More on Katrina coverage....

The media made a bad situation worse...

After the levees broke in New Orleans, the city appeared to descend into chaos before our eyes. Americans sat in front of their TVs, watching Katrina's flooding and hearing tales of horror. On Sept. 2, ABC's "Good Morning America" described New Orleans "as the city spirals out of control." Charles Gibson continued: "There appears to be anarchy. Reports of rapes, riots, fires, bodies in the street."

That was how much of the media depicted New Orleans – a city lost to anarchy. Only it wasn't true.

There is no doubt that Katrina was an incredible tragedy, but it was nowhere near what was reported. What is true is that the sloppy coverage of Katrina's devastation will leave its mark on the media and on America for years to come.

This past week, the New Orleans Times-Picayune led the parade of media that did their best to set the record straight about what really happened. They told a story of epic failure, but they weren't writing more stories blaming the Katrina disaster on FEMA or President Bush. These told of the failure of local officials and media who got the story wrong, giving new meaning to the term "bad news." The Sept. 25 Times-Picayune story painted a new picture: "[T]he vast majority of reported atrocities committed by refugees – mass murders, rapes and beatings – have turned out to be false..." That's not what we were told, over and over again.

For weeks, the media dumped blame on FEMA, President Bush and the rest of the federal government for conditions worthy of a war zone. In a Sept. 12 cover story, Newsweek included this ironic comment: "How the system failed is a tangled story – " Actually, it was countless tangled stories – news stories.

The very structure of news reporting contributed to the disaster because news often focuses on the unusual or outlandish. In a crisis, almost everything is unusual or outlandish. With Katrina, journalists had no way to cope with the fact that many of the people they interviewed were distraught and spouting rumors. And there is no true accountability now that those reports have been proven false. Relying on Politicians

Journalists are taught to count on elected officials for much of their information, especially the kind needed during a crisis. Thus, the media turned to Louisiana politicians and police for crime statistics, the death toll and for rational commentary to offset rumors.

But state and local officials from Louisiana's governor on down didn't stamp out the sparks of rumor – they spread them like arsonists. Democratic New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin claimed on the Sept. 5 "Today" show that "it wouldn't be unreasonable to have 10,000." A month after the storm, the Louisiana death toll stands at 896.