68 Comments

1. chuck:

I think the MSM are just bog standard gossips. Journalistic training is supposed to get practitioners past all that, but it doesn’t take. Gossip is much more fun and a whole lot easier.

Sep 26, 2005 - 9:58 am 2. Daniel Simon:

Actually, my first instinct was that it reminded me of the Jenin “massacre.”

Sep 26, 2005 - 10:10 am 3. Knucklehead:

But a formal… review of the matter later found that…the information came from rumors in the food line for military, police and rescue workers…

Heck, that’s where everybody finds our which officers’ and NCOs’ wives are sleeping with whom, when the next alert is coming, when the next war will start, etc. and etc. and etc. Chow lines. Always a great source for unimpeachable information.

Sep 26, 2005 - 10:22 am 4. RogerA:

This is a piece by James Pinkerton linked to by Glenn several weeks ago about the revenge of the sith–oops, MSM–http://instapundit.com/archives/025520.php

Very instructive as facts start to emerge–Apparently the intro course in Journalism 101 is “how to execute the big lie.”

Sep 26, 2005 - 10:32 am 5. JJE:

“Remember all those reports of the mass looting of their national museum that turned out to be little more than some minor thefts (most returned), principally by the museum’s own directors?”

Sadly, no. http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/040415/oi.shtml

“As the year developed after the looting, reports both highlighted the damage and confused the issue. Some news outlets began to speak of

Sep 26, 2005 - 10:33 am 6. Pat Curley:

Two points:

1. The Times-Picayune themselves fanned the flames of the rape and murder stories.

2. Look at who the media’s sources were on the stories; the Mayor and the Chief of Police. Combine this with Aaron Broussard’s claims and you’ve got three local officials lying about what happened. I’d call that a trend.

Sep 26, 2005 - 11:01 am 7. Silicon valley Jim:

Frankly I don’t care that much about George Bush. He’s just one guy.

I care a whole lot about George Bush, because he’s not “just one guy.” He’s the President of the United States. Distorting facts and reporting allegations without proper checking and sourcing with the intention of embarrassing the President of the United States demonstrates a definite lack of patriotism. Yes, I’m questioning the patriotism of those who do that. And, yes, I would feel the same if it were anybody else in the White House.

Sep 26, 2005 - 11:16 am 8. Knucklehead:

JJE,

What point are you trying to make?

From the link you provided:

Press reports following the museum looting last April initially had suggested a total loss of the museum

Sep 26, 2005 - 11:16 am 9. Knucklehead:

I failed to close a blockquote.

The date of the article at the link is April 15, 2004. According to the article itself, the number of missing items was reported as approximately 10,000 by the museum director and the US Marine officer in charge of the investigation, in March of 2003. A year later that number had been revised upward by an additional 5,000.

It seems quite clear that following investigation and and an additional year after the MSM reports of wholesale looting of the museum (along with virulent condemnation of the US Military for “allowing it to happen”) there remains no evidence of wholesale looting.

In the above are my words, not those of the article JJE linked to.

All in all, the initial MSM shrieking that the entire history of the first civilization had been “looted” from the museum seems, in retrospect, quite overblown. Considering that it took, or is still taking, a darned long time for the museum to figure out what is missing it may be that the museum had some pretty shoddy record keeping habits. Further considering that, as the article at the link points out, some of what is missing appears to be some pretty well targetted, high-value items, one might get the idea that something other than, or in additions to, “looting” was at work there.

Sep 26, 2005 - 11:41 am 10. JJE:

Knucklehead,

That 15,000 items isn’t “a few minor thefts.” The media initially overstated the extent of looting, and then pro-war bloggers began understating it, and continue to do so. Mr. Simon used a story he doesn’t understand to flog the MSM for placing ideology above accuracy, but he is so emotionally invested in the pro-War position that he didn’t bother to check his story, when a simple Google search would have revealed that his description of the looting was as inaccurate as the MSM’s.

If putting ideology above accuracy (or democracy, in Mr. Simon’s bizarre formulation), makes one a “reactionary,” then Mr. Simon need only look in the mirror next time he seeks a reactionary to condemn.

Sep 26, 2005 - 11:44 am 11. flenser:

As Dan von Ratherwitz might have said, reporting is a continuation of politics by other means.

So far the known falshoods from Katrina coverage include the murders in the convention center, the “tens of thousands of dead” in New Orleans, the levies failing because they were inadequately funded, and the “slow federal response”.

If you simply believe the opposite of what the MSM is telling you, you can arrive at the truth more often than not.

Sep 26, 2005 - 11:49 am 12. byrd:

Reading Instapundit this morning, talking about how media reports interfered with recovery efforts (by causing officials to misallocate resources), I was reminded of the Mississppi floods of about ten years ago, wherein some guy pulled down sandbags patching a levee breach, flooding of hundreds of square miles, so that he could stay with his friends drinking beer on one side instead of going home to his wife on the other.

He got a life sentence. What’ll the MSM get?

Sep 26, 2005 - 12:07 pm 13. chuck:

JJE,

Well, Roger may have overstated his case. On the other hand, I have to admit that the looting of the museum never bothered me much. From my point of view it was a triviality among larger and more important events. YMMV.

Sep 26, 2005 - 12:08 pm 14. vnjagvet:

What concerns me is what seemed to be the MSM’s intentional fomenting of hysteria during the days after the storm hit.

How can this be considered good crises reportage under any journalistic standard? I have the impression the blogosphere did much better on the facts and the trackdown of rumors than the MSM. How could this be shown empirically?

Sep 26, 2005 - 12:17 pm 15. Knucklehead:

JJE,

Mr. Simon used a story he doesn’t understand to flog the MSM for placing ideology above accuracy

I can’t say whether or not Roger understands the story or not. In general he seems to be rather adept at achieving reasonable levels of understanding.

