New at Reason

Julian Sanchez | November 28, 2005

Matt Welch heard a rumor that some people were gang raping journalism somewhere in the basement of the Superdome...

Comments

|11.28.05 @ 9:44AM|#

Good article. Another incident worth mentioning is the blocking the bridge by Jefferson Parish police to prevent the looting mob of New Orleanians from rampaging into the nice suburban towns on the other side of the river.

The Whiny and Oh So Superior P|11.28.05 @ 9:56AM|#

"So no paramedic has died yet, but a National Guardsman has been shot and wounded and a Chinook helicopter has been shot at. http://www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/09/01/katrina.impact/index.html Jennifer already posted about attacks on ambulances. If these people are threatened, they're not going to just soldier on. They're going to quit and wait for order to be restored. Quit apologizing for Bush's failure to restore order and realize that more people are going to die unless the mayhem is stopped.
Comment by: Meyer at September 1, 2005 11:14 AM"

Lol

The rumours were propagated to make excuses for an understaffed disaster response. Observant observers knew this on 1 Sept. Now Matt is dropping it, like science, on all our heads.

|11.28.05 @ 10:03AM|#

"...gang raping journalism..."

Can't really calling gang-raping can you? The bitch was askin' for it.

|11.28.05 @ 10:03AM|#

Uh, yeah, the news channels that sent their reporters to gnash their teeth and rend their garments about the inadequacy of the response were repeating these rumors because they wanted to make excuses about the inadequacy of the response.

The fact that stories about snipers shooting helicopters is a wicked cool story that gets eyeballs on the screen had nothing to do with it, I'm sure.

The Whiny and Oh So Superior P|11.28.05 @ 10:09AM|#

No. The people who started the rumors were making excuses. The media were selectively buying into the excuses to sell papers. The people who designed the rumors were smart. They knew that excuses designed to get eyeballs on the screen would be more effective than boring excuses, so they took pains to make their fiction interesting and newspapers heeded this effort in the manner expected.

The Whiny and Oh So Superior P|11.28.05 @ 10:12AM|#

semi-related: story idea for Mr. Welch: I keep hearing various "confirmed dead" numbers for Katrina these days. What does "confirmed dead" really mean at this point? Is it a good approximation of the real number of dead? Will we ever have a good approximation? How do the efforts to establish a relable death toll for Katrina compare to comparable efforts made in the context of 9/11 or other disasters?

|11.28.05 @ 10:16AM|#

OK, Phil, it was an elaborate conspiracy.

Viking the Peaceful, Elegant M|11.28.05 @ 10:23AM|#

Phil - congratulations on the full transformation into a Cabbage Patch Doll!

(obscure reference warning) have you finally remembered where you live? somehow i always seem to hear that song at the dentist's.

when you start with the "dropping like science" stuff, that's where it's time to turn the station.

Phil Collins|11.28.05 @ 10:29AM|#

No. It wasn't an elaborate conspiracy. That is why it fell apart when Matt hammered at it. The basic truth remains that we were willing to expend a lot more responders on 9/11 than for Katrina, even though the death tolls weren't that different. I think that says something bad about both responses. Bad stuff that we, as a society, don't talk about near enuf.

In a sense, the rumours did help the excuse-makers who started them. Specifically, the rumours delayed our conversation about the understaffed response back to a later point in time when people have forgotten and no longer care. Instead of reporting rumours, the media could have thrown in a drowned corpse picture or two on Sept 1. Preferabley taken at a nursing home or nursery. Then people would remember, just like they did after the 9-11 coverage extravaganza. I don't think this dynamic is formal enough to be called a conspiracy, but it is real and it matters.

Ed|11.28.05 @ 10:55AM|#

No mea culpa from the blogosphere, I note.

|11.28.05 @ 11:04AM|#

Or from Charles Murray of "The Bell Curve" fame, who was nice enough to let us know in an NYT op-ed that this is what happens when "the animals" - poor urban people - are "let out of the zoo."

Jeff P.|11.28.05 @ 11:11AM|#

There was a great gag on the pilot of Tripping the Rift where an anchor throws to to a male reporter (seen only in extreme close-up) who says (in reporter-calibre dead-pan) "Tom, I'm currently being brutally ass-raped by a gang of roaming thugs..."

keith|11.28.05 @ 11:16AM|#

Despite these revelations and retractions, I bet if, in ten years, you asked the average person what happened after Hurricane Katrina, most of them will still believe it was a firestorm of baby raping, with attacks on rescue workers and bodies piled in towering masses.

Dan|11.28.05 @ 11:52AM|#

I�m amazed that this happened � I thought that the decreased significance of the �mainstream media� and increased influence of bloggers and �alternative media� was supposed to produce better journalism?

This is heresy to Reason readers, but it appears that increased competition in the �news� market is actually making things worse, not better�in an age of �instant� news, you lose money if you spend too much time fact-checking or considering all angles of a story.

|11.28.05 @ 11:53AM|#

My fave Jefferson quote:

"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers."

Also from T.J.:

"Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper."

Just replace "newspapers" with "MSM" and you're all set.

