In previous posts (here, and here), I spoke out in very strong terms against political hacks who were desperately trying to turn the Hurricane Katrina disaster into “the perfect storm” of political controversy for the President. Many others have chimed in with me via their own blogs or on some of the conservative media sites around the web.

Definitely, the Hurricane Katrina disaster was an emotional event for the entire country, and MANY in the media showed the emotional impact this disaster was making on themselves as well as those around them during the worst parts of the disaster. Fox News had several reporters on the scene, all of whom were shocked, dismayed, angry, even outraged that women and children were laboring to survive in the heat, waiting for help to come. CNN reporters showed the same kinds of emotions, with one female reporter on the scene shedding tears while a husband and father told of losing his wife in the flood.

I don’t know about you, but that touched me. And it woke me up big time to the true scope of the disaster in New Orleans and surrounding areas. When you see Shep Smith from Fox News ready to completely lose it on O’Reilly’s show, you know there’s a problem.

Unfortunately, some members of the MSM decided that the death and destruction caused by Katrina would make terrific political fodder to throw at the President. And with the help of the hapless governor of LA. and mayor of New Orleans, who were desperate to point fingers, the liberal media used the dead and dying as a springboard of political opportunism.

Let me give you the perfect case in point.

On Sunday, September 4, during “Meet the Press” on NBC, moderator, Tim Russert, interviewed Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, La. During the interview, Broussard told a singularly heartbreaking tale of a senior citizen who, for days after the hurricane, had been calling her son begging for help until, finally and tragically, she drowned in the after-hurricane deluge. Here is part of Broussard’s statement:

BROUSSARD: … The guy who runs this building I’m in, emergency management, he’s responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, “Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?” And he said, “Yeah, Mama, somebody’s coming to get you. Somebody’s coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Friday.” And she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night.

RUSSERT: Mr. President…

BROUSSARD: Nobody’s coming to get us. Nobody’s coming to get us. The secretary has promised. Everybody’s promised. They’ve had press conferences. I’m sick of the press conferences. For God sakes, shut up and send us somebody.

Sad, yes? Well, it would be if it weren’t all a lie. Here is what really happened, as outlined in a retraction by NBC, who labelled this whole event as a “misunderstanding”:

Subsequent reporting identified the man whom Broussard was referring to in the Meet the Press interview as Thomas Rodrigue, the Jefferson Parish emergency services director. Contacted on Friday by MSNBC.com, Rodrigue acknowledged that his 92-year-old mother and more than 30 other people died in the St. Rita nursing home. They had not been evacuated and the flood waters overtook the residence.

The chronology of the phone calls described by Broussard came under particular scrutiny by bloggers.

Rodrigue said he didn’t see or hear Broussard’s comments on Meet the Press. When told of the sequence of phone calls that Broussard described on Meet the Press, Rodrigue said “No, no, that’s not true.”

“I can’t tell you what he said that day, why he was confused, I’m assuming he was under a tremendous amount of pressure,” Rodrigue told MSNBC.

“I contacted the nursing home two days before the storm [on Aug. 27th] and again on the 28th of August,” Rodrigue said. “At the same time I talked to the nursing home I also talked to the emergency manager for St. Bernard Parish,” Rodrigue said, “to encourage that nursing home to evacuate like they were supposed to and they didn’t until it was too late.”

Broussard must have been confused “because I was calling, not my mother calling me, I was calling her,” Rodrigue said. Further, Rodrigue says he never made any calls after Monday, the day he figures his mother died, based on conversations he’s had with another person who had a family member perish inside St. Rita’s. Officials believe that the residents of St. Rita’s died on Monday, Aug. 29, not on Friday, Sept. 2, as Broussard had suggested.

Broussard could not be reached for comment Friday, but Jackie Bauer, a spokeswoman for Broussard who was present during the Meet the Press interview, said “it was a misunderstanding.”

Please note TWO interesting details here:

1. BLOGGERS were responsible for debunking Broussard’s BS story.
2. “The husband and wife owners of St. Rita’s nursing home,” where all of this occurred, “in the New Orleans suburb of Chalmette have been charged with homicide in the case.”

Why were they charged with homocide? Because they should have heeded the MANDATORY evacuation order and gotten their people out. Instead, the owners survived and their elderly patients all died. And all of this happened during the Hurricane, long before federal resources could have been brought on the scene.

Why did Broussard get the details so wrong? Because they made the President look bad, of course, and the MSM ate this story like candy! Where were the fact-finders of the much-vaunted MSM? I guess they were off doing other things.

As for Mr. Russert, he called in to WTOP radio the next morning to comment on this story, express his sympathy for the victims, and to decry the Bush Administration for its failures. He sounded tired and I’m sure he was, but, at the very least, he allowed his bias to get in the way of his normally sound judgement. At worst, he showed his true stripes as yet another liberal member of the MSM who is willing to discard facts as long as it hurts a conservative President.

So, has Mr. Russert apologized for his remarks, which flowed from his emotional response to Mr. Broussard’s BS story? Not that I’m aware of. Too bad, I always thought of Russert as one of those in the MSM who had more integrity than most.

Guess I was wrong.

David Flanagan
Viewpointjournal.com