Hurricane Katrina
The Press Got it Wrong!
By Daniel Muniz

I am sick and tired of the bogus perception that the federal government abandoned the city of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. That is blatantly false and completely erroneous. However, this faulty perception has already been molded into the minds of millions of Americans and reinforced by the press, media celebrities, and liberal politicians. But if these assessments are unequivocally wrong, then why has the truth gone unnoticed for so long?

But first, what is the truth?

Within 72 hours after the landfall of Katrina, over 100,000 emergency personnel from various governmental agencies arrived to help. That staggering number of personnel and equipment represents the largest and fastest rescue effort ever mounted in our nation’s history. And most heroically, there were National Guard and Coast Guard helicopters already rescuing people only two hours after the hurricane struck.

But what is shockingly irresponsible is that our press downplayed the enormous scope of the rescue effort itself. Livid newscasters were constantly asking “where is the government” while over 100,000 government personnel were executing the largest rescue operation in history with tens of thousands of people being airlifted or boated out of harm’s way. In essence, the media was totally negligent in ignoring this Herculean effort to save so many people.

Instead, the press went hog wild with wall-to-wall coverage of completely unsubstantiated and patently false news stories. They made sensational headlines were totally untrue.

For instance, I remember seeing news crews interviewing helicopter pilot after helicopter pilot asking them how they felt about being shot at from sniper’s nests while they were airlifting people. Each pilot gave the same answer that they were never shot at and that they didn’t know of any other helicopter that was also shot at. That didn’t stop the press from reporting these incredible but fraudulent stories about upset New Orleans residents revolting against the government. In fact, an investigation concluded that there was not a single bullet hole in any helicopter.

Here is another whopper:

That again is totally false. Only six bodies were pulled from the Superdome and amazingly, one victim died from a drug overdose, one was ruled a suicide, and the other four died of natural causes. Only four bodies were pulled from the convention center in which three people died of natural causes while a fourth one did have stab wounds. There was only one attempted rape at the Superdome which was stopped by the New Orleans police. And the only recorded weapons discharge at the Superdome was a Guardsman who shot himself in the leg by accident.

Although people were naturally upset at being displaced and from being in the hot humid weather, there was no mayhem that resulted in thousands of dead bodies at the Superdome.

But perhaps the worst tragedy that the press committed is the rowback. A rowback is when the media reports an unsubstantiated story that is later proven wrong but they don’t bother to go back and correct it. They just pretend that the mistake never happened even though the public is still left with an erroneous perception. In fact, it is often estimated that the press would have to spend about a third of their newspaper space or broadcast time correcting all the stories that they got wrong if they ever wanted to be rowback free.

Besides, the harsh reality is that sensational headlines sell newspapers and it is totally irrelevant if the story is wrong.

And that is really the problem with Hurricane Katrina. The press never corrected all the bogus stories they got wrong and that list is exceedingly long. And by pretending that their journalistic errors never happened, their negligence simply reinforced the misperception that the federal government abandoned New Orleans or worse, falsely assigning them responsibilities that they never had in the first place such as FEMA being a first responder.

Also, by being fixated on the bumbling of the top management of FEMA, the media ignored the largest and fastest rescue operation in history which unfolded right in front of their eyes.

Unfortunately, the passage of time has not altered the public psyche even though the facts are readily available. In fact, the press has given the false impression that the most important person responsible for your personal safety is the federal government instead of yourself. If you stop doing your own thinking and stop taking your own personal responsibility in which you expect the government to do it for you, then you are going to suffer the consequences.

For instance, the best way to survive a hurricane is to not be there when it makes landfall. And the best way to make due after a hurricane is to have your own hurricane survival kit stocked full of supplies already at hand. Yet the media gives the impression that all of those responsibilities solely belong to the federal government instead of to the individual.

With that perspective, it is easy to understand why so many people still blame the federal government for Hurricane Katrina even after all of these years. With the help of the media, the public now has a very unrealistic (and very dangerous) expectation of what is supposed to happen in the event of a natural disaster.

Although the press got it wrong with Hurricane Katrina, it is still the fault of the Bush Administration of not bringing to attention what the results really were and setting the record straight. As a result, the enormous rescue effort that saved tens of thousands of people has largely gone unnoticed.

Any opinions or views expressed herein belong solely to the author and does not represent any employer, organization, political party, governmental agency, or any other entity and do not necessarily reflect the views of the site owner or its participants.