In retrospect it seems quite clear that the MSM put “ideology above accuracy”. The screaming about the “looting” of the museum was immediate, wild-eyed, and widespread as was the condemnation of the US military. It has taken careful investigation and a further year or more for the director of the museum, presumably working from inventories and other records, to figure out how much of what is missing. That does not support the initial screed claiming the complete obliteration, by looters, of the museum.

The museum apparently had some 170,000 artifacts. As bad as the theft of some 10,000 to 15,000 is, that leaves 155,000 or so remaining. Hardly a complete obliteration. And if memory serves from my scan of the article you linked, roughly 5,000 pieces have been recovered or otherwise returned.

Of the artifacts that remain missing some are among the most valuable of the entire collection – pretty darned clever looters.

It is clear that whatever looting took place was “minor” compared to the inital shrieking of the MSM. It seems reasonable to speculate that there was targetted “theft” rather than epic scale looting. It also seems reasonable to speculate that the museum didn’t have particularly good record keeping practices and didn’t know what was where or when. That leaves some room for yet more speculation that some of what is missing may have been stolen well before or since the US invasion.

It is, in total, perfectly clear that the “museum looting” episode is a very good, among many very good, example of the MSM throwing ideological hissey-fits without even a basic attempt to get at facts.

And, BTW, even if it were Roger himself or the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy’s Blogosphere who made some claim that “only 40″ artifacts were missing, arithmetically speaking, 40 is a whole lot closer to 15,000 than 15,000 is to 170,000.

Let’s try it another way.

If I were your neighbor and, one night, woke up the neighborhood shrieking that my house had broken into, that I had $170,000 worth of valuables in it and that “they took everything – they wiped me out!” and you later learned that I’d lost $10,000, maybe $15,000 and that some $5,000 had been recovered, would you say that I’d initially done some wild exaggeration?

Sep 26, 2005 - 12:17 pm 16. JJE:

Chuck,

Fair enough. But I think one should check one’s facts if one makes it one’s business to accuse others of failing to do so for ideological reasons.

Sep 26, 2005 - 12:19 pm 17. Ed Poinsett:

Flenser:

By my reckoning there are only two established facts:

A hurricane named Katrina came ashore just East of New Orleans , an evacuation order and execution by the local government was a complete snafu.

Some levees broke and caused local flooding.

Beyond that, the reporting seems to be unfounded, inaccurate, subjective, agenda driven, finger pointing, spin, misdirection, misleading and deceitful. The stuck on stupid, fake but accurate MSM was pretty good. And by the way, apparently hurricane Katrina missed Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi. Or maybe FEMA wasn’t invited to participate there.

Sep 26, 2005 - 12:19 pm 18. Knucklehead:

JJE,

Mr. Simon used a story he doesn’t understand to flog the MSM for placing ideology above accuracy

I can’t say whether or not Roger understands the story or not. In general he seems to be rather adept at achieving reasonable levels of understanding.

In retrospect it seems quite clear that the MSM put “ideology above accuracy”. The screaming about the “looting” of the museum was immediate, wild-eyed, and widespread as was the condemnation of the US military. It has taken careful investigation and a further year or more for the director of the museum, presumably working from inventories and other records, to figure out how much of what is missing. That does not support the initial screed claiming the complete obliteration, by looters, of the museum.

The museum apparently had some 170,000 artifacts. As bad as the theft of some 10,000 to 15,000 is, that leaves 155,000 or so remaining. Hardly a complete obliteration. And if memory serves from my scan of the article you linked, roughly 5,000 pieces have been recovered or otherwise returned.

Of the artifacts that remain missing some are among the most valuable of the entire collection – pretty darned clever looters.

It is clear that whatever looting took place was “minor” compared to the inital shrieking of the MSM. It seems reasonable to speculate that there was targetted “theft” rather than epic scale looting. It also seems reasonable to speculate that the museum didn’t have particularly good record keeping practices and didn’t know what was where or when. That leaves some room for yet more speculation that some of what is missing may have been stolen well before or since the US invasion.

It is, in total, perfectly clear that the “museum looting” episode is a very good, among many very good, example of the MSM throwing ideological hissey-fits without even a basic attempt to get at facts.

That is the issue. And Roger seems to understand it very well.

Sep 26, 2005 - 12:20 pm 19. flenser:

JJB

What museum looting occured seems to have been an inside job.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,974193,00.html

You should check your facts, you know?

Sep 26, 2005 - 12:28 pm 20. RogerA:

All–without getting involved in the specifics of the museum looting nor the Katrina coverage, I think part of our analyses should focus on the longer view of an unfolding story. Perhaps it says more about our culture of 10 second sound bites, instant analyses, and the like that we react to the first thing that comes down the pike.

In the past, the MSM got to control that part of the story; as the blogosphere has developed it has proved (IMHO) an excellent counterweight to the MSM. In both cases, though, we still need historians who follow the nasty details of a complex, unfolding story over time. Regretably, histories emerge long after the immediate policy damage has been done.

As a bit of perspective when I was a young man (when giants walked the earth) Harry S Truman was perceived to be an ignorant, common, political hack. As history has had a chance to judge him, his reputation has improved dramatically; conversely, John F Kennedy was the great (insert color here) hope. As it turned out he was a satyr who said a few good things and did nothing (except for perhaps the Apollo program). These histories, however are 40-50 years old and will continue to evolve.

I guess we all need to exercise some perspective of where we are in the timeline.

Sep 26, 2005 - 12:28 pm 21. RogerA:

AAARGH–I Hate Typekey

Sep 26, 2005 - 12:29 pm 22. Rick Ballard:

Suggestion,

TypeKey has obviously teamed up with that Preeviw bastard to wreak havoc in comments here. In an effort to combat double posts it may be best to click ‘Post” and then close the page. It is annoying to do so but it is the only way I’ve found that circumvents their nefarious scheme.

