On the road and I'm tired, but I have to ask this again:
If you don't trust the media because you think they are biased and/or get the story wrong on purpose, why do you think the media got the story RIGHT in their coverage of Katrina concerning alleged lawlessness?
Exhibit 'A' (via P6, via Seeing The Forest)
Posted by: memer at September 14, 2005 08:01 AM(slightly tangential) Exhibit 'B'
The more I fume about it, the more I think there ought to be more of a push toward rehabilitating media outlets somewhere along the Germanic scale.
We need to recognize the insidious power of propaganda. I mean, is inserting "allegedly" enough anymore?
Alright, I go on. Me go towel off now.
Posted by: memer at September 14, 2005 11:18 AM"Alleged" lawlessness?
Ed, I'm not even going to touch that one.
The camera doesn't usually lie. Its what people do with it that can cause problems.
Remember when a caption of a black person read "This person was looting a store" and a caption of a white person read "these two people wade through chest deep water after finding food in a store"? Journalism is not just a matter of pointing the camera and pressing record. I blogged on that story, by the way. You might wan't to see this post.
The problem that people have with trusting the media is with its propagandistic bias. During this Katrina disaster basically all the media did was repeat criticisms about Michael Brown's qualifications. It really was beside the point (and of course there's always "better"), but the lib media couldn't wait to somehow turn this into another attack ad on President Bush.
If you relied on the media's reporting and heard about the hungry people at the Superdome, you might not know that the Red Cross and Salvation Army were blocked by Louisiana STATE officials the story was reported on Fox news. Check out the September 8 post at RadioBlogger.com:"Major Garrett updates us on the Red Cross AND the Salvation Army being blocked from helping by Louisiana state officials" That last link should take you to the transcript of a radio interview by Hugh Hewitt.
Yet the media has practically ignored that and instead made this an issue about who was directing FEMA! Even though:
"The federal government pretty much met its standard time lines, but the volume of support provided during the 72-96 hour was unprecedented. THE FEDERAL RESPONSE HERE WAS FASTER THAN HUGO, FASTER THAN ANDREW, FASTER THAN INIKI, FASTER THAN FRANCINE AND JEANNE."For instance, it took five days for National Guard troops to arrive in strength on the scene in Homestead, Fla. after Hurricane Andrew hit in 2002. But after Katrina, there was a significant National Guard presence in the afflicted region in three."
WHOEVER had Michael Brown's place at FEMA would still have had to deal with Nagin and Blanco's ineptitude and failure to follow their own STATE EMERGENCY PROCEDURE for hurricanes which tasks the Mayor with initiating the evacuation and coordinating OEC elements of evacuation.
President Bush didn't point out any of this stuff about the Governor and Mayor of New Orleans. All the President did was say that he took responsibility for the actions at the federal government and pointed out that of course mistakes were made at different levels of the overall government. Even when Nagin and Blanco spewed all sorts of nonsense to deflect attention from their incredible incompetence, which I mentioned above. But that isn't even the point here, the point is the way the the media distorts things to try to get people to support their party. Check out this example of "reporting".
It wasn't FEMAs role to evacuate and prepare a first response to a disaster, thats what people need to understand. I'm quoting Edward Morrissey here: "These are the reasons why FEMA makes clear that local and state authorities should plan on having their own resources in place for the first 72-96 hours after a disaster strikes. In this case, FEMA had significant resources in place prior to the disaster, and followed up with a massive response within their time frame after the levees broke and the disaster overwhelmed New Orleans and Louisiana."
There's a very good review of what went wrong in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina here. Tell me if after that you still believe that.
Posted by: Sirc_Valence at September 15, 2005 05:51 AMSorry, before I sign off I just want to finish my last sentence, because it was incomplete when I pushed post.
It should say:
Tell me if after that you still believe that the media got it right and is trust-worthy.
Posted by: Sirc_Valence at September 15, 2005 06:02 AMTell me if after that you still believe that the media got it right and is trust-worthy.
Uhhh....
Do you realize that was the thrust of the comments I made?
I understood your question. It wasn't a bad one.
Posted by: Sirc_Valence at September 16, 2005 11:06 AM
Damned fine point. As usual, the best policy is to exercise some patience and skepticism and wait til the fog of bullshite clears a little. Didn't really hit me til last week when a white friend of mine was kinda goin on about the cop/rescuer shootings and wot not. It occurred to me, like, what, was it really like 'Nam down there or was it a "few" very isolated incidents (and how many true)?
Kinda hard waitin for the real deal to emerge tho. Hurry up, dammit. Mebbe if I lay out some scooby snacks?
Posted by: memer at September 14, 2005 07:42 AM