Ed|11.28.05 @ 11:54AM|#

The lesson to be learned (again) is that we tend to believe what we want to believe about human nature. Instant news + instant value judgments = instant gratification and vindication that, yes indeedy, we were right all along about "those people." A dangerous trap to fall into, made more dangerous by the unrelenting torrent of disinformation, rumors and outright lies that is now passing as "news."

|11.28.05 @ 12:07PM|#

There were many very dramatic stories coming out of New Orleans in the week after the storm. Some of these - the stories of crime and violence - tended to endorse a conservative/right view of the world. Others - the stories of abandonment, deprivation, and abuse of refugees by the authorities - tended to endorse a liberal/left view of the world.

If we had a media that was biased towards the political left, we would expect to see a higher rate of debunking of the latter set of stories. Instead, the stories about the lack of food and water, the closing of routes out of town by the police, and the poor provision of services to low-income areas have proven to be very accurate, while the stories of rampaging hordes of negroes turned out to be false.

Draw your own conclusions about the state of modern media.

|11.28.05 @ 12:37PM|#

Dan

"This is heresy to Reason readers, but it appears that increased competition in the ?news? market is actually making things worse, not better?in an age of ?instant? news, you lose money if you spend too much time fact-checking or considering all angles of a story."


Dan, you're assuming, of course, that the information passed on to us from the "golden years" of journalism (ala Cronkite, Rather et al) was correct. I'd be careful about making that assumption.

|11.28.05 @ 12:39PM|#

The Katrina coverage reminded me of the Eddie Murphy routine about someone getting hit by a car and how there's always a guy who didn't acutually see the accident but is jumping around, talking real loud about it. "Oh shit, yeah. I seen it. I seen it! What happened was..." In this case the loud, incorrect, obnoxious guy was the mainstream media.

|11.28.05 @ 12:45PM|#

I just came back from 6 days in New Orleans (staying with my parents in their 27' travel trailer). I have a friend who quit his job as a fireman because he had been shot at while trying to put out fires in the days just after the storm. At the bar I used to spend a lot of time at, quite a few of my left-liberal friends were encouraging me to find a job in the city and stay. Apparently, crime has dropped off the radar, which most of these enlightened individuals were attributing to the mass exodus of poor urban blacks after the storm. Middle class black people who stayed or have returned are agreeing with that sentiment too.

|11.28.05 @ 2:53PM|#

Some of these - the stories of crime and violence - tended to endorse a conservative/right view of the world. Others - the stories of abandonment, deprivation, and abuse of refugees by the authorities - tended to endorse a liberal/left view of the world.

Interesting. I see both of these as endorsing a pro-authoritarian view of the world. These stories further promote the notion that the media is neither left nor right, but profoundly centrist and, overall, pro-government.

That the stories about authorities reacting with apparently unexpected incompetence turned out to be true, while the stories about people becoming hellish animals in the absence of authority turned out to be false, is not very surprising to me.

|11.28.05 @ 3:04PM|#

Another incident worth mentioning is the blocking the bridge by Jefferson Parish police to prevent the looting mob of New Orleanians from rampaging into the nice suburban towns on the other side of the river.

I've been wondering what happened to this story. I thought that was disgusting.

The Wine Commonsewer|11.28.05 @ 5:21PM|#

Evacuation from the city of New Orleans was never halted, according to officials from the Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and the Louisiana National Guard

A disingenuous statement from three, count 'em, government agencies. I was NEVER under the impression that the evac from the City of New Orleans was halted, just from the Superdome.

R C Dean|11.28.05 @ 5:22PM|#

Others - the stories of abandonment, deprivation, and abuse of refugees by the authorities - tended to endorse a liberal/left view of the world.

They were certainly spun to push the lefty/liberal agenda, by using them as props to blame the Bush administration, rather than the local, predominantly Democrat, officials, who had primary responsiblity for first response and were actually in charge of authorities abusing refugees.

R C Dean|11.28.05 @ 5:24PM|#

Apparently, crime has dropped off the radar, which most of these enlightened individuals were attributing to the mass exodus of poor urban blacks after the storm.

Well, its pretty much a fact of modern American life that poor urban black men commit a grossly disproportionate number of violent crimes. Tragic, in the sense that gaius uses the word, but an undeniable fact.

K|11.28.05 @ 5:28PM|#

just a figment of your imagination

|11.29.05 @ 10:48AM|#

"They were certainly spun to push the lefty/liberal agenda, by using them as props to blame the Bush administration, rather than the local, predominantly Democrat, officials, who had primary responsiblity for first response and were actually in charge of authorities abusing refugees."

RC, the Jefferson Parish police who fired over the heads of those attempting to flee over the bridge were not lefties. Neither were the parish officials they answered to.

And, believe it or not, the criticism of local Democrats was quite common both among the journalists on the ground (recall Anderson Cooper berating Blanco? I bet you don't, Mr. Selectively-Informed), and among the liberal commentariat, who excoriated government at all levels.

But once again, the corrupt modern conservative is uninterested in the reality of what actually happened, and what statements were actually made - just whether criticism was made of George Bush, or not.

|11.29.05 @ 1:54PM|#

It seems to me the world would be a happier place if there were less gang raping and more gang loving.