Sep 26, 2005 - 12:36 pm 23. JJE:

Knucklehead,

You seem to be missing the point. I’m not trying to defend the initial looting reportage, or claim that it wasn’t wildly exaggerated, I’m simply pointing out that there has been a gross error in the other direction, purveyed by Mr. Simon, among others. It’s pretty obvious that Mr. Simon stopped following the story as soon as the initial “widespread looting” story was debunked, and didn’t bother to find out that the debunking had been widely overstated.

As for 15,000 being closer to 40 than 150,000, that’s true in absolute terms, but not on a percentage basis, and irrelevant.

This looks like a warblogger “EVIL MSM!” hissy fit without the slightest attempt to ascertain the facts, and Mr. Simon is simply unable or unwilling to comprehend that his ideological blinders and disregard for basic accuracy are as pervasive as the MSM’s.

Flenser,

That’s intersting, but irrelevant.

Sep 26, 2005 - 12:42 pm 24. flenser:

RogerA

I’m not sure we can afford to wait for history to judge Katrina. The MSM/Democratic party are using their fraudulent hurricane narrative to advance their policy goals right now. It’s both possible and neccessary to begin correcting the record at once.

Sep 26, 2005 - 12:45 pm 25. flenser:

Where would we be without JJB to grandly announce to us what is and what is not “relevant”?

Sep 26, 2005 - 12:53 pm 26. JJE:

Where would we be without flenser to muddy the issue with pointlessness? The only issues here are the extent of the looting, who misreported it (and continues to do so), and why. Whether it was an “inside job” does not bear on any of those questions. That’s why your observation was irrelevant.

Sep 26, 2005 - 12:58 pm 27. Charlie (Colorado):

Um. JJE:

You seem to be missing the point. I’m not trying to defend the initial looting reportage, or claim that it wasn’t wildly exaggerated, I’m simply pointing out that there has been a gross error in the other direction, purveyed by Mr. Simon, among others. It’s pretty obvious that Mr. Simon stopped following the story as soon as the initial “widespread looting” story was debunked, and didn’t bother to find out that the debunking had been widely overstated.

Roger:

I tell you what it reminds me of – Baghdad immediately after the invasion. Remember all those reports of the mass looting of their national museum that turned out to be little more than some minor thefts (most returned), principally by the museum’s own directors? Yet the media behaved as this were the mass destruction of antiquities from the cradle of civilization and the US was to blame

I’m sorry, but I’m having a little difficulty in recongizing what Roger actually said in what you wrote. On the other hand, Roger’s description reads to me to correspond with what the article you link says: no widespread looting, cherry-picked high-value items chosen by someone who knew both the market and the inventory.

So far, to me you don’t seem to be making your case.

Sep 26, 2005 - 1:01 pm 28. Linc:

Regarding the New Orleans article, a telling paragraph occurs later in the story:

“As the fog of warlike conditions in Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath has cleared, the vast majority of reported atrocities committed by evacuees have turned out to be false, or at least unsupported by any evidence, according to key military, law enforcement, medical and civilian officials in positions to know.”

Fake but inaccurate?

Sep 26, 2005 - 1:08 pm 29. JK Ribera:

I must say I agree with Charlie (Colorado), JJE. Moreover, you declare it to be “irrelevant” that the important looting from the Baghdad Museum was an inside job. It isn’t to me. It’s very hard to hold responsible US military planners for the work of Baathists bureaucrats they would have no way to control or even really to know much about. In retrospect, the criminality of the Saddam regime was, if anything, in many ways underestimated. CNN under Eason Jordan may have been in some ways complicit in this. Sorry, JJE, but you seem to have backed yourself into a corner.

Sep 26, 2005 - 1:13 pm 30. Terrye:

I think the reporting of the hurricane was atrocious. It seems that the desire to embrasse the president is what drives this nonsense and that tells us to be careful about what we believe.

But even now the pundits left and right who were so willing to jump on Bush for not getting in there sooner to stop the socalled mayhem are whining about the president’s plan to rebuild.

bitch bitch bitch.

Sep 26, 2005 - 1:14 pm 31. Kevin P:

Roger:

The fact that any news organization makes mistakes is not unusual. Especially in a chaotic situation. What is despicable is the lack of effort to undo the impression that what they originally reported was so wrong. The reports of massive deaths was widespread. The image of many Americans and Europeans of the Superdome was that it was a killing field. The fact that the number of deaths was so inflated is not pointed out with the same fervor. This is not to say that the Superdome was a nice place. But the MSM still feeds off the original faulty reporting. Was there a front page story saying “Yes it was terrible but the stories of massive deaths was a symptom of media panic and rumour mongering.” No. they will still refer, except in some responsible sectors, refer to the reporting as “Speaking truth to power.” I guess truth really is relative.

The fact that JJE still refers to the mueseum in Iraq as having been “looted” is a perfect example. Everything I have read, especially the fact the the pieces that are missing are the most valuable ones, point to robbery rather then looting. a inside job. Looting is the conventional wisdom even after the facts seem to point to another explanation. If it is a inside job the fact that the Army could not control workers from walking off with historic pieces is not that embarrasing because it happened in the middle of a war. The MSM prefers to comtinue to use the word looting because it points to poor planning and sloth. I have many problems with the post invasion plans but the museum is not one of them. The way false reporting becomes ingrained in the public perception can be partially explained by the fact that the media will not point out their corrections with the sme fervor that they point out the original mistake. The 100,000 iraqi deaths from the Lancet report is qouted hundreds of times a day all over the world. It was a faulty report. But it is too late. the infection is out and can’t be contained and the MSM does little to squash this false propaganda.

Kevin Peters

Sep 26, 2005 - 1:16 pm 32. Knucklehead:

JJE,

I fail to see how it is I who is missing the point. The point Roger made was that the MSM went off on a tirade, failed to even attempt to establish facts, and was shown to be incorrect. The museum looting shriek has been debunked and remains debunked. Subsequent discovery of targetted thefts of high-value items does not un-debunk the MSM’s reporting of the issue.

