Media Bias On Hurricane Prevents Real Coverage
As the reasons behind the failures of responding to hurricane Katrina begin to unfold, those caught in the political “Bush Bashing” are going to be in for severe credibility erosion I think. Instead of covering the true reasons for failure at the local, state and federal levels, an alarming number of MSM members are taking an easy and natural for them, fall back position. They are going on auto pilot and playing the “blame Bush for everything” card.
Jon Ham has a good article at Carolina Journal Ham that summarizes what is happening in the MSM coverage and why.
First off the MSM doesn’t seem to have a clue about the subject they are attempting to cover. The first response to every disaster comes from local and state government. The lack of focus on the abysmal failings of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco fails to get the total coverage of what went wrong and why off the ground. At this point in the story, the coverage should be about 70% focused on the local and state failures. Once we find out why things failed so badly there, we can move on to the federal failures. You can’t begin the coverage or investigation into this tragedy if you ignore the starting point. Whether the MSM lacking coverage of the local and state failures are politically motivated or simply incompetence really doesn’t matter. Both make the coverage itself incompetent and lacking credibility.
We already hear calls for investigations into why federal relief efforts failed from those looking to make hay and score political points, however not a peep for investigations into the most critical failures that started this whole nasty relief response disaster. Are those calling for federal investigations really concerned about fixing what went wrong and helping people in the future, or are they like the looters preying on the victims for political points?
You have to start at the beginning and work you way up on this story I say, and if you jump to the end to begin your coverage then you simply have no credibility. In the end I think that those who peddle political agenda based journalism, are going to be surprised by the consequences.
The public can become pretty indifferent to the typical political agenda based journalism when it comes to traditional Washington type subjects. Budgets, economics, appointments, bills, you know the standard boring stuff to a majority of Americans. However when you put a human face on the story and in this case thousands of hurting fellow Americans faces, you better not wrap political agendas around your coverage. Even self described non-political Americans get very angry when victims like these are used for political agendas. Even people who are not overly aware of the politics of the media will smell that type of coverage out. Like the stench of the Superdome, it's too awful of a smell to go undetected………………………….
Update:
One of the most agenda driven journalists in America is Paul Krugman, and right on key he rips off a political hack piece full of falsehoods and misinformation. Journalists like Krugman don’t let little things like facts get in the way, when there is a political agenda to advance from the pages of the NYT.
Krugman is the type of journalist who has no issue using victims of the hurricane in this political spin. He also is the type of journalist that I think will pay this time around for using these victims to spin his political agenda.
Powerline takes Krugman apart in their post “Krugmania Continued”
Jon Ham has a good article at Carolina Journal Ham that summarizes what is happening in the MSM coverage and why.
First off the MSM doesn’t seem to have a clue about the subject they are attempting to cover. The first response to every disaster comes from local and state government. The lack of focus on the abysmal failings of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco fails to get the total coverage of what went wrong and why off the ground. At this point in the story, the coverage should be about 70% focused on the local and state failures. Once we find out why things failed so badly there, we can move on to the federal failures. You can’t begin the coverage or investigation into this tragedy if you ignore the starting point. Whether the MSM lacking coverage of the local and state failures are politically motivated or simply incompetence really doesn’t matter. Both make the coverage itself incompetent and lacking credibility.
We already hear calls for investigations into why federal relief efforts failed from those looking to make hay and score political points, however not a peep for investigations into the most critical failures that started this whole nasty relief response disaster. Are those calling for federal investigations really concerned about fixing what went wrong and helping people in the future, or are they like the looters preying on the victims for political points?
You have to start at the beginning and work you way up on this story I say, and if you jump to the end to begin your coverage then you simply have no credibility. In the end I think that those who peddle political agenda based journalism, are going to be surprised by the consequences.
The public can become pretty indifferent to the typical political agenda based journalism when it comes to traditional Washington type subjects. Budgets, economics, appointments, bills, you know the standard boring stuff to a majority of Americans. However when you put a human face on the story and in this case thousands of hurting fellow Americans faces, you better not wrap political agendas around your coverage. Even self described non-political Americans get very angry when victims like these are used for political agendas. Even people who are not overly aware of the politics of the media will smell that type of coverage out. Like the stench of the Superdome, it's too awful of a smell to go undetected………………………….
Update:
One of the most agenda driven journalists in America is Paul Krugman, and right on key he rips off a political hack piece full of falsehoods and misinformation. Journalists like Krugman don’t let little things like facts get in the way, when there is a political agenda to advance from the pages of the NYT.
Krugman is the type of journalist who has no issue using victims of the hurricane in this political spin. He also is the type of journalist that I think will pay this time around for using these victims to spin his political agenda.
Powerline takes Krugman apart in their post “Krugmania Continued”
posted by Steve at 12:00 PM
