posted
On another thread, I've been mostly bashing media on coverage of the disaster in New Orleans.
In all fairness, I see some glimmers of hope - maybe even some responsible reporting. On the "Today" show, Matt Lauer suggested that the situation has exposed the sharp divide in this country between the very poor and everyone else. He also suggested that the media had some responsibility for ignoring the problem of poverty in this country.
CNN's doing something interesting. They're comparing the official pronouncements of different department officials about the situation in New Orleans and comparing them with the word from people who are actually there. This is one of the things that invites harsher criticism of federal efforts. It's one thing when they fall short - it's another thing to claim they're "going well" when they're not.
quote: NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- Diverging views of a crumbling New Orleans emerged Thursday. The sanitized view came from federal officials at news conferences and television appearances. But the official line was contradicted by grittier, more desperate views from the shelters and the streets.
These conflicting views came within hours, sometimes minutes of each of each other, as reflected in CNN's transcripts. The speakers include Michael Brown, chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, evacuee Raymond Cooper, CNN correspondents and others. Here's what they had to say:
--cut-- The federal response:
Brown: Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans, virtually a city that has been destroyed, things are going relatively well.
Homeland Security Director Chertoff: Now, of course, a critical element of what we're doing is the process of evacuation and securing New Orleans and other areas that are afflicted. And here the Department of Defense has performed magnificently, as has the National Guard, in bringing enormous resources and capabilities to bear in the areas that are suffering.
Crowd chanting outside the Convention Center: We want help.
Nagin: They don't have a clue what's going on down there.
Phyllis Petrich, a tourist stranded at the Ritz-Carlton: They are invisible. We have no idea where they are. We hear bits and pieces that the National Guard is around, but where? We have not seen them. We have not seen FEMA officials. We have seen no one.
I am pretty sure that Chertoff won't be using the word "magnificently" to describe the DOD's performance again in the near future. Needless to say, Chertoff said this before Pres. Bush pronounced the results of efforts "not acceptable."
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quote: I am pretty sure that Chertoff won't be using the word "magnificently" to describe the DOD's performance again in the near future.
I hope he does. Because the people going out are doing magnificently with what they have availble. Yes, we need more people. Of course not enough is being done. Frankly, it's currently impossible for enough to be done. Nothing will be enough. But the people who are there are working themselves to the bone every day, and all the media seems to do is complain about them.
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posted
I'm reading "the DOD" as the key words here.
The rescuers are doing magnificently. The firefighters, police, and medical personnel who stayed on, as well as those who came in to help (and the National Guard coming in to help) are heroes.
The administrators at the DOD are still screwing up, as far as I can tell.
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quote:JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The Army is rushing in 4200 military police to Louisiana, 1400 a day for three days to help stem the rising violence in New Orleans and try to calm the seething masses of angry, frustrated, hungry victims still stranded in squalid conditions. PAUL MCHALE, ASST. DEFENSE SECY./HOMELAND DEFENSE: Over the next three days, the National Guard, through the cooperation of the governors and ultimately under the command and control of the governor of Louisiana, will be deploying into the New Orleans area a force the size of the New Orleans police department each day, every day, for the next three days.
MCINTYRE: That will bring the number of military police in Louisiana to about 7,000. And the overall total of National Guard troops deployed in the disaster zone to 30,000.
But Louisiana's governor says she's asked for 40,000 in her state alone and may ask for more. Still, what many simply can't understand is why it's taking so long.
In a telephone briefing to reporters at the Pentagon, the three star general in charge of military coordination admitted a failure to plan for the worst.
LT. GEN. RUSSEL HOMERT, COMMISSIONER OF TASK FORCE KATRINA: All last week, we were collaborating on developing options. None of us, nobody was clairvoyant enough to perceive the damage that was going to be brought by this storm.
So it was off the worst case scenario that any of us might have envisioned of happening.
posted
Were they not informed of the possible damage? I mean Scientific American knew what could happen, shouldn't top-level military people have been able to figure it out?
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posted
Heck, ketchupqueen, they could have asked the Army Corp of Engineers. They probably had some ideas about what a "worst-case scenario" could look like. (and, believe it or not, this fell short of "worst-case," I believe)
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posted
That's a really powerful piece when you read the whole thing.
People are dying and some bureaucrats are working very hard to cover their own asses. Bodies being stored in the stairwells of flooded hospitals and yet "they're doing magnificently."
Move along Citizen, there's nothing to see.
And our President? I keep thinking of Nero playing his fiddle while Rome burned.
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our President has been on an "image slide" for awhile. He took two preliminary steps in the right direction.
1. He cut his long vacation a few days short. 2. He finally - this morning - came out to address the press after talking to his DoD advisors - and pronounced the situation "not acceptable."
Those are tiny steps. They may be enough for a lot of unaffected relatively well-off white people (hey, I'm one) start to forget how they're feeling now.
