The media facade crumbles a little more. The part labelled "objectivity" is a barely recognized heap of rubble at the foot of the media ediface. The ability to separate fact from fiction is now rapidly slipping and Katrina coverage is a case in point.
Excerpt from Reason.com:
A Louisiana National Guardsman explains how he dealt with false rumors being piped into Ground Zero of Hurricane Katrina
Matt Welch
We are now into Week Two of elite news organizations' re-evaluation of the New Orleans horror stories they helped transmit to the world in the first seven days after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. It was known already by September 6 that tales of evacuee ultra-violence in refugee centers like Baton Rouge and Houston were both false and strikingly similar to one another, but it took much longer to begin clearing the muck from the Big Easy.
But starting with New Orleans' heroic though not-infallible Times-Picayune, the correctives have come rolling in, from (in order) the Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press, Knight Ridder, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. Most focused on apocalyptic tales of violence that did not leave an evidentiary trail after the Superdome and Convention Center were finally cleared out—the mythical seven-year-old rape victim with her throat slit, the 30-40 bodies in the freezer, the constant gun violence.
Did you know that there were hundreds of Louisiana National Guardsmen in the New Orleans Super Dome throughout the storm? Click on the headline and read an interview with Major Ed Bush, public affairs officer for the Louisiana National Guard, who was there at the Superdome before, during, and after the evacuees got there. It will open your eyes.
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