From Cronkite to Katrina: Why the MSM Keeps Getting It Wrong
Taken from this week’s edition of PJM Political, the unedited version of Ed Driscoll’s interview with W. Joseph Campbell, veteran former AP reporter turned professor of communication at American University in Washington, D.C. Campbell is the author of Getting It Wrong: Ten of the Greatest Misreported Stories in American Journalism. His blog at Media Myth Alert is well worth checking out as well.
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Having survived Hurricane Katrina, I’m here to tell you that the way the media got it “wrong” was in telling the world that only New Orleans was affected. Biloxi, Gulfport, Long Beach, Pass Christian and Waveland, MS, were much more devastated than New Orleans. New Orleans’ problems were exacerbated by a Mayor and a Governor who sat on their hands and let it happen and then blamed the government. Mississippi’s coast line was for all practical purposes obliterated by the wind and by the water. We got out with only the clothes on our backs and our two dogs, a couple of hours before the east side of Katrina hit, and drove for 9 hours to get one and half hours into Florida. Our home and two thirds of the Mississippi homes were matchsticks, along with all the 200-year old oaks on the beach. Nothing left but a few front stairs to nowhere, and gutted shops. The biggest difference in Mississippi and New Orleans was that Mississippi sighed and cried for the 300+ who were lost, then got to work clearing the debris and re-building. With the help of Gov. Haley Barbour and many caring individuals and groups, Mississippi hardly skipped a beat before it was running full steam ahead again. Five years later N.O. is still wailing “Help me! Poor me!”
Yup,
New Orleans and Louisiana both had incredibly dismal records pre-Katrina. Both were populated by some of the MOST corrupt politicans to whore themselves to special interests and crime groups. Money was poured into N.O. and La. and just disappeared.
Post Katrina it became all about the MONEY… Millions of Dollars in rebuilding & restoration contracting.
All I can say is thank God for Bobby Jindal!
The guy’s blog is certainly interesting as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go very far. It’s a bit repetitious – how many “takes” do we need on Hearst & the yellow journalism, Edward R. Murrow, the “Cronkeit Moment,” and Watergate? It would be interesting to see more articles about current media myth-making. I’m sure the author’s analysis would be very useful in deciphering the contemporary media’s babblings.
Other than the limited scope, the blog is certainly informative. I admire the author for untangling the whole Watergate mess and making the Post’s role in the affair crystal clear. The Jessica Lynch articles were very informative, too. I hope his book is very successful. People who casually toss out these myths (usually to make a political point) should be made familiar with the “rest of the story.”
When will Campbell and his fellow denizens of academia and the media finally admit that the media-orchestrated blood-libeling and demonizing of the Serbs throughout the 1990s and 2000s was just as wrong (both factually and morally) as all of the other instances he cites?
Until that happens, color me unimpressed.