Manufactured News

In the days after Katrina we were treated to daily reports of how quickly a city can sink into depravity. As the world looked on, we wondered how America could come to this? Of course, some were quick to respond that racism was somehow to blame.

If you were paying close attention you noticed that all of the reports came from one place - New Orleans. No where else was reporting this kind of lawlessness or violence. This raised a new question: what was different about New Orleans?

One difference was the level of reporting. Most of the hurricane's devastation was ignored in favor of shots of flooded streets. In the rush to find new stories, reporters repeated nearly anything that they were told, especially if it came from an authority figure.

Which is the second difference. Most city authorities try to downplay reports that make their city look bad. Not Mayor Nagin. Early on he was quoted as saying that the death toll would be 10,000 or more. What was his source for this? He made it up. As time went on, he found that he could get on Oprah by repeating the worst stories he had heard. On Sept. 6 he was on Oprah and told the world about piles of dead bodies and babies being raped at the Superdome. Police Chief Compass, who was also on Oprah, added more details about general lawlessness including alledging that the Ritz-Carlton hotel had been taken over by armed thugs and his own daughter had been raped there. Nothing of the kind happened.

The official murder count for the week of flooding was four - a typical week for New Orleans.

Articles about the misinformation have appeared but it is too late. America has been given a black eye. A lot of the foreign press including the BBC exaggerated the already-false stories. Any follow-up they do will be buried. The world now thinks of America as one storm away from barbarians.

Probably this is part of why Chief Compass resigned.

Congressional hearings began this week on what went wrong. I wonder how closely they will look at the stream of mis-information and its source. Mayor Nagin might get another national TV interview yet.