The only legitimate gripe you can possibly have is with Roger’s characterization of “minor thefts”. OK, they weren’t “minor”. That doesn’t change the overall claim that the MSM goes off half-cocked and fails to make any attempt to discover the reality behind wild-ass rumors. The museum looting story and the coverage of the NOLA following Katrina are excellent cases in point.

Sep 26, 2005 - 1:20 pm 33. Paul:

It’s truly nauseating how the quisling media lunged at the opportunity to blame this natural disaster on Bush, even though it’s plain to see that whatever incompetence and mismanagement there was must be laid at the feet of the Democrat Mayor and Governor of NO and Louisiana.

And let’s not forget the environmentalists who sued the ACE in ‘77 to stop the building of flood gates that would have prevented the storm surge from backing up into Lake Ponchartrain, which was the reason for the levee failure that flooded the city.

Now Katrina is one of the focal points of the antiwar protests, and great intellectuals like Barbara Streisand and Al Gore are offering the storm as “proof” of global warming, which of course is Bush’s fault too. Despicable.

Now for a refreshing dose of reality. Look at this chart of hurricane activity for the last 150 years.

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pastdec.shtml?

Sep 26, 2005 - 1:27 pm 34. Knucklehead:

Kevin P,

I’m not at all convinced that the MSM made “mistakes”. Take the Broussard/Russert nonsense. How is it possible that nobody in a professional news gathering and analysis organization so much as wondered, “How is some guy in NOLA calling his mother in a flooded old folk’s home every day? There’s no power, there’s no phones. Do he and his mom have satelite comms links like we do?” Russert knew the guy was full of crap, or should have. If he didn’t somebody on that staff should have.

They grab hold of whatever juicy rumor hits their ears and run with it. Why are they never embarassed about it?

Sep 26, 2005 - 1:32 pm 35. flenser:

JJB

The only issues here are the extent of the looting, who misreported it (and continues to do so), and why. Whether it was an “inside job” does not bear on any of those questions.

Good Grief!! Let me explain this slowly for you. An “inside job” is theft, not looting.

Looting implies random theft which occurs when order breaks down. An inside job means that people working in the museum carefully stole preselected valuable items, in some cases leaving forgeries in their place. It occurred in some cases well in advance of the invasion. When the staff who work at a museum steal some of its contents, the appropriate description is “theft”, not “looting”.

And that, JJB, is “relevant” whether you think so or not.

Sep 26, 2005 - 1:34 pm 36. Vulgorilla:

“Yet the media behaved as this were the mass destruction of antiquities from the cradle of civilization and the US was to blame.”

When is everyone going to learn that the last source of misinformation one wants to pay any attention to is the media? Why is this so difficult to understand? The media (now known as the TSM – Terrorist Supporting Media) is the propaganda arm of the DNC. Period. End of discussion.

Why do they even come up in conversations anymore? They have no credibility anymore. They make it all up. Remember “fake but accurate”? Its all fake but accurate anymore. If they don’t like the facts, they just make some up to fit their political agenda. If the facts are counter to their political agenda, the ommit them. Lets start giving them the publicity they so richly deserve – NONE.

Sep 26, 2005 - 1:38 pm 37. Rick Ballard:

Personally, I believe that the efforts of the propagandists of the public organs of the Democratic Party did a reasonable job with both stories. They understand the naive credulity of their audience very well and are careful to select half-truths that fit their audiences preconceptions. It is unfair to judge them on the basis that “any fool can see through” their mendacity when elections prove that a sizeable minority are obviously incapable (or unwilling) of doing so.

It would be an altogether different matter if journalism were involved.

Do your part to help a propagandist find meaningful employment – cancel a subscription today.

Sep 26, 2005 - 1:50 pm 38. PeterUK:

A point overlooked in the Museum “looting” furore is that there isn’t a museum on the planet that knows where all the items on its inventory are.There might be a piece of paper which describes a piece and the date of aquisition but in many cases the item has not been seen since.

No museum displays the entirety of its collection,there a huge reserve collections visited only by academics,curators and conservators.Mostly pieces remain mouldering in storage,sometimes since the 19th century.

All this boils down to the fact that in it is inevitable that much of what was consequently found to be missing was pre-looted,perhaps for decades.

As someone pointed out there were no front page corrections of the original looting hysteria,and that is the crux of the matter.The MSM knows obsolutely nothing about the subject,but like magpies, grab the shiny,dramatic elements ,then move on to the next story.If they have also done some political damage,well and good,”Speaking Truth to Power”,well half right.

Sep 26, 2005 - 2:11 pm 39. Michael_B:

“What was that about the blogosphere fact-checking the MSM?” JJE

Beyond the other substantial points made, within very few hours of the original post a variety of contrasting opinions, facts and references were offered up for review.

By contrast the MSM, while purporting to be “merely the messenger,” elides, denies, occludes, omits and edits in and edits out according to whatever political/ideological agenda du jour they think they can get away with. And yes, that’s a generalization, but they do so often enough and they do so with great sophistication, across a wide variety of markets and media and as regards domestic and international issues of great moment. Additionally, even when they are caught red-handed – from Walter Duranty to Dan Rather – they are not noted for their mea culpas, to perhaps put it in the kindest terms imaginable.

Sep 26, 2005 - 2:20 pm 40. WichitaBoy:

It would seem that the spirit of Roger’s comments is entirely correct, even if the exact numbers are still quite murky.

Sep 26, 2005 - 2:43 pm 41. Patrick Tyson:

Both on and off topic:

Missed it by that much.

—the late, great Agent 86 aka Maxwell Smart aka Don Adams, Get Smart

It was great to be alive when one of the local Los Angeles affiliates (aka a media outlet) was running it four to six times a day.

Sep 26, 2005 - 2:52 pm 42. JJE:

Sorry flenser, the only issues that I’ve been discussing are whether the extent of the looting was “minor” or not, and whether Simon was basing his characterization on long-debunked information. As to these questions your point, remains, sadly, irrelevant.

