As New Orleans drowned and the Gulf Coast lay shattered, the tone of the media coverage turned from shock and incomprehension to despair and finger-pointing.
By the end of the week, pictures of corpses were unavoidable on television. “People need to see this,” said CNN’s Chris Lawrence.
Do they?
Hurricane Katrina first unfolded with stock images of wind-blown correspondents, heirs to Dan Rather’s patented showboating. The second wave of images moved from television to the Internet. We still had reporters offering their bodies as evidence of the power of 145 mph winds, but the eye of the reporting storm migrated, with blogs, amateur video and “citizen journalist” sites scoring unprecedented hits. Next viewers witnessed hardened reporters breaking down on camera.
Eloquent pictures explained the terrible headlines. Trying to “wrap our heads around this story,” CNN’s Anderson Cooper showed a picture of what looked like a yellow puzzle pattern. It was an aerial shot of submerged school buses that summed up the tragedy and the mind’s confusion at taking it in.
More horrific images – bodies inside and outside the convention center – came later.
The media used its power, specifically the power of graphic shots of the dead and dying – on our native soil, not half a world away – to demand more help for victims.
Reporters ventured into personal reflections, with results both awkward and effective. ABC let Gulf Coast natives Cokie Roberts and Robin Roberts (“Good Morning America”) reminisce and emote in primetime. The effect was unnerving. Are their stories worthier than those of the thousands of displaced victims? It’s tricky when journalists turn the camera on themselves, but when it provides entry into a story, it works.
The media allowed President Bush’s tour of the disaster sites to set the weekend’s news agenda. In Washington, press secretary Scott McClellan was pelted with questions about the pace of recovery efforts.
“Any troops from Iraq being diverted to help?” veteran reporter Helen Thomas asked.
“You’re talking about two different priorities,” McClellan said. He warned against finger-
pointing as reporters dug into the seeming lack of preparedness.
Broadcasters mused that the communication challenges felt similar to those of the Indonesian tsunami, where issues of fire, water and power outages also hampered coverage.
While the reporting was generally compassionate and informative, with appropriate warnings before graphic images, there were moments of nails-on-chalkboard dissonance.
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer insisted on congratulating his network’s “brave personnel” and “courageous journalists” who dealt with the realities along the Gulf Coast. The self-referential ego strokes were inappropriate given the level of suffering.
CNN’s John Zarrella talked about helping to evacuate a mother and her baby – “it took us three hours to make it into Baton Rouge” – and, back in Atlanta, was debriefed about his experience. It all felt self-congratulatory.
Fox News Channel’s Shephard Smith retained objectivity as he described the lethal mix of water, gas and human waste flooding New Orleans in “a refugee crisis the United States has never known.”
Wrap-ups by the new generation of anchors found them not ready for primetime network figurehead status. NBC’s perpetually tan Brian Williams, CBS’s Ratheresque John Roberts and ABC’s Elizabeth Vargas (who did a fine job but, alas, cannot be Peter Jennings) attempted to fill the vacuum.
In time-tested newsmagazine style, NBC’s “Dateline” sought uplift amid despair: “But after the worst from nature, the best from human nature.” Except for the looting. This time, “Dateline’s” insistence on a bright spin didn’t fit.
“This disaster has changed this country,” NBC’s Williams stated, echoing commentary from Sept. 11. While 9/11 was a psychological blow, difficult for the media to document, physical harm is a continuing threat after Katrina, easier to chronicle. Fears of typhoid and cholera moved to the fore.
In the days ahead, media managers must deal with matters of race and class. The post-disaster disaster afflicting poor African-Americans requires study. Media depictions of “looters” (when they’re black) and “gatherers of groceries” (when white) are one place to begin that discussion. Similarly, when Aaron Brown of CNN commented that “‘Refugees’ is such an uncomfortable word when applied to Americans,” he apparently meant it’s unaccustomed. But his words were xenophobic.
TV critic Joanne Ostrow can be reached at 303-820-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com.
