Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Katrina - A Different View

Lou Dolinar has an excellent article over at Real Clear Politics that provides insight into how well the first responders in New Orleans performed with a bit of contrast as to how poorly the MSM performed. His only error is in evaluating the MSM as news providers when they are in fact propagandists. Their propaganda efforts cannot be faulted.

The performance of the Coast Guard, the National Guard and the Regular Army during Katrina was exemplary. I believe that Dolinar is a bit more critical of FEMA than necessary, given that FEMA does not promise that relief will be immediately available - every report I have seen makes clear that the first 72 hours are the responsibility of the local and state response teams.

I also think that he is a bit too gentle with Blanco who may well have been aware of the actual situation at the Superdome but made no effort to correct the blatant (and successful) propaganda efforts of the MSM (including Fox, which I no longer watch).

With the results of the mayoral election announced, I believe that the good citizens of New Orleans received far better treatment than their attention to civic duty warrants. Any locale that re-elects Nagin and Democratic Congressman 'Cold Cash' Jefferson deserves a very large portion of whatever distress due to governmental mismanagement befalls it. I wish the citizens of New Orleans no ill but they deserve the absolute minimum of federally supported help.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Rick:

His only error is in evaluating the MSM as news providers when they are in fact propagandists. Their propaganda efforts cannot be faulted.

In what I hope was a once in a lifetime experience, I listened to the MSM with one ear telling me the world was ending while the reports from the field told a different story. "But the guy on CNN says . . ."

Not that things weren't often confused and dicey, but there were different failures and different successes than those reported to the world by the MSM. You got a glimpse of what the guys in Iraq must feel like all the time.

The milbloggers in post-Saddam Iraq have the advantage of relative calm, in other words the time to be contemplative and to blog. In the middle of Katrina there was no time to correct what the Baghdad Bobs of the MSM were saying.

Anonymous said...

It will be interesting to see the MSM cover a Katrina-type event in some future Democratic Adminstration.

Especially in light of the MSM's assumption that it is only the Feds who can / should / must run the whole show, with everybody else just jumping out of the way.

Anonymous said...

Back in the old duck - and - cover days there was a concerted effort to use ham radio operators as a kind of supplemental communications network. This led to outfits like ARES and on a local level things like HDSCS in California.

You could probably do the same with the net, except that first you have to solve the problem of limited connectivity and lack of bandwidth in the disaster area. These are issues that a ham with a portable generator doesn't face. But ultimately, what you want is to go well beyond this auxiliary volunteer function to develop on the ground reportage independent of the MSM - disaster bloggers, like milbloggers.

Unknown said...

It is a shame that the work and effort of so many people will go unnoticed because of the lousy job the press did covering Katrina.

I think most people are onto the press by now to tell you the truth.

Anonymous said...

terrye:

CNN at one point tried to get embedded with a medical team. You can imagine what the team thought of that one. :-)

chuck said...

I find it impossible to believe that they are so insular that they don't know they flat out lied through their teeth..

I can believe it. People can believe really bizarre stuff that they never question because everyone they are around just "knows" it is true. I see a lot of that sort of thing in newspapers when I read them.

Katrina was when I stopped reading Jeff Jarvis, the man was hysterical and off the wall. I am sorry to say I lost a ton of respect for both him and his profession as a result.

buddy larsen said...

Instapundit's latest comment ends with what he thinks the MSM may've learned from their imperfect storm coverage: "...what they learned was that if they all shouted lies in unison they could drive Bush down in the polls."

This is bitterly so.

buddy larsen said...

OT, but must see, the disturbing face of American Empire (scroll down for pic).