Sep 26, 2005 - 3:55 pm 43. TedM:

I have a little different take on all of this. What recent events expose is the INCOMPETENCE of the media, particularly the TV and Cable faces which we see and the unseen producers and editors.

Just as network “news” is judged by some of us to be entertainment, cable has slid into the same genre. They are entertainers, dependent on ratings, who play their roles for us. How many of the faces you see have any sort of record of knowledge and accomplishment in international affairs, economics, public policy, etc etc. Where are the scholarly papers written by your highly rated anchors. Bah.

Fox, generally regarded as conservative serves up the gruesome trio (plus alternates) in the morning. What a group of dunces. So, they are on my side. So what. They embarass me. And you can add on almost every talking head you see.

No wonder, that in a novel castastrophe such as Katrina these people were totally unequiped to be objective news providers. Their usual scripts weren’t there. They actually had to tell us the news . And what they did was act as rank amateurs. Geraldo, with his hysterical outbursts. Shep Smith (another lightweight) visibly cracking up under the pressure. Anderson Cooper adding his imitation of chicken little to the mix.

Only now, are we seeing some “facts”. And sadly we shall not see a self examination by the media of what went wrong in their reporting.

Take at look at buzzmachine today for some long comments on this subject. Jeff Jarvis, usually somewhat moderate, is taking the apologist route for the media. And he is now teaching at a leading school of journalism.

This one wasn’t a “plot” of the MSM. It was sheer incompetence.

Sep 26, 2005 - 4:12 pm 44. RogerA:

I listened to NPR’s talk of the nation show today. It was eerie–they spoke about the posse comitatus act, and the insurrection act, pointing out how those acts limited presidential authority–had a great set of speakers on all talking about the limitations of FEMA

and I thought to myself

these are the same set of pontificating idiots who have been talking about the alleged failures of the federal government?–

really—if they can muster the same level of expertise to talk about the LIMITATIONS of the federal government, why are they repeating the shibboleths of the “Katrina Response”

The MSM is a vapid cesspool of bad information–the broadcast today suggested to me they can find people who know what is going on–yet they focus on the phoney stories–

I really dont give a damn how many artififacts were pilfered from the Iraqi national museum

I care that the American news media doesnt have the remotest idea about how our system works

Sorry–we can debate our hosts context, syntax etc–but the bottom line is, they are scum–and lying scum at that

Sep 26, 2005 - 4:41 pm 45. Joe Schmoe:

Well, I believed the stories. I guess I was wrong. That said, I am still somewhat contemptuous of the people in the Superdome and other places. They may not have murdered one another, but they did sit there, like sheep, and await a government rescue.

They made no effort to save themselves. I realize that some are elderly, and others are disabled, but still — it wasn’t a pretty sight.

Sep 26, 2005 - 5:40 pm 46. richard mcenroe:

Shoot, I’ll tell you what really happened: those damn New Orleans Democrats were so incompetent, they lost all the corpses…

Sep 26, 2005 - 5:45 pm 47. Kevin P:

Roger:

The facts about the media that are beginning to trickle out is one of the reasons why the media jumped so quickly on the racism gambit. Instead of doing the hard work of finding out what really happened and trying to develop a serious timeline and where each branch of government, municiple, state, and federal, rose to the occasion or where they dropped the ball the took the easy route of bringing up the “is the Bush administration racist.” Of course there is no actual evidence of racism but it allows the press to ruminate and ponder and develop theories that are conjecture and speculatiuon. Oh, and the press has discovered poverty in New Orleans! Well, check Detroit, the Appalachians, parts of L.A. ect, ect. And my memory isn’t perfect but I believe the poverty in these cities was there before Bush became President but I doubt that the press used this as evidence that the “first black President” was a racist. Some black activists and some of the press examined Clintons handling of Rwanda compared to Serbia but how often is Clinton called a racist for not lifting a finger to stop the massacre of almost a million Rwandans. He is criticized but how often is he called a racist. I don’t think he is a racist. But if the Press is going to use these simplistic forms of proof testing they should apply them to both sides of the political spectrum.

Sep 26, 2005 - 5:45 pm 48. ex-democrat:

i have to agree with michael-B here: the superiority of the blogosphere is not (just) that it has individual bloggers with more decency and intelligence than the MSM, it is that the blogger’s views are open to immediate challenge by the likes of JJE and clarification by the likes of knucklehead etc.

To me, it is this collective product that is so radically different – and so much better.

Sep 26, 2005 - 6:19 pm 49. klrfz1:

TedM

Nope, no sir. Incompetence might explain one or two of these incidents. Incompetence cannot explain the thousands I have seen in the last 30 years. And where are the corrections?

Thanks JJE. You are almost as much fun to read as Markus.

Sep 26, 2005 - 6:20 pm 50. TedM:

kirfz1

These people can be both slanted and incompetent.

I was merely pointing out that the coverage of Katrina showed their incompetence. And FOX was right there along with the others.

Remember Love Story. “Being in love means never having to say that you are sorry”

That certainly applies to the media.

Sep 26, 2005 - 6:32 pm 51. TedM:

Beyond incompetence is the creed of journalism as expressed by Jeff Jarvis today on his blog.

“Too much of journalism is turning this way today: If we nitpick the facts and follow some rules some committee wrote up, we

Sep 26, 2005 - 6:40 pm 52. WichitaBoy:

TedM,

Remember Love Story. “Being in love means never having to say that you are sorry”

That certainly applies to the media.

Except in their case I think “being in hate” would be the apter phrase.

Sep 26, 2005 - 6:50 pm 53. ambisinistral:

JJE,

You’re missing the plot here. I mock Bush enough on this board that I likely veer dangerously close to Trolldom from time to Time. What saves me, if I am saved at all, is I realize that BDS is even more dangerous in the long run.

It isn’t healthy for a democracy to have a large chunk of the media reporting a blantant agenda rather than anything approaching the truth.

