News-Record.com

The question of whether the journalists who went to Katrina did good journalism is as interesting as whether they did some good deeds. If you look back, many repeated rumors as truth and mishaped the public's perception of what went on. And, they missed alot of stories that they could have gotten if they had shown some initiative and gone where the stories actually were.

Some of the problems that Katrina victims faced after the disaster related to the false perceptions created by magnified and often false stories of armed bans roaming the streets of New Orleans and the Superdome. The average citizen of the poorest nieghborhoods in New Orleans behaved creditably and showed concern for his neighbor, but you wouldn't have known that from initial reports.

Reporters took unattributed reports of a death toll at least ten times as large as reality and ran with them. One of the worst examples, and the one ironically often cited as good journalism, was the horrible Anderson Cooper of CNN who lectured to authorities on the air based on information that was not entirely accurate. He stopped being a journalist and became an advocate.

The US military, particularly the Coast Guard and it's helicopters, did extraordinary things that got less mention than they deserved. The press missed much of the devastation in Mississippi simply because it was easier to shoot live video from dry parking lots in New Orleans. Because of this, they also fostered false impressions about how the relief effort was being carried out based on their misunderstanding the scale of the event.

There was precious little analysis, even less well sourced and attributed quotes from people who actually knew what was going on, and alot of the reporting was driven by the press' incessant need to find a political angle to any story.

Journalists do alot of good for society, more so at the level of your local newspaper, but at the national level major stories take on a "send in the clowns" aspect. With the perspective of time New Orleans will be seen as among journalism's worst hours. We can only be thankful that Dan Rather has retired. It could have been much worse.

You make some good points, Dudley. There were problems, including a massive overestimate of fatalities.

But I still consider this one of broadcasts journalism's finest moments.

They certainly knew more about the situation than FEMA. And the administration.

One thing the Katrina story did, at least for me, was underline the point that newspapers are still essential. Broadcasters can take you to a story and show you an event, but it takes print journalists to get the details right and add context.

Much of network TV reporting is driven by producers and when the on air talent starts speaking in an unscripted manner they seldom add much to the story. I think part of the problem is that TV personalities tend to come from college radio/TV programs. These are good programs for learning about broadcasting, but the best journalists often take non-traditional routes to their jobs. If I had to hire reporters, I would be just as likely to hire an English or History major as a journalism student because they had been forced into considering bigger questions and may have better critical thinking skills.

Last word on Katrina. The part of the story nobody talks much about now is the hours just after the hurricane passed. The press generally underreported the fact that this was actually a very dangerous time and may have allowed people in New Orleans a false sense of security when in reality the flooding of Lake Ponchetrain back into the city set the stage for the disaster that followed.

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