9/27/2005
Well, in my last post on this topic, “The Pitiful Press,” I commented on the fact that even normally reliable and stalwart media organizations were dissapointingly impulsive in their coverage of stories coming from Hurricane Katrina.
Almost from the first day the Hurricane hit, New Orlean Mayor, Ray Nagin, was predicting thousands and tens of thousands dead in the city. He said much more than that, as Breitbart.com reports:
On Sept. 1, with desperate Hurricane Katrina evacuees crammed into the convention center, Police Chief Eddie Compass reported: “We have individuals who are getting raped; we have individuals who are getting beaten.”
Five days later, he told Oprah Winfrey that babies were being raped. On the same show, Mayor Ray Nagin warned: “They have people standing out there, have been in that frickin’ Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people.”
The ugliest reports _ children with slit throats, women dragged off and raped, corpses piling up in the basement _ soon became a searing image of post-Katrina New Orleans.
The stories were told by residents trapped inside the Superdome and convention center and were repeated by public officials. Many news organizations, including The Associated Press, carried the witness accounts and official pronouncements, and in some cases later repeated the claims as fact, without attribution.
Here is what has actually been discovered to date by authorities:
But now, a month after the chaos subsided, police are re-examining the reports and finding that many of them have little or no basis in fact.
They have no official reports of rape and no eyewitnesses to sexual assault. The state Department of Health and Hospitals counted 10 dead at the Superdome and four at the convention center. Only two of those are believed to have been murdered.
One of those victims _ found at the Superdome _ appears to have been killed elsewhere before being brought to the stadium, said Bob Johannessen, the agency spokesman.
“It was a chaotic time for the city. Now that we’ve had a chance to reflect back on that situation, we’re able to say right now that things were not the way they appeared,” said police Capt. Marlon Defillo.
Sally Forman, a spokeswoman for Nagin, said the mayor was relying on others for his information about conditions at the evacuation sites. “He was listening to officials, trusting that information they were providing was accurate,” she said.
I think the last line from this article, a comment from Sally Forman regarding Mayor Nagin’s statements to the press, describes this mayor perfectly:
“The mayor was relying on others…”
Mayor Nagin was relying on others! And not just for information, but for leadership, for organization, for inspiration, and even for a sense of sanity.
Mayor Nagin was clueless.
Not to say that there is no blame elsewhere. There certainly is.
But Mayor Nagin is a mess. He is, in a nutshell, the Marian Barry of New Orleans. Hapless, corrupt, and incapable of real leadership.
Too bad most of the MSM still doesn’t get it.
David Flanagan
Viewpointjournal.com
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