Regardless of the looting, or robbery, or whatever you want to call it — the military was fighting to seize control a city at the time. Their job was not to secure museums, nor should it have been, that was the job of the museum directors and their vaults in the basement. Do you really doubt that had the nilitary guarded the museum the story then wouldn’t have been their failure to secure power plants, or water plants, or to protect journalists in a hotel, or whatever problem they could have found that was over-looked?

In the context of Katrina’s reporting — that’s the problem. The failure to put a rational story on the air explaining the FACTS on the ground. Instead we have a version grossly distorted to fit an anti-Bush agenda.

That is not a good thing, regardless of who sits in the Ovel Office.

Sep 26, 2005 - 7:35 pm 54. Steven Mitchell:

I mostly agree with TedM on the Katrina coverage–definite incompetence. The bias crept out, but even it was incompetent. The long-run bias of the MSM is what we are seeing now, with no corrections or even shame. Of course, bias makes people lazy and leads to incompetence. So yes, hardly mutually exclusive.

The real problem with the MSM is that they are not serious about serious things. If they were, the museum would have been about a two paragraph story on page B-12 for one day.

Sep 26, 2005 - 8:20 pm 55. thibaud:

The issue goes beyond bias; it’s also a matter of the MSM’s chosen format. Rather than announcing the Meme du Jour and then laying out the supporting pillars for it– in neat, clear, simple, bullet-point fashion– most of the Katrina coverage adhered to a bogus who-what-when-where story format. The latter works fine when basic facts may be ascertained and where few readers care for ideological or political story angles: a 4-alarm fire on Elm St, Jen and Brad, the weather.

But the MSM seized on Katrina from Day One as a chance to resurrect some Grands Memes from the 1992 LA riots and the Vietnam War, namely, that Class and Race are Back and Badder Than Ever and that The Man Doesn’t Get It.

Of course, the barely disguised subtext here is that Bush is clueless and the MSM are cluefull, which means that, as MicrosoftGeneralElectricNBC’s Chris Matthews baldly put it the other day, “the public trusts us [in the MSM] way more than they do Bush.” So another Grand Meme in Katrina coverage was that Bush may have won the battle against the MSM and their favorite son in 2004, but now the MSM has the upper hand, and is on the way to winning the war for public trust and affection.

Another word for the above: Tet-ification. Doesn’t matter that the real story of Katrina and Rita was that Louisiana’s run by incompetent children and Texas by responsible adults, or that contemporary New Orleans is and was a complete failure from every possible angle, not least, environmentally, and that therefore it is utterly senseless to even think of rebuilding that shithole and exposing its miserable residents to the inevitable devastation that will occur when the predicted Big One hits and makes Katrina look like a summer squall. Doesn’t matter at all. It’s all about the war for public opinion between the MSM and the Bush Administration, and truth be damned.

Sep 26, 2005 - 8:57 pm 56. thibaud:

Clarification: the hurricane conveniently provided the MSMers with a sensational story hook upon which to discreetly hang their meme of Race n’ Class ‘n’ Bush is an Ass. Huge numbers of readers and viewers wwent back to CNN and the rest in hopes of simply getting factual information, and instead were exposed to the street theater spectacle of Sherwood Anderson Fenimore Cooper gettin’ mighty ANGRY, and clownish Louisiana pols gettin’ real angry, and waters rising and folks needin’ help.

I predict that this will prove a pyrrhic victory for Jon Klein, Cooper, et al. Louisiana’s pols have eagerly seized on Bush’s ransom dough, and the public will very quickly figure out what the real story was, is and will be. (Can you say, “Brazil, US-style”?)

Sep 26, 2005 - 9:05 pm 57. thibaud:

Another way to look at it is that we now have, in the developing dance between Louisiana and the Bush administration, a kind of domestic version of Kofi Annan’s ransom proposal whereby the arrogant Bushies must be made to pony up tens, oops, hundreds of billions of $$$$$$$$ to third-world kleptocrats in order to “drain the swamp” in which terrorists are bred.

Of course, in the domestic US version, the implicit threat isn’t terror but jihad, MSM-style: the unrelenting media onslaught that positions Bush as a combination LBJ/Nixon/Hoover. As with Kofi’s deal, the goal is to coerce humility, not to achieve any practical improvement. Bush is obliged under this scenario to trudge humbly to Canossa in sackcloth and ashes, there to kiss the arse of the Holy Roman Louisiana Emperors, and deliver the $250 billion in baksheesh– hell, why not raise it some? Isn’t that what compassionate conservatism’s all about?

Ironically, the MSM’s stunt has, albeit indirectly, achieved its end with this voter. Bush’s craven willingness to throw billions into a (quite literal) sinkhole, knowing full well that at least 20% of this extraordinary sum will disappear into a multitude of official pockets and that any money that actually does find its way into construction will be washed away within another decade or two by the next Cat 5 storm, renders him beneath contempt in my book.

I mean, Bush grew up next to Louisiana! He knows better. Or does he?

Sep 26, 2005 - 9:23 pm 58. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

Folks,

I think there is a coverup regarding the SuperDome.

First, we had a friend inside the Superdome (see my blog for his report). He sent us text messages while inside reporting violence and his fear of being killed. He claimed to have seen a rape and murder victim (4.5 years old). We have no reason to doubt his report. He is still suffering the symptoms of PTSD as a result of his experience.

Second, the number of deaths is too small just for the number of people and the conditions inside. One would expect more deaths just from natural causes.

Third, some of the people in there were no doubt predators, and there was no effective law enforcement presence (one reason our friend was terrified). Given that everyone was disarmed before going in, I find it unlikely that the predators didn’t band together and commit violent acts.

Fourth, it is to the advantage of the reporting parties to say that the number of deaths was lower than reported, since the local authorities were responsible for not providing security in either the Superdome or (worse) the Convention Center.

Sep 26, 2005 - 10:36 pm 59. Michael_B:

With no joy and also no direct first hand knowledge, tend to agree with J. Moore. Read this first hand accounting via the BBC, interviewing a Brit who was vacationing in N.O. at the time Katrina hit and who spent time in the dome. Or, for a reminder, this early report from The Times-Picayune.

