The LA Times has picked up the story, but not sure how "mainstream" you'd consider that.

that's what hapens when major news outlets broadcast to the world uncorroborated stories, rumors, and unconfirmed events as fact (which pretty much puts cnn and the likes on the same level as tabloids). And you are right, now that it comes to light that the stories they were broadcasting were not exactly true, they quietly let the story fade.

I really freaking hate the media in the country, it's such a bunch of bs.

Rita did send people running, which is not a bad thing to report (except that it encourages looting). But whatever happened to the days of reporting with integrity, where journalists confirmed the veracity of their sources?

I do have a problem with the claim that politicians are acting on "data" presented by the media--there are several very efficient reporting agencies that are unaffiliated with any network, and those are the people upon whom decisions should be based. Any administration that buys what the media is selling deserves to fail, fail miserably, and fail alot.

The media did over exaggerate the facts.
Living only 5-6 hours away from Louisiana, we also had evacuees come to Lubbock.
I spoke to one of the residence of New Orleans.
*He is currently living in the same apt complex that I live in*
He told me that the looting was bad, but it was for survival until the Gov. (FEMA) could help and relocate them.
The Evacuees were scattered and lost..not dead.

We very much need a Media Commission investigation because as a U.S. citizen, it has become more and more apparent that I cannot trust the news - and that is dangerous.

Suggested by Powerline:

* How did so many false rumors come to be reported as fact?

* Do news outlets have any procedures in place to avoid this kind of mis-reporting? If so, why did their procedures fail so miserably?

* To what extent were the false rumors honest mistakes, and to what extent were they deliberate fabrications?

* To the extent that the false reports were deliberate, did the press pass them on through sheer negligence, or did some reporters participate in deliberate fabrication?

* Did the widespread breakdown in accurate reporting stem only from a failure to follow proper journalistic standards, or did it also reflect a deliberate effort to damage the Bush administration by passing on unconfirmed rumors as fact?

* In deciding what stories to report, did the news media consider the likelihood that passing on false rumors would damage the rescue effort?

In response to Suzanne, "But whatever happened to the days of reporting with integrity, where journalists confirmed the veracity of their sources?"

I suspect there has never been this "integrity" that you report of - just sensationalism or worse political bias. As far back as I can remember - remember Cronkite's infamous body counts? How about recently, "Rathergate" How about Jason Blair at the NYT? Or the LA Times support for North Korea

Reader beware - everything in print should be read with a grain of salt - everything. Because everyone has an agenda - whether it be AntiBush, ProNorthKorea, ProSocialism, AntiReligion, AntiAmerican, ProUN (I'd mention the antonyms for each, but you have to look very very hard to find ProBush, ProAmerica mainstream media - not that I want a cheerleader for a newspaper either) - it's either overtly deliberate or insidiously subconscious, but it's there.

More proof:
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/011799.php
http://www.mediaresearch.org/
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/12/3/215106.shtml

I don't want to give away too much of the next column, because I go into some of this in there, but my list of issues with the media boil down to:

1.) 24 hour news cycle - Either they repeat themselves a lot, or they put so much commentary out there that you get 10 minutes of actual news an hour, and 50 minutes of commercials/fluff/editorializing

2.) Breaking news model - Everyone is in such a hurry to scoop the other outlets, that they are more than willing to throw up rumor, unsubstantiated facts, etc., on the off chance that they'll be right.

3.) The Media is a business - We tend to fail to remember that the media isn't in the news reporting business, they're in the business of selling papers, magazines and advertising time. Controversy sells, and so does being "first".

I'm hoping that the number of folks out there with blogs and with knowledge will start forcing the mainsteam media outlets to put being first second to being right.

In case you guys may not have seen this, Drudge has a link up to the LA Times article on the front page. Since I wrote my article yesterday, I'm going to quietly say "You heard it here first", and toot my own horn a bit.

Drudge's Front Page

The AP has released an article stating, "Some Reports of N.O. Violence Exaggerated".

We've seen the media kneejerk before, such as calling elections before they're officially over, and it seems they still haven't learned their lesson. At the same time doesn't some of the blame for an overzealous media fall in the lap of the viewer? Perhaps the same "news junkie" that "had Fox and CNN on almost constantly during the whole Katrina crisis" is a contributing factor in the very problem he or she claims to abhor.

One of the contributing factors to the media'a steady, slow decent into hell is competition. There are more sources of news available than ever before with the vast proliferation of television stations over the last couple of decades do to cable and satellite television, and the popularity of the internet. Newspapers have felt the crunch and many have shut down across the country, while others have a decreased readership. All of this contributes to sensationalism, poor fact checking while trying to get the story out there fast, and an emphasis upon the business aspect of it, as noted above, over and above ethics in reporting. How can we get viewers, listeners, readers? That's the question that leads. What will make it the most interesting? We, the viewers, are somewhat responsible. If we didn't come, they wouldn't build it. Sensationalism and shock sell.

Jenga brings up a very good point. The viewer does have a role. This particular news junky prefers hearing facts, and unfortunately has to wade through 50 minutes of commentary and fluff for my 10 minutes worth of real news. Plus, like most people, I do like seeing things as they happen. That is one of the areas that these shows are great for. But at some point, is too much instant commentary necessary?

One of the reasons I enjoy CSPAN (most of the time), is because there's little, if any, commentary, particularly when things happen. Speaking of CSPAN, I gotta go turn it on. I want to see the Brown hearing reruns.

I'm an MSM reporter who's just gotten back from a week and a half in New Orleans.