But I think the repercussions in the black community in this country haven't even begun. They are not going to forget this.
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posted
Actually, I think there are quite a few fairly well-off white folks that are pretty pissed, too.
I think the repercussions are going to be pretty across the board. Or at least they should be.
But one thing I haven't heard much of lately: Praise for the Coast Guard. Those are Coasties on many of the choppers that are pulling people to safety.
Those fellows never get the credit they deserve.
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quote:Heck, ketchupqueen, they could have asked the Army Corp of Engineers. They probably had some ideas about what a "worst-case scenario" could look like. (and, believe it or not, this fell short of "worst-case," I believe)
Heck, If they had watched the news this weekend they would have heard that the current scenario was likely.
All these claims that they hadn't considered this "worst case scenario" are bald faced lies pure and simple. FEMA had planned and drilled for exactly this kind of scenario just last year. They identified many of the problems that we are seeing on the ground now and they did nothing about the problems because their budgets were cut.
The Army Corp of Engineers story is virtually identical.
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posted
It makes me wonder how FOX news is spinning the thing. I also wonder why neighboring states haven't tried to help out. Maybe they are and I just don't know about it.
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posted
The reprecusions of this are going to be felt nation wide because of oil and gas prices alone. Then add in the refugee issure. They are saying it may be 3 months before refugees will be able to return to New Orleans -- that's a long to have 1 million or more refugees and my guess is that nearly every state in the union will be housing refugees. I don't think anyone in the country is going to forget about this quickly.
And now consider that last year we had three Hurricane hit land in US within about a months time. The National Weather service is predicting similar storm activity this year. They say that we can expect 12 more Hurricanes/Tropical Storms in the Atlantic before the season is over and that odds are that 3 to 4 will hit land.
I don't think anyone has given much thought to what will happen if another Storm hits the Gulf Coast in the next month.
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posted
I've also noticed that FoxNews seems to have come around. They've got no one to be biased against so we're getting quality reporting from them now.
I think it was CNN, but one channel did a short investigation into the affect of race on the rescue effort. Nagin drew a comparision between 9/11 and how quickly aid was given to rich, corporate NYC while the poor (and black majority) suffer for days without food, water, or transportation out.
Its hard to deny the fact that Tulane University hospital was evacuated while the Charity hospital nexdt door, which caters to the poor, has been ignored and is now working bravely without electricity or water.
As for neighbor states, Texas has opened up schools and shelters for evacuees. Florida sports fans are giving up hotels for those who need shelter. A radio station in North Carolina collected $200,000 and packed 14 18-wheelers full of supplies for relief. Chicago truck drivers came down with food and water.
I've seen more good will from fellow citizens than I have from the government.
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posted
The mere fact that you can list individual good will gestures says a lot.
I flipped over to FOX yesterday, wondering how they were spinning it and was amused. They were doggedly reporting all of the "good" things that were happening. They even had Greta Van Susteren at one of the evacuee centers in Texas, I think, (yep, the Astrodome) and even though I think the general gist the bosses had in mind was more along the lines of "see, these people are being taken care of" listening to her comments made me wonder how much longer she was going to have her job.
A current FOX headline: Aid Pours Into New Orleans - National Guard helps refugees; Bush says Big Easy will 'rise again'
A current Yahoo headline: Bush: Katrina response 'not acceptable'
Also at Yahoo: Aid reaches New Orleans National Guard arrives amid criticism of delayed relief efforts
At CNN: AID IN, PEOPLE OUT Some hope returns to New Orleans
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posted
I understand some of these folks are going to be on Meet the Press this Sunday. Tim Russert is pretty hot about the failure of the Feds to act more quickly. Should be good TV.
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posted
I'll have to make a point to see Meet the Press, then. That should be good; Russert can get pretty righteously angry sometimes.
I don't know...it seems to me that if the federal response doesn't get on the right track really soon, this may be the hole that the Bush administration can't spin themselves out of, primarily because the media has seen enough, and it has disgusted them enough, that they won't drop the ball or be cajoled or intimidated out of reporting the story.
I saw a clip of something that really warmed my heart, by the way, and wish I had seen the whole thing. Apparently Anderson Cooper was interviewing some woman politician from Louisiana who went into the typical politician rap of thanking other politicians for being politicians, basically. Well, Cooper interrupted her and pretty much read her the riot act about how people don't want to hear that sort of thing, politicians patting each other on the back, right now, when people are still unrescued and dying, and the dead are still laying out on the streets. If he was just posturing, he was doing a damn good job of it; his voice was shaking in his indigation.
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posted
Was I the only one who listened to President Bush's speech about his recent visit, and thought it sounded a lot like his talks about Iraq? "We've taken the Astrodome" sounded just like "We've taken Falujah."
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