Promoting his new book, 'Katrina's Secrets,' on Monday's NBC Today, former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin stood by his assertion that racism played a role in the Bush administration's response to the storm: "I'm not telling you that President Bush was a racist or what have you. But I think race and class and politics played in just about every aspect of this disaster."
Co-host Matt Lauer claimed that Nagin was "very honest and open" in the book, at least in his ability to "blame President Bush, FEMA Director Michael Brown and others for slow federal response." After quoting Nagin's suggestion in the book that race was a factor, Lauer referred to the accusation as a "Kanye West moment" and wondered: "What proof do you have that it contributed to the slow response?"
Hurricane Katrina
Are deadly tornadoes really the best "stimulus" to be hoped for from the Obama White House, or is the New York Times just desperately looking for economics green shoots as the 2012 presidential elections approach?
In any case, just 10 days after the deadly tornado hit Joplin, Missouri, Wednesday’s off-lead by Michael Cooper, "Reconstruction Lifts Economy After Disasters – New Jobs Are Created to Erase the Rubble," pushed tornadoes as economic stimulus.
Actor and filmmaker Harry Shearer, best known for his voice work in 'The Simpsons', blasted the news media in a speech to the National Press Club on Monday.
Specifically, he singled out the media's "myth-making" tendency - its constant desire to fit current events into mostly pre-formed narratives. "What I’m calling a ‘template,’ is based on facts. Some facts. A partial collection. The first dusting," Shearer claimed. "It then becomes adopted as ‘the narrative.' The mental doors lock shut, and no further facts are allowed in."
On Friday’s Countdown show on MSNBC, host Keith Olbermann announced that the episode would be his last, and spent a few minutes near the end of the show saying goodbye. He mentioned a number of infamous and pivotal points in his show’s history when he went after the Bush administration:
The show gradually established its position as anti-establishment from the stagecraft of "Mission Accomplished," to the exaggerated rescue of Jessica Lynch in Iraq, to the death of Pat Tillman to Hurricane Katrina, to the "Nexus of Politics and Terror," to the first "Special Comment."
As he listed a number of prominent supporters of his show, he ended up notably giving credit to the late Tim Russert of NBC for being "my greatest protector, and most indefatigable cheerleader."
Below the fold is the video and a complete transcript of Olbermann's announcement from the Friday, January 21, Countdown show on MSNBC, from about 8:53 p.m.:
As NewsBusters has been reporting all week, the media have used the occasion of George W. Bush's published memoirs "Decision Points" to rekindle their hatred for the 43rd president.
Not surprisingly, NBC's "Saturday Night Live" took its shots at Bush by uniting him with Kanye West during "Weekend Update" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
The fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina recalls a horror show on two levels. There’s the actual disaster which killed hundreds of people – and then there’s the media smear job on the Bush administration and first responders. No one should forget pompous grandstanders like “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams signing off three months after the floods from the Lower Ninth Ward: "This is a neighborhood that's been left to die."
How those network anchors loved hurricane hyperbole! Williams, for one, lectured the nation that the hurricane should “necessitate a national discussion on race, on oil, politics, class, infrastructure, the environment, and more.” He underlined that a top local radio station decided not to air President Bush’s remarks from the city since “nothing he could say could ever help them deal with the dire situation unfolding live in the streets of New Orleans, where people were still dying during his visit."
It never mattered to these nattering nabobs that, as Popular Mechanics magazine documented, Katrina spurred by far the largest and fastest rescue effort in American history, with nearly 100,000 emergency personnel arriving on the scene within three days of the storm's landfall, rescuing an estimated 50,000 residents.
Five years ago on Sunday, Hurricane Katrina smashed into the Gulf coast, devastating much of the region, and most memorably New Orleans. Yesterday was an occasion to look back at what went wrong in the city, and hope that the same mistakes are not made again.One of the most notorious failures surrounding Katrina was the media's coverage of the situation in New Orleans. One "well-known [television] anchor," actor and filmmaker Harry Shearer recalled in an interview with Daily Finance's Jeff Bercovici, claimed the "the emotional stories are more compelling for our audience." Hence, the media mostly ignored the larger issues facing the city - survivors still stranded on rooftops, the reasons for the levy's failures - in favor of more sensationalistic, occasionally outright false stories.
Shearer gives the media's coverage - with the notable exceptions of only a couple outlets - a D-minus.
Interviewing President Barack Obama in New Orleans on Sunday afternoon, Brian Williams treated Obama with a level of deference he didn’t afford to President George W. Bush as he treated Obama as a great oracle of wisdom to pluck. “Katrina was about so many things. It was about class and race and government and the environment,” Williams told Obama in the except aired on the NBC Nightly News, yearning for guidance: “Whatever happened to that national conversation we were supposed to have about it?”Williams raised how “it's getting baked in a little bit in the media that BP was President Obama's Katrina. And it's also getting baked in that the administration was slow off the mark,” but only to cue up Obama: “Is that unfair?” As the economy continues in dire straights and Obama’s economic policy of “stimulus” spending has obviously failed, all Williams could ask was: “Do you have anything new on the economy?”
Williams fretted that though “you're an American-born Christian...significant numbers of Americans in polls, upwards of a fifth of respondents are claiming you are neither.” The “question” from Williams: “This has to be troubling to you. This is, of course, all-new territory for an American President.”
As the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina slamming New Orleans nears, the folks at NBC offered viewers a "Meet the Press" special edition with a sadly predictable conclusion: the disaster was all George W. Bush and the federal government's fault.
The New Orleans mayor at the time was almost entirely ignored in this hour-long examination. The only mention of the state's former governor was actually one of praise.
Rather than offering one new compelling insight into the natural disaster that changed America, the invited guests all fed fill-in host Brian Williams the same old tired lines about racism and classism; despite numerous opportunities to delve into the decades of political corruption in the region that left the levees surrounding New Orleans in a dreadful state of disrepair, the subject was never broached.
Instead, what ensued - given all the time and resources available to really do a groundbreaking exposé on this issue - was something all those involved should be tremendously embarrassed for.
Frankly, that was clear right from the get go (partial video follows with partial transcript and commentary, full video and transcript here and here respectively):
Five year ago today, Hurricane Katrina slammed Louisiana and Mississippi forever changing America.
Today co-anchor Matt Lauer traveled to New Orleans, on Friday, to mark the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and interviewed the likes of former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, former FEMA Director Mike Brown, current Democratic Mayor Mitch Landrieu and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, but saved any sort of direct shots at George W. Bush for his interview with Laura Bush.
At the very end of his August 27 interview about her charitable work in the region, Lauer laid the following guilt trip on the former First Lady: [audio available here]
Is it possible for CNN to do a 7 1/2 minute segment about Hurricane Katrina without mentioning George W. Bush's name?
Given the media's approaching five year obsession with blaming one of America's largest natural disasters on a Republican president, it seems highly unlikely, doesn't it?
Yet that's what happened on "Reliable Sources" Sunday when Howard Kurtz invited Harry Shearer on the program to talk about his new documentary "The Big Uneasy."
In it, Shearer claims the media badly missed the boat in their reporting of what caused the flooding in New Orleans (video follows with transcript and commentary):