When you're on the ground, you can only report on what's in front of you. You can't get NOPD or state officials on the phone because the phone systems are down, so you can't get any input from officials who might know what's going on.

So you report on what you see. And those two offending comments by CNN and Fox you've posted are not factually wrong. There were dead people lying around, not being picked up. The New Orleans police superintendent was reporting that "babies" were being raped inside the Convention Center.

So this is your information: you see dead bodies, you talk to people trapped there, officials say things that line up with what what you're seeing. These are your sources -- eyewitnesses and officials. Do you hold off on the story until they can go through and do an actual body count? Of course not -- if that were the case we wouldn't have known about the convention center at all.

It's a gigantic story and we don't know the full picture at once. We still don't know how devastated the bayous are from Rita. I only saw a little bit on Sunday and it kicked my ass.

Meanwhile, you're bragging about how you're the first to link to the LA Times story, ahead of Drudge. That's one hell of an accomplishment, you ought to be very proud of yourself.

Welcome back, Andy. I'm not a reporter. I'm a consumer of information. And in order for me to do my job, and for the government and Congress to do their jobs, we all rely on accurate information. In a crisis, the MSM is pretty much the only folks who have access, and we are forced to rely on them. That puts a pretty significant burden on all of you to make sure that what is reported is accurate, because it affects the impression the general public gets, and it affects the policy decisions that are shaped after the crisis is over. FEMA is going to take it in the chin, whether they deserve it or not, based primarily on the news coverage coming out of New Orleans. That's potentially going to cost a lot of people jobs, and cost a lot of taxpayer dollars - and if the whole thing is based on bad information because of the rigors of breaking news reporting, things have got to be done better. As we've all seen in a number of ways recently, bad information in = bad policy out.

And I will take a bit of pleasure out of 'scooping' Drudge, because it's not easy to do, whether you like the guy's politics or not. And Scott's the one who linked the LA Times story, not me. I wrote my column based off the Times-Picayune.

http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/Cartoons/09-28-2005.gif

You're right, garbage in = garbage out, but you've got the equation backwards. Here's a key graf from the Times-Pic piece:

In interviews with Oprah Winfrey, Compass reported rapes of "babies," and Mayor Ray Nagin spoke of "hundreds of armed gang members" killing and raping people inside the Dome. Unidentified evacuees told of children stepping over so many bodies, "we couldn't count."

That's the chief of police, the mayor, and people at the scene -- usually pretty reliable sources for a reporter trying to piece a story together.

It's not a case of bad news reporting leading to bad governing, it's the opposite. Brownie didn't even know that people were stuck in the Convention Center until Ted Koppel told him.

Government failed at all levels during that first week. The only institution that performed with any competence was the news media. CNN didn't leave people stranded on rooftops or in the Superdome. Blaming "the media" for incompetent or callous leadership is simply a cop-out.

One more thing - your profile lists you as a lobbyist in D.C. Are any of your clients treating this disaster as an opportunity for more tax breaks and subsidies?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/27/AR2005092701667.html

If you're concerned about keeping the costs of this disaster under control, as you mentioned, here's one way you can make a difference.

Don't even get me started on some of the things that have been coming out of the government officials there and here. I don't think there is anyone involved at any level that can claim they are blameless in what happened down there. But giving the media credit for being competent when what I asked for in my column (namely, a closer look at the hurricane coverage) is slowly starting to happen, and we're now learning that the coverage during the Hurricane was riddled with incorrect facts and information, as the Washington Times reports here, is premature. It doesn't look like this was anyone, except perhaps the Coast Guard's, finest hour. The press seems very wary of taking most public officials' at face value - one needs merely watch a White House Press Briefing to see that - so I don't know if it is truly fair to blame inaccurate information being reported on the source. Two wrongs don't make a right.

As for Brownie's comments, it looks like its going to turn into a he-said-she-said. He told the House yesterday that he misspoke when he talked to ABC, and that he knew the day before that the Convention Center was being used, but that FEMA had not anticipated it being used and it wasn't prepared for being used. That much was obvious.

As for me, I am an in-house lobbyist, so I only have one client, and that client was affected by both Rita and Katrina. I also shut down all of our political fundraising and contributions from our PAC for the month of September (which is a big deal, since this is the end of the 3rd quarter). I don't plan on using any of the Katrina legislation as a "Christmas Tree" to get anything I want, no. I'm more concerned about the policy implications as a result of the Hurricane than I am about gimmes.

But that's all stuff for a later column.

From Andy,

"Government failed at all levels during that first week. The only institution that performed with any competence was the news media. CNN didn't leave people stranded on rooftops or in the Superdome. Blaming "the media" for incompetent or callous leadership is simply a cop-out."

Come on Andy - we all know that this misreporting was part of the media's "Get Angry" campaign:

"A producer from "Paula Zahn Now" – Healy doesn't remember her name – called and asked if the author would appear on the show; Healy agreed. Roughly an hour before Healy’s appearance, he got another call from the producer. He wasn't sure of her exact words, but he said the gist was "I know this is going to sound tacky, but when you're on the show, could you be angry?""

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2005/09/12/publiceye/entry837903.shtml

I don't think DC Guy is BLAMING - I think he is WARNING us and if he beat the LA Times or Drudge to the punch, Kudos.

If the body of that girl from Aruba had washed ashore during the hurricane....jesus imagine possibilities.

It doesn't stop.

Study: New Orleans Floodwaters Not As Toxic As Feared

"Researchers at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge found that the water was similar in content to the city's normal storm water."