Negating these accounts also would seem to be too pat and too convenient a cover-up from any number of angles. FPM.com has also reported Mayor Nagin is being touted and revivified in another post-mortem, revisionist line by the NYT. Is that to be accepted uncritically as well?

Too, for a little thought experiment, imagine if Nagin had been the President and Bush the Mayor. Under that inverted scenario does anyone – anyone – seriously believe the NYT would be working to revive the Mayor’s reputation while demonizing the President’s? From Chris Matthews and Maureen Dowd to the NYT and the WaPo and other members of the Mainstream Manipulators, the demonization/apologetic polarities would generally be reversed – or minimally there would be a studied silence and avoidance in one direction while the spotlight would be focused in the other direction. And the MSM would be perpetrating it all with sophistical ease.

No certainty can be attached to that imagined scenario, but generally stated one can be excused for believing such would be the slant and focus: away from the White House and onto the local cast and crew.

h/t, Mangan’s Miscellany

Sep 27, 2005 - 12:22 am 60. klrfz1:

TedM, Steven Mitchell

Nope again. The MSM is not incompetent at being biased. They slant the news quite effectively. Michael Brown resigned, Bush’s poll numbers went down, even neo-cons now rail against Bush’s so-called “cronyism”, and the “Bush is a racist” lie is now out there for all time. Nobody seems to know Brown was confirmed by the Senate and had done an acceptable job for several years. Nobody thought Bush appointing men and women he already knows was a big problem before. Nobody seems to care about any of the policies Bush has instituted to help poor blacks. That, sirs, is the MSM getting the job done, not incompetence.

Sep 27, 2005 - 2:20 am 61. thibaud:

Speaking truth to power? More like the Power of Speaking Untruths.

From the LA Times, of all places, an admission that the MSM’s victory was, shall we say, short-lived: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-rumors27sep27,0,5492806,full.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Katrina Takes a Toll on Truth, News Accuracy

Rumors supplanted accurate information and media magnified the problem. Rapes, violence and estimates of the dead were wrong.

….newspapers and television exaggerated criminal behavior in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, particularly at the overcrowded Superdome and Convention Center.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune on Monday described inflated body counts, unverified “rapes,” and unconfirmed sniper attacks as among examples of “scores of myths about the dome and Convention Center treated as fact by evacuees, the media and even some of New Orleans’ top officials.”

…Mayor C. Ray Nagin told a national television audience on “Oprah” three weeks ago of people “in that frickin’ Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people.”

I love this admission:

“I don’t think you can overstate how big of a disaster New Orleans is,” said Kelly McBride, ethics group leader at the Poynter Institute, a Florida school for professional journalists. “But you can imprecisely state the nature of the disaster.

Sep 27, 2005 - 8:42 am 62. thibaud:

Powerline’s on target to call for a congressional investigation of the media’s reporting and behavior. From the LA Times mea culpa story:

The media inaccuracies had consequences in the disaster zone.

Maj. Ed Bush, of the National Guard, said that reports of corpses at the Superdome filtered back to the facility via AM radio, undermining his struggle to keep morale up and maintain order.

Is Mayor Nagin criminally liable as well? Or is this merely an attempt by the MSM to rat on a former ally in the anti-Bush campaign?

Some of the hesitation that journalists might have had about using the more sordid reports from the evacuation centers probably fell away when New Orleans’ top officials seemed to confirm the accounts.

Nagin and Police Chief Eddie Compass appeared on “Oprah” a few days after trouble at the Superdome had peaked. Compass told of “the little babies getting raped” at the Superdome. And Nagin made his claim about hooligans raping and killing.

We need an investigation of these characters, NOW, before more damage is done and so that billions of $$$ are not sucked up by the same kleptocratic children whose lies and incompetence are the greatest cause, by far, of the loss of life that actually did occur in New Orleans.

Sep 27, 2005 - 8:51 am 63. Knucklehead:

Michael_B,

The first hand BBC account you linked to is surely a tale of what would pass for “hell” for most anyone, especially an 18 yr. old Rugby player from the UK. But nothing Stuart Bird witnessed equates to the rape and murder stories that were originally presented. He was verbally abused by angry black people. Someone “threatened” to “take out a gun and kill all the white people”. No gun materialized and nobody killed all the white people.

He saw a woman, apparently dead, dragged out of the crowd. Recent reports, IIRC, have four people dying of “natural causes” outside the Superdome. It is entirely possible young Mr. Bird saw one of those unfortunate people being dragged away. Undignified as the treatment may have been there’s no evidence it was a murder.

As for the Times-Picayune article, this is precisely the reporting that is being called into question now. One might imagine that the T-P, or some other enterprising reporter, would track down Mikel Brooks and/or other members of the Arkansas National Guard who allegedly made these claims of seeing 30 or 40 “more” bodies stacked in the “freezer”.

Chances are very good, however, that what Brooks and others saw were one or two of the six bodies eventually recovered from the ‘Dome and they never saw any bodies stacked in a freezer but, rather, heard of them from someone who heard from someone who heard from someone…

All that said there was no good reason the ‘Dome had to be whatever level of hell it was. It could have, and should have, been secured and managed by NOLA officials.

The LA times article Thibaud linked to provides some interesting snippets.

Times-Picayune Editor Jim Amoss cited telephone breakdowns as a primary cause of reporting errors, but said the fact that most evacuees were poor African Americans also played a part.

The T-P doesn’t seem interested in trying to defend its earlier reporting.

“If the dome and Convention Center had harbored large numbers of middle class white people,” Amoss said, “it would not have been a fertile ground for this kind of rumor-mongering.”

Ummm… so was the fiasco a result of “racism”, or the result of poor, black people being prone to overwrought rumor-mongering or, is Mr. Amoss… never mind.

