Media Meltdown on Parade: The Katrina Hype

Back on August 29th, I ran a post with the headline, Catastrophe Averted: LJiC Bought the Hype. The next day, the levees broke, New Orleans flooded, and I posted a retraction. The truth, as we are now finding out, was somewhere in the middle.

The scandal that is being revealed just adds one more nail in the coffin of MSM reliability:

The New Orleans Times-Picayune on Monday described inflated body counts, unverified "rapes," and unconfirmed sniper attacks as among examples of "scores of myths about the dome and Convention Center treated as fact by evacuees, the media and even some of New Orleans' top officials."

Indeed, Mayor C. Ray Nagin told a national television audience on "Oprah" three weeks ago of people "in that frickin' Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people."

Journalists and officials who have reviewed the Katrina disaster blamed the inaccurate reporting in large measure on the breakdown of telephone service, which prevented dissemination of accurate reports to those most in need of the information. Race may have also played a factor.

A breakdown of phone service?!?!? How about a breakdown of credibility? How about an agenda driven media, driven by ratings, and, for most, a desire to prove their Bush-hating template true?

How many gunshot victims were there in Louisiana during Katrina? Don't read the answer yet. How many were you told? Dozens? Hundreds?

Of the 841 recorded hurricane-related deaths in Louisiana, four are identified as gunshot victims, Johannessen said. One victim was found in the Superdome but was believed to have been brought there, and one was found at the Convention Center, he added.

Four. Heck, for New Orleans that's a good day for the crime rate. If you want to cut down the murder rate in New Orleans, maybe you should have a few MORE hurricanes!

Read the list in this story of all the rumors you KNEW were true.

Over at Independent Liberal, Joseph is writing a great series on Media Bias. He makes the case that media bias is a good thing. It may be. But media incompetence and agenda driven journalism is a travesty, and a scandal.

And journalists look down on bloggers because we don't have editorial filters?

Give me a break.

cross posted at Gun-Totin' Liberal