Das Ist Falsch
Is the Wake of Katrina coverage evidence, finally, of the U.S. media waking up, particularly broadcast media? This is the faint praise coming from many left-leaning bloggers and commenters.
That perspective came through during a chat Tuesday at the Washington Post Web site, where a questioner from Wake Forest, N.C., told Howard Kurtz, "I was absolutely shocked to see CNN develop a spine - I guess being put on the ground without the government watching your every move (Ala embedded reporters) makes you see a lot more of reality. Paula Hahn (no kidding) was even ripping into Michael Brown from FE MA (who should be fired immediately). I doubt this new found journalistic integrity will last long, but it is nice to see."
The praise from the left comes mixed with criticism - some of it flat-out wrong.
Over the weekend much blog hay was made over a pair of German television reports on the slow response to Hurricane Katrina's devastation. More than 100 bloggers, nearly all of them liberal, repeated claims made Sept 3 on the War & Piece site by a Dutch TV viewer, who compared CNN and German station ZDF's coverage of President Bush's visit to New Orleans.
The Dutchman, Frank Tiggelaar, wrote that unlike CNN, "PDF News reported that the president's visit was a completely staged event. Their crew witnessed how the open air food distribution point Bush visited in front of the cameras was torn down immediately after the president and the herd of NeWS people had left and that others which were allegedly being set up were abandoned at the same time."
Only one problem. He was wrong. I asked Inquirer reporter Christian Meier, a six-month fellow from Bonn, to translate the Sept. 2 PDF report. We were beaten to the punch by a pair of bloggers who write at the Idealistic Pragmatist and Respectful of Otters and collaborated on a post that debunks the dittoed postings, and warns fellow liberals not to let belief trump fact.
It was Rivka at the Otter site who began the investigation. She is a psychologist who works on HIV treatment in an inner city. She enlisted the German-speaking Idealist Pragmatist from Edmonton, who discovered that the blogosphere, in relying on the Dutch commenter, "had gotten several crucial facts about the story wrong. Although the images do show Bush visiting a New Orleans food distribution point, there is nothing in the New Orleans segment that suggests the distribution point had been specifically set up for Bush, and in fact nothing that even represents his visit as staged."
The pair of bloggers reasonably surmise that the Dutch viewer reconstructed the news from memory, confusing the Biloxi and New Orleans visits. In Biloxi a clean-up crew worked along the Bush route; in New Orleans cameras showed Bush at a food distribution point. But while the clean-up stopped at that Biloxi spot when Bush left, the food did not in New Orleans.
But this comment fit well, the bloggers note, with Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu's complaint that construction equipment was brought to a levee for the presidential visit, then removed.
The bloggers end their good work with a warning:
It's natural that rumors are flying everywhere right now. But we should be careful about what we do with unsourced news, especially when it confirms our biases. We here at Respectful of Otters and Idealistic Pragmatist are hardly Bush supporters, but we do think it's important to set the record straight. It's easy to lose the subtleties--or even the main point--of a news story that isn't in your native language. But we need to be careful not to undercut the points we're trying to make with even unintentional amplification. The news coming out of the U.S. Gulf Coast, including the biting commentary by ZDF news, is damning enough as it stands.
Polling numbers are coming out now, showing how people left and right place blame for the quality of government response to the disaster. The Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal on Tuesday wrote of an ABC survey that showed, as they put it, 55 percent said they didn't blame the president for the response. Two-thirds thought the federal government was inadequately prepared. Three-fourths said this about state and local government. Dems were far more likely to be shocked by the response than Reps.
In a nice turn-of-thought, the OpJo links to John Podhoretz's interpretation of what this means:
Once again we see the gigantic divide in this country--not between Right and Left, but between people who live and breathe politics and those for whom politics are only an incidental part. You need to look at the world through political glasses to assume that THE key aspect of a natural disaster is the response or lack thereof of the authorities--whether they be local, state or federal. The president doesn't MAKE hurricanes, therefore he will not be blamed FOR hurricanes. Nor do the governor and the mayor.
du dumkopf :p "who discovered that the blogosphere, in relying on the Dutch commenter, "had gotten several crucial facts about the story wrong"" Cancer. http://www.jasontconnell.com/index.jsf?newsId=133
I don't know if this is widespread yet, I'll post it anyway. http://maps.google.com/maps?q=New+Orleans,+LA&spn=0.139882,0.240704&t=k&hl=en Google got snaps from the satellite after Katrina. Just click the "Katrina" button, which only shows up when in the vacinity of where Katrina hit... or just New Orleans, I haven't played around enough yet.
I have two reactions to this. I'm torn between being amused that we scooped a genuine journalist on the track of the same story (due not to any superior skills, I'm sure, but to the fact that one of us actually speaks German and therefore had a head start), and truly touched that that genuine journalist gave us the credit. You could have easily written the story as planned and pretended you'd never seen a couple of random bloggers who wrote about the same thing, but you didn't. What a class act you are. Thank you.
Easy on the FEMA Guy, he had absolutely no "presence" for being interviewed and just plain booted it every time. the one who should be fired( and this would make history) is that Loser of a Governor. Yes Governor Blanco should be canned. She blew it. Now she's passing the buck. I could not believe what I was hearing come out of her mouth. It amounted to absolutely NOTHING. The Mayor is the man. He stuck his neck out and got the attention that was needed. Governor Blanco is a LOSER!
To Idealistic Pragmatist: "But we should be careful about what we do with unsourced news, especially when it confirms our biases." Words to live by on the Internet. Good work.
An interesting collection of opinions: Are we number one? Harold Meyerson isnt sure. Even as Mr. Bush claims he doesnt want to play the blame game, the Karl Rove character assassination game goes into high gear. Now, Im not ...