Some might call this New Orleans Times-Picayune editorial an example of righteous indignation. I call it an example of the best defense.
Nearly a month after the storm, officials have come up with no hard evidence to back up stories of murder, rape and other violence that supposedly happened among those who took shelter in those places. No matter how convincing the eye witness accounts, the bodies that back up their stories aren’t there.
“OUR OPINIONS: Hurricane-force rumors,” an unsigned Times-Picayune editorial dated Sept. 27, 2005.
This stern disapproval comes from a newspaper that didn’t exactly count any bodies before hatching its own set of lurid rumors.
Arkansas National Guardsman Mikel Brooks stepped through the food service entrance of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center Monday, flipped on the light at the end of his machine gun, and started pointing out bodies.
“Don’t step in that blood—it’s contaminated,” he said. “That one with his arm sticking up in the air, he’s an old man.” Then he shined the light on the smaller human figure under the white sheet next to the elderly man.
“That’s a kid,” he said. “There’s another one in the freezer, a 7-year-old with her throat cut.”
[snip]
Brooks and several other Guardsmen said they had seen between 30 and 40 more bodies in the Convention Center’s freezer.
“Mayor says Katrina may have claimed more than 10,000 lives, Bodies found piled in freezer at Convention Center,” by Brian Thevenot, Staff Writer, The Times-Picayune, Sept. 06, 2005
Compare this Times-Picayune article by Brian Thevenot with the following Times-Picayune article, also by Brian Thevenot.
At the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, just four bodies were recovered, despites reports of corpses piled inside the building. Only one of the dead appeared to have been slain, said health and law enforcement officials.
[SNIP]
As floodwaters forced tens of thousands of evacuees into the Dome and Convention Center, news of unspeakable acts poured out of the nation’s media: evacuees firing at helicopters trying to save them; women, children and even babies raped with abandon; people killed for food and water; a 7-year-old raped and killed at the Convention Center.
“Rumors of deaths greatly exaggerated, Widely reported attacks false or unsubstantiated,” By Brian Thevenot and Gordon Russell, Staff writers, The Times-Picayune, Sept. 26, 2005
The Times-Picayune isn’t the only media publisher to produce what Chief Eddie Compass called “vicious rumors,” or wild and unsubstantiated tales of raped and murdered children.
In an audio report broadcast from NPR, reporter John Burnett said the “one death that stood out to most of the people” he interviewed was that of a girl who had been raped and murdered. Mr. Burnett also reported evacuees’ stories about a woman who died with her baby in childbirth, yet could not give his audience a definitive body count.
Mr. Burnett’s NPR audio report, by the way, was broadcast on September 15, several days after former police chief Eddie Compass told the world there were no children’s bodies found in the Convention Center.
But let’s get back to the Times-Picayune editorial. Apparently unconcerned with unsubstantiated reports of freezers piled high with bodies, the editorial instead condemns specific statements Mayor Nagin and the former Chief Compass made to Oprah Winfrey during her fact-finding mission to New Orleans.
During an interview with Oprah Winfrey, [Chief Compass] said that babies were being raped. Mayor Nagin said that hundreds of armed gang members were killing and raping people inside the Dome.
Thank God it didn’t happen. Everyone in south Louisiana — in the entire country — should feel a tremendous sense of relief that New Orleans didn’t descend into some kind of post-apocolyptic orgy of violence following Katrina…
“OUR OPINIONS: Hurricane-force rumors,” September 27, 2005, an unsigned Times-Picayune editorial.
Note how the Times-Picayune distances itself from the term “post-apocolyptic.” Meanwhile star Times-Picayune reporter Brian Thevenot embraces it:
We’ve all run out of adequate descriptors, words we couldn’t believe appeared on our screens or notepads even as we wrote them: Armageddon, Bedlam, Chaos, Apocalypse, Hell.
“Apocalypse in New Orleans, A firsthand account of how a small band of Times-Picayune journalists covered devastation and misery in their shattered home,” by Brian Thevenot, American Journalism Review, October/November 2005.
This is what you call ironic.
It’s understandable that in the tense and fractured days after Katrina frightened people reported rumor as fact and soldiers, police and even elected officials believed what they heard and passed it on. In the hell that descended after Katrina, almost anything, no matter how horrific, seemed possible.
But now that we know better, it’s essential that people like Mayor Nagin and Superintendent Compass set the record straight, just as forcefully. That might mean saying, “I spoke too soon” or even, “I exaggerated.”
“OUR OPINIONS: Hurricane-force rumors,” September 27, 2005, an unsigned Times-Picayune editorial.
Why isn’t it essential that the Times-Picayune set the record straight?
In the hell that descended after Katrina, soldiers, police and elected officials did believe what they heard and passed it on. Journalists, on the other hand, are supposed to verify everything they hear, before they pass it on.
Eddie Compass and Ray Nagin do not have thousands of subscribers paying them to report the news accurately. If anyone needs to “set the record straight,” it is the Times-Picayune.
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