Not really the comprehensive effort I was hoping for. Junkyard Blog takes a closer look:
If your only source for news is the New York Times, you’re always the last to know anything unflattering to Democrats or the press. And when the Times finally gets around to telling you about it, there’s a good chance that they’re leaving quite a bit out.
Case in point: The NY Times finally follows where the LA Times, the Times-Picayune and the AP have led, examining the role of rumor mongering in relief efforts after the levees broke in New Orleans. Here’s the nut sentence:What became clear is that the rumor of crime, as much as the reality of the public disorder, often played a powerful role in the emergency response.
Ya think so? Is it possible that all the rumors combined with the meltdown at the city level and the incompetence at the state level might have had a thing or two with how the whole situation played out?
That sentence comes in the 16th paragraph of the story. It should be rewritten and cast as the lead, because it is the main and driving fact of the story: The relief response was hindered by rumors spread by Mayor Nagin and NOPD Superintendent Compass to the media, which spread them all around the world. That rumor mongering was a major reason for the multiple breakdowns. And imagine for a moment, if Nagin and Compass were telling the media so many things that weren’t true, what were they telling FEMA? Former FEMA head Mike Brown has been castigated in the press for not knowing what was going on in New Orleans. How was he supposed to know anything reliable when his chief information sources were Nagin and Compass?
I’m not much of a Mike Brown defender, but that’s a fair point.