NPR’s Alex Chadwick dropped the ball in a recent Day to Day audio segment: “New Orleans Update: Death Toll, Top Cop Quits: Alex Chadwick speaks with James Amoss, editor of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, about the latest developments in New Orleans, including the downward revision of the death toll related to Hurricane Katrina and the resignation of Police Superintendent Eddie Compass.”
No mention of any ball-dropping there, so I’ll point it out for you.
CHADWICK: …During the height of the crisis there were reports of law and order breaking down in New Orleans, of shootings and murders at the city’s Superdome and Convention Center and of scores of bodies being stored there. Local officials now say those reports may have been overblown.
This interview aired Sept. 28, one day after the Times-Picayune‘s editorial expressed relief that “New Orleans didn’t descend into some kind of post-apocolyptic [sic] orgy of violence following Katrina” as was reported. “May have been overblown” is an odd way to rephrase this.
CHADWICK: Joining us again is the editor of the New Orleans Times-Picayune Jim Amoss. Jim, welcome back to Day to Day.
And let me note that the mayor of New Orleans Ray Nagin was among those repeating the stories of rape and murder, uh, after the storm. Do you now believe those stories were false?
Note how Alex Chadwick wastes no time in telling us Mayor Nagin was “among those repeating the stories of rape and murder,” conveniently overlooking the Times-Picayune‘s part — not to mention NPR’s part — in relaying that misinformation.
Heck, let’s mention NPR’s part in relaying that misinformation.
Let’s look at All Things Considered reporter John Burnett’s sensational audio segment entitled “‘Hell on Earth’ at the Convention Center,” dated Sept. 15, 2005.
In interviews with 30 people evacuated from the convention center — and National Guard and police officers — we hear a story of anarchy and filth, described as “hell on Earth. Evacuees described gangs of young men roaming the center, preying on people at night; and dead bodies pushed to the side or left in bathrooms for days.”
From the press blurb for the audio segment “‘Hell on Earth’ at the Convention Center,” by John Burnett, Sept. 15, 2005.
In this audio segment, Mr. Burnett reported multiple witnesses claiming a young girl had been raped and murdered, and that multiple witnesses heard a woman and her baby dying in childbirth. According to Burnett’s research, there should have been two dead children found in the Convention Center.
Yet less than one week before “‘Hell on Earth’ at the Convention Center,” aired, Eddie Compass had told the world that no children’s bodies had been recovered from the Convention Center.
This means Mr. Burnett told NPR’s listeners that at least two children died in the Convention Center (one of them brutally raped and murdered) without bothering to check if any children’s bodies had actually been recovered from the Convention Center.
So I ask again: how can Mr. Chadwick only focus on Ray Nagin’s part in repeating “the stories of rape and murder,” without mentioning NPRs part in repeating “those stories” that were “false”?
Instead, Mr. Chadwick asks James Amoss a question similar to the one I already asked Mr. Amoss, but for which I have not yet received an answer.
Amoss could do the right thing and say, “Yes, Alex, these stories were false. Not only were they false, but my newspaper printed some of those false stories as if they were the truth. Compass and Nagin are not journalists, and should not be held to the same standard my newspaper should. I am sorry.”
Amoss doesn’t take that route.
AMOSS: I think they were certainly greatly exaggerated, you know the mayor was not the only one who was repeating them. Many of us in the media were doing so. Um and he like many other officials were relying on yet other reports from the ground and in particular from his police chief Eddie Compass who was getting them from, I suppose from his men.
Greatly exaggerated?
On September 6 the Times-Picayune published an article by Brian Thevenot entitled, “Mayor says Katrina may have claimed more than 10,000 lives, Bodies found piled in freezer at Convention Center.” The article quotes Mikel Brooks, an Arkansas National Guardsman, as he described the bodies of children in the Convention Center, one of which he said had been 7, gang-raped, and murdered when her throat was cut. The other body was “estimated” to be that of a 5-year-old.
This story was widely circulated all over the world and is more than just “greatly exaggerated.” Remember, only 4 bodies were recovered from the Convention Center. Only one victim died of violence, and none of the dead were children.
At least Mr. Amoss admits that “many of us in the media” were spreading rumors. Then he goes on to make some excellent points about how difficult it was for anyone to know what was true and what was rumor.
AMOSS: …There was this fertile ground for these rumors because communication was nonexistent. Cell phones didn’t work, phones didn’t work, walkie talkies didn’t work and on top of that just this apocalyptic atmosphere made everything horrific and everything bizarre seem likely or plausible.
I agree that the chaos of post-Katrina New Orleans made factual reporting difficult (just ask Compass and Nagin). Mark Egan of Reuters also worked in that “apocalyptic atmosphere,” and yet he managed to do what Times-Picayune reporters could not: fact check his story.
Sitting with her daughter and other relatives, Trolkyn Joseph, 37, said men had wandered the cavernous convention center in recent nights raping and murdering children.
She said she found a dead 14-year old girl at 5 a.m. on Friday morning, four hours after the young girl went missing from her parents inside the convention center.
“She was raped for four hours until she was dead,” Joseph said through tears. “Another child, a seven-year old boy was found raped and murdered in the kitchen freezer last night.”
Several others interviewed by Reuters told similar stories of the abuse and murder of children, but they could not be independently verified.“Murder and mayhem in New Orleans’ miserable shelter,” by Mark Egan, Reuters, Sept. 2, 2005
The Times-Picayune could not even toss off that little “independent verification” concession to journalistic ethics in the infamous stuffed-freezer story, and yet one day before Chadwick’s interview, its editorial board had the gall to attack Eddie Compass and Ray Nagin for repeating stories they had heard from Compass’ men.
I wish James Amoss had been willing to apologize for the major part his newspaper played in spreading the Katrina rumors.
I wish Alex Chadwick had asked Mr. Amoss about the Times-Picayune‘s very own “greatly exaggerated” story, the one about all those nonexistent bodies piled in a Convention Center freezer.
And finally, I wish that if Mr. Chadwick couldn’t admit that NPR played a role in spreading rumors, he could have at least pointed out the hypocrisy of the Times-Picayune‘s attack on convenient scapegoats Compass and Nagin.
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