Some of the hesitation that journalists might have had about using the more sordid reports from the evacuation centers probably fell away when New Orleans’ top officials seemed to confirm the accounts.

Well, if the people who should have been in control and, therefore, should have had some accurate information hadn’t jumped into the rumor-mongering…

Nagin and Police Chief Eddie Compass appeared on “Oprah” a few days after trouble at the Superdome had peaked.

Compass told of “the little babies getting raped” at the Superdome. And Nagin made his claim about hooligans raping and killing.

Sigh… a little local leadership might have gone a long way.

State officials this week said their counts of the dead at the city’s two largest evacuation points fell far short of early rumors and news reports.

Where are the local officials who originally made the claims, Nagin and Compass, to either retract and “admit mistakes”, or defend their claims?

Ten bodies were recovered from the Superdome and four from the Convention Center, said Bob Johannessen, spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals.

(National Guard officials put the body count at the Superdome at six, saying the other four bodies came from the area around the stadium.)

How would anyone pull off a “cover up”? Who is beaming their mind-control rays onto the NG people who went into the ‘dome? What possible motive would any of the “boots on the ground” have for joining in a coverup?

Sep 27, 2005 - 9:23 am 64. thibaud:

Interesting parallel with Rathergate here:

1. Journalist has explosive but questionable scoop, whose authenticity he/she has not verified (nb. emphasis on has not verified, not “cannot verify”).

2. Instead of seeking to verify scoop with solid evidence, journalist seeks comment on scoop’s veracity from elected official and his aides. Official does not deny story (Bush/Rove) or confirms story (Nagin). Journalist publishes unverified (but undisputed by authorities) story.

3. Story turns out to be bogus. Journalist points finger at elected official for not disabusing journalist of bogus story prior to publication.

Am I missing something here, or is this an unbelievably sloppy and careless professional practice?

Can anyone imagine any other profession– doctors, accountants, architects– adhering to such an absurd non-standard of review and scrutiny for their preliminary work product? Imagine if surgeons justified medical errors by saying that the patient’s family did not disabuse the doctor of an incorrect diagnosis. Or if architects blamed builders for not telling them that the architects’ recommended steel lacked the necessary tensile strength to support the structure.

Journalism’s sausage factory is getting uglier and uglier. When even amateurs can spot the flaws in the process, it’s time to shut down the factory and start over.

Sep 27, 2005 - 9:45 am 65. Michael_B:

Knuck,

Yes, I certainly hope – and now suspect – my skepticism was misplaced and also hope the most recent reports reflecting far fewer casualties and incidents are the more accurate accounts. I presented the Times-Picayune article only as a reminder of what was originally reported, not to accept it at face value.

The Left/Dem/MSM crowd – the Politburo/Pravda, self-anointed crowd – has its share of mendacious and even malevolent mendicants of the political order they deem to be the rightful order. If that’s an exaggeration one may be forgiven for doubting it’s much of an exaggeration at all.

Sep 27, 2005 - 12:37 pm 66. Always right:

Methinks there is more to the coordinated media attempt at creating this “Bush fault” miasma. Since they (Dem) lost the election again, the only way to NOT have the Republican agenda cram down their throat is to maim Bush so much, as polls showed how successful they are, that there is no

Sep 27, 2005 - 1:41 pm 67. Knucklehead:

Always Right,

Good points re: the agenda.

There are a few things I wish he would have (or been able to) push harder on. Tax cuts are always useful, but the ones he got through were OK.

I wish his early crack at immigration had been given a fair discussion rather than being attacked from all sides. This is an issue that is rapidly reaching the point where it may not be able to be ignored much longer but people want simplistic answers like close the borders and round up the immigrants for deportation. Neither is particularly workable but the roundup is especially not going to happen. The US public, xenophobic neanderthal fascist theocons though we may be, is not going to sit by and quietly watch millions of people torn out of their homes. It just isn’t going to happen.

Social security apparently can’t yet get a hearing from the American people. We still wedged with the idiocy that Granny’s benefits are going to be snatched out of her arthritic fingers. He may be able to get back to this. We’ll see.

In his defense he’s been somewhat overcome by events not of his making and, to an extent, made worse by his predecessors.

The crash of 2000 wasn’t his doing. To the small extent that such things can be laid at the feet of POTUS, Bubba bears the blame there.

A long line, beginning with Carter, could have done a lot to either have fought the GWOT or at least engaged the enemy. That one fell in his lap.

A completely corrupted UN wasn’t his doing but he’s had to fight it tooth and nail internationally. There’s another one former POTUSs could have mitigated at least a little bit. This problem for international issues has been exacerbated by a corrupt scumbag leading France, a useless cipher leading Germany, a questionable guy stuck between a rock and a hard place leading Russia, a stark-raving madman run amock in NK, and so on. A lot of international boils got deep, wide, and painful over the past 5 years. He didn’t create any of it but he’s stuck with it.

I still shudder when I think what might have been. Al Gore couldn’t deal with the stress of his own campaign without going bonkers. Kerry makes Shroeder look like a man of substance. Neither of those no-ops coulda dealt with what McChimpy Bu$hitler has had thrown at him. We’d be 5 years further down the road to Armegeddon with those idiots telling us not to worry, doing nothing but feeling Other People’s Pain.

Sep 27, 2005 - 2:13 pm 68. Luther McLeod:

Well said and scary as hell Knuck. I don’t even like to imagine where we would be had we been without this dogged and determined man. As I’ve said before, he’s not perfect (and who is), but he has surely attempted and succeeded in halting (hopefully not just temporarily) the world’s descent into barbarism. Thinking of a comment Roger made the other day, he is more than “just one man”. Perhaps this would be true in ordinary times, but the times they are not ordinary. He was the right man in the right spot at the right time. I can’t think of anyone on the national scene who could/would have done what he has done. I know I sound like a pandering sycophant here, but believe me, I’m not. It’s just that after all these years, we finally had someone who would fight back.

Sep 27, 2005 - 4:25 pm

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