Katrina, US and us

Over the last few weeks, the media have given the Katrina disaster the special treatment reserved for Ultra-Mega-Double-Select Topic-A stories. You've read the massive headlines and gaped at the photo spreads of New Orleans under water. You've watched as the television banners evolved from "DEVASTATION IN THE GULF" (CBS) to "ROAD TO RECOVERY" (CNN). You've heard the theme music. And as the Gulf...

Soon after the floodwaters engulfed New Orleans, reporters chronicled the thousands trapped at the Superdome, trapped at the convention center, and trapped on rooftops. As the days passed, news consumers had to wonder: Why couldn’t citizens just hike out of the city to the nearest patch of dry land? The Socialist Worker webzine on Sept. 6 provided an answer: You couldn’t leave without facing down...

NEW YORK (AP) - Anticipating that the Hurricane Katrina recovery will be a big story for months to come, both NBC and CNN said Thursday they are opening full-time news bureaus in New Orleans. NBC News said its bureau will operate out of space at WDSU-TV, its local affiliate, and will help the network and MSNBC originate shows in the city. Brian Williams anchored the "NBC Nightly News" from there...

Readers and commentators from abroad are watching images of chaos and despair in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and are wondering how a country so mighty could have fallen so far. "Nature Lays a Superpower Low" reads the headline of an editorial in The Hindu, a daily in Chennai. Arvind Sivaramakrishnan, commenting in another article in the paper, writes that Katrina exposed "squalor that would...

Personally, I'm not very fond of the American media. On the one hand, there are the frivolous, superficial television news shows, with their low standards of newsworthiness and their Hollywood-driven agenda, which forces interviewees to compress complex messages into five-second sound bites. American newspapers, on the other hand, take themselves too seriously: grey, unwieldy and laboriously...

HUMAROCK, Massachusetts (Hollywood Reporter) - Will Katrina and its grim aftermath spell an end to some of the excesses in TV hurricane reporting? Let's hope so. In the case of most hurricanes, the coverage has two- or three-day arcs: preparation in the path of the storm, surf, rain and wind during the storm itself, then a day or so showing the destruction and human toll. Katrina, we know now...

The front pages of more than 20 newspapers today ran a photo of a naked, emaciated American clinging to life as rescuers carried him from his home. Editors say the startling image, showing a man being rescued in New Orleans 16 days after Hurricane Katrina, created discussions in their newsrooms but ultimately carried enough news value to make it worth publishing. The photo, by Orange County...

NEW YORK: A new CNN/USA Today/Gallup survey finds that 58% of Americans say they are following news coverage of the hurricane disaster -- and a vast majority give the media high marks. At the same time, only 43% of Americans give President Bush a passing grade in response to Hurricane Katrina, with 54% disapproving, and 7 in 10 call for an independent probe of the federal response. According to...

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Knight Ridder Inc., one of the nation's largest newspaper publishers, said today that third-quarter earnings from continuing operations will decline by about 20 percent due to damages related to Hurricane Katrina and higher newsprint costs. Last year, the company reported third-quarter earnings per share from continuing operations of 93 cents, compared with total earnings per...

SAN FRANCISCO – "Black general takes charge in New Orleans." "Undocumented won't be allowed to receive help from FEMA." "1,700 Koreans in New Orleans yet to be located." With passion and pride, ethnic news organizations in the United States are sending reporters, photographers and TV crews to the disaster area and covering the Hurricane Katrina story from angles not seen in many major metropolitan...