed events were. Exactly why should we believe a Guard representative over a first hand report?
Fiction: There were no roving bands of looters and gangs.
Fact: Were it not for the Second amendment much more of New Orleans would have been burned to the ground. Oakwood Shopping Center was burned by Looters and that action was one of the primary reasons the Bridge was blocked to foot traffic by Gretna Officers.
Fiction: The response from the Federal Government was acceptable even admirable!
Fact: President Bush disagrees with you. He said so himself and Michael Brown now has lots of time to sort out his wardrobe these days.
Fiction: The New Orleans Police Department is a reliable reporter of crime and we can depend on them representing the situation honestly.
Fact: After a lengthy investigation, 5 of the top brass in the 1st District were fired and one suspended for the deliberate misreporting of crime to make their stats look better. Something to consider when wondering why there wasn’t more crime reported especially when combined with the sheer lack of facilities to take reports.
A snippet from a previous article I wrote in response to Captain Ed, as fine a gentleman as exists.
The media has a lot to answer for, indeed they did get major parts of the story wrong in Katrina. It was shameful that they used our tragedy to attack President Bush. It would also be ashamed if we in the Blogsphere used the tragedy to attack our enemy the MSM.
At this point a Major US city is no more. Less that 100,000 people sleep in the city overnight. Enormous portions of the city will never recover. Let that sink in for a moment…a US City has been effectively destroyed. Not sure how much the MSM overhyped it, but it would be ashamed if we made less of it, to attack the MSM. More than 5,000 Adults and 1,500 children from La. are still missing. Chill a bit on the minimizing eh?
So now we are back to this Washington Post article that stands in contrast to the reports of everything being sweetness and light in New Orleans. The Looting is still going on, the violence is still going on and a once great city is slowly and simply going away. This is a sad sad time and pushing each other over turf seems especially ugly in the light of the terrible tragedy this nation has endured.
FEMA Pulls Out of Lower Ninth
katrinahurricaneNew OrleansPoliticsLouisianaHurricane Katrina
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