If they don’t get it, it would be a sham
The daring escape to paper delivery trucks was an amazing story in itself, but more fascinating is how far ahead of the story they were compared to national news which was ahead of FEMA, DHS and the President for some bizarre reason. For the first several days I was primarily reading NOLA.com updates and watching WWL TV streaming and the picture of what was going on was radically different from what the national media was covering–for one thing, both organizations dealt with facts and did what big media can do better than anyone–collect facts and report them to the public.
Beyond the regular reporting, the story above mentions the message boards–which were literally flooded with requests for people to check on individuals who might have been left behind.
The disaster at the St. Rita’s Nursing home in St. Bernard was relayed through message boards where one man was asking loved ones to write him to get an answer since he didn’t want them to find out on a electronic message board. I wonder what happened to many of the messages because the system seemed to have purged them as the day went on during the height of chaos.
I have spent 2 bewildering weeks trying to follow the story coming out of New Orleans. It is hard to find local (ie New Orleans) reporting here in
northern Louisiana. What I have seen is quite
good. They all deserve top awards for covering this story.
I would like to know why no one at the various network news bureaus did not hire or acquire
a New Orleans- area person to help correct
gross inaccuracies. We in New Orleans are
particularly sensitive to gaffes in the pronunciation of names and places (due in part to all the French
names but not always). One national weather
person referred to “the town of Buck,” which everyone in N.O. knows as Bucktown. There is no Hanrahan (it is Harahan), and you would think
Canal St and the French Quarter were the only parts of the city at all. Was it that hard to get a local to do this? New Orleans was (and IS) a
complicated and often frustrating place to report on.
Most of us who evacuated needed a hell of a lot better coverage than we got. I am sick of pretty-boy and pretty-girl news readers who have little sense of history or the bigger world picture.
Would that journalism was in the hands of competent adults again. Is it asking too much
to get someone who knows what the hell is going on? I wonder.