Katrina, US and us

The Washington Post this summer created a bulletin board for staffers to post critiques of the day’s newspaper. On Aug. 26, several days before Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, this bit of revisionism popped up on the board: "Mr. Weather would have liked to see a fuller story on the hurricane further forward in the paper, maybe even A-3, with a front page key; it’s the story people woke up to...

For the first 120 hours after Hurricane Katrina, TV journalists were let off their leashes by their mogul owners, the result of a rare conjoining of flawless timing (summer’s biggest vacation week) and foulest tragedy (America’s worst natural disaster). No one could have anticipated that, suddenly, TV’s two prettiest-boy anchors would be boldly and tearfully (CNN’s Anderson Cooper and FNC’s Shep...

Media people like to believe they were put on Earth to think big thoughts about great global issues, a la Walter Lippmann. But in our hearts, we're really just storm chasers. As the last two weeks have shown, natural disasters speak to us in a way that no G-8 summit ever could. We're in that tiny club of oddballs who are at their best in the absolute worst of human circumstances. All that pain and...

At this weblog, we were very admirative of the work done by newspapers in Louisiana, especially the New Orleans Times-Picayune. For instance the "missing persons list" was launched very quickly by the newspaper and it is a remarkable initiative. But I think to two other consequences: 1) If the goal of newspapers is not only to provide news, but to serve their communities, why have we seen so many...

For the past six weeks the American public has been treated to news reporting of two totally different kinds: five weeks of calculated, controlled lies wrapped in sympathy for modern day saintly "Settlers" being evicted from their homes in their land of Judea, and an open, honest, gut reactive reporting resulting from the uncontrolled mayhem wrought by Katrina. What's to be learned from these...

NEW YORK As Hurricane Katrina's deadly gale-force winds bore down on New Orleans last Monday, dumping water that would later engulf the city, NOLA.com editor Jon Donley was hunkered down in the Times-Picayune's "Hurricane Bunker," listening to the police scanner and posting updates using the site's blogging software. Before its offices were literally swamped with water, the Times-Picayune was...

Natural disasters, whether in the form of storms or tsunamis, make no distinction between developed and developing countries. However, in the face of Hurricane Katrina, the world's richest and most powerful nation was expected to put all the resources at its command to protect its people. Tragically, this did not happen in New Orleans where thousands are reported dead. Despite the early warning...

In the deluge of reporting surrounding Hurricane Katrina, I got stuck on a rather quirky piece – about bread, and how it has highlighted the stark contrasts between two nations struck by the same tragedy. "In New Orleans there was shooting and looting when the floods came last week. When a similar inundation struck India's financial capital Mumbai in month earlier, there was no violence, just free...

NEW DELHI–Even as the United States struggles to come to terms with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that has destroyed New Orleans, there is a sense of shock in India. Pictures of victims begging for food, reports of looting, rapes, racist attacks, an ineffective disaster management routine has revealed the innards of America that many believed never existed. After all, making it to America...

Americans, usually critical of the media, have given the news coverage of Hurricane Katrina a thumbs up, and major outlets are pledging to stay on the story to find out what went wrong with the response to the disaster. "We haven't had this many people committed to a story since I don't know when," says CBS News executive Marcy McGinnis, who estimates that the network has 200 staffers on the story...