What? Am I going off the deep end? Am I threatening to enter the fever swamps? I have just run across a quotation from Marcus Aurelius that may become my favorite: “The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” So I will have to validate my claim to avoid joining the ranks of the insane.
But getting back to Goldberg, Katrina and the media:
Last week, according to LexisNexis, there were more than 2,000 newspaper and wire stories on Hurricane Katrina, along with blanket coverage on cable news.
This hurricane of hurricane retrospectives was no doubt long in the works, as editors like to put stories “in the can” for vacation time.
The media seemed to cover every angle, particularly the Bush administration’s missteps in response to the disaster. And while some might quibble with this or that characterization or selection of facts, ultimately the media were doing what they’re supposed to do: hold government accountable.But there was one thing missing from the coverage of this natural, social, economic, and political disaster: the fact that Katrina represented an unmitigated media disaster as well.
Few of us can forget the reports from two years ago. CNN warned that there were “bands of rapists, going block to block.” Snipers were reportedly shooting at medical personnel. Bodies at the Superdome, we were told, were stacked like cordwood. The Washington Post proclaimed in a banner headline that New Orleans was “A City of Despair and Lawlessness” and insisted in an editorial that “looters and carjackers, some of them armed, have run rampant.” Fox News anchor John Gibson said there were “all kinds of reports of looting, fires and violence. Thugs shooting at rescue crews.” These reports actually hindered rescue efforts, as emergency crews wasted valuable time avoiding phantom snipers.
So this is where my accusation that the press may well have contributed to the death toll in New Orleans comes from. How many people died waiting for rescue because rescue workers were denied access because of fears of snipers and armed gangs? How many others were sent on wild goose chases looking for non-existent phantoms of journalistic imagination? The media were all over the Bush Administration for delay in reacting to Katrina, but I was watching and blogging about the delays caused by the media's lies that impeded the rescue effort.
Can we have a variation on another slogan? "The media lied and people died!" We can apply that to Katrina as well as the "Koran Flushing" story by Newsweek.
TV reporters raced to the bottom to see who could moralistically preen the most. Interviewers transformed into outright scolds of administration officials. Meanwhile, the distortions, exaggerations and flat-out fictions being offered by New Orleans officials were accelerated and amplified by the media echo chamber. Glib predictions of 10,000 dead, and the chief of police’s insistence that there were “little babies getting raped,” swirled around the media like so much free-flowing sewage.
It was as though journalistic skepticism of government officials was reserved for the White House, and everyone else got a free pass.
Well of course. The media circles the wagons to cover up its malpractice like a cat covering up scat in a litter box. Aren't we glad that the Internet exists to protect us against the MSM?
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