So The Media Failed?
Sep 27th, 2005 by Mark
Well yes they did, who knew? Everyone except the media, that’s who knew. Several media pundits said the news was finally the way it is supposed to be. They reasoned that since journalists were not chasing the same story you were getting “real news” finally. Oops! Guess not.
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.”
This of course was not helped when government “officials” not only repeat the lies, half-truths, and innuendo; they use them for political gain, spin, and to push off blame on someone else. That someone else being Bush who the lap-dog liberal media will portray in the worst light, and run with any story that makes Bush look badly.
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.”
Oprah herself did not help things with her caustic, race pimping comments which were the same tired old canards. Typical media elitist. It’s never about personal responsibility with the left. They are never to blame, it’s either Race and/or Bush that is the issue.
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.
So let me get this straight. You people can’t do your jobs because of “race”? Who’s race, yours, theirs or ours? Could it be that you lefty media chimps saw a chance to play the race card and bash Bush as the same time; so you ran with it. Who cares that you did not even follow your own “journalistic ethics”? Who cares that you threw out objectivity and went ‘hog wild’ for ratings and/or a chance to take a swipe at Bush?
Well we care. We care that you make up stories, don’t tell the whole story, create biased polls, and then write about how wonderful your coverage was/is. We want news, NOT YOUR OPINION.
Follow-up reporting has discredited reports of a 7-year-old being raped and murdered at the Superdome, roving bands of armed gang members attacking the helpless, and dozens of bodies being shoved into a freezer at the Convention Center.
Hyperbolic reporting spread through much of the media.
The problem is that the media (and none are guilt-free) who holds itself up as the arbiter of all things, is not the objective and truth-seeking group to which it stakes a claim. Your bias, and greed were on display for all to see. Your holier-than-thou attitude is nothing but posturing. Everyone can see that now.
Some of the hesitation that journalists might have had about using the more sordid reports from the evacuation centers probably fell away when New Orleans’ top officials seemed to confirm the accounts.
Nagin and Police Chief Eddie Compass appeared on “Oprah” a few days after trouble at the Superdome had peaked.
Compass told of “the little babies getting raped” at the Superdome. And Nagin made his claim about hooligans raping and killing.
What a load of crap. So a bunch or lefty pols go on the Oprah show and it never occurred to you that they may not know anything? Or worse maybe they are attempting to attack Bush? Oh wait, sorry my bad. They are liberals, of course they know everything. Even if what they said was not true, it was done for good reasons. So it is o.k. to report it!
This is typical of the lame excuses the media uses to excuse itself from responsibility for not doing it’s job.
Basic journalism, check your facts. Seem checking facts is not an issue anymore. Be dispassionate. Oh yeah right! Seems questioning officials is not done anymore either, IF THEY ARE THE RIGHT PARTY OR COLOR.
The media inaccuracies had consequences in the disaster zone.
[Maj. Ed] Bush, of the National Guard, said that reports of corpses at the Superdome filtered back to the facility via AM radio, undermining his struggle to keep morale up and maintain order.
“We had to convince people this was still the best place to be,” Bush said. “What I saw in the Superdome was just tremendous amounts of people helping people.”
But, Bush said, those stories received scant attention in newspapers or on television.
Maybe now you can understand why you are losing circulation and viewers to non-traditional outlets. No, probably not. Let me explain it to you.
Exacerbating the situation by not doing you jobs, you put lives at risk. Not for news, not for truth did you do it. You did it for money, power, ratings, and personal gain. I think we need a 9/11 style investigation into the irresponsible acts of the media.
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