On September 11 New York Times reporter Jason DeParle noted that "what a shocked world saw exposed in New Orleans last week wasn't just a broken levee. It was a chasm of race and class…. Hydrology joined sociology through the story line, from the settling of the flood-prone city, where well-to-do white people lived on the high ground, to its frantic abandonment." As if with most catastrophe’s, Hurricane Katrina has allowed for a bit more honest reporting than is normally allowed. Even reporters on FOX News didn’t bend to the ideological will of Sean Hannity who still wants to deny that the government has done anything wrong in New Orleans.

Unfortunately, most of the major media coverage surrounding the impact of Hurricane Katrina has been kind to the government. The national Media Watchdog group FAIR has noted that while skepticism has increased amongst reporters when it comes to government responses, much of the reporting has given them the benefit of the doubt. Even after some criticisms are leveled against the administration, another reporter will come to its defense. On 9/1 Ted Koppel challenged FEMA director Michael Brown on ABC, but the very next day Cokie Roberts defended him.

Besides mainstream media’s defense, the administration has put into place its own damage control and PR machine. Reuters news service reported on 9/7 that FEMA was managing images, but not allowing reporters to certain areas and asking that "no photographs of the deceased be made by the media." A policy very similar to the administrations attempt to ban photos of dead US soldiers coming home from Iraq. Then we have Bush and other administration officials going to New Orleans for photo ops and trying to manage the public perception of the disaster. Fortunately, not everything can be filtered and we even heard one angry victim of the hurricane say “Go fuck yourself, Mr. Cheney,” while Cheney pontificated in front of cameras, while making deals off camera to get his former employer Halliburton more contracts.

Perhaps the most blatant elements of media reporting has been the double standard with race reporting. You remember, when White people were “taking” things it was out of desperation, but when Black people took food and other items they were “looting.” As the Church Lady used to say “how convenient.” Both the images and language in much of the reporting exposed the deep seeded racism in the south, in the government, and the media. This became so apparent that the public began to see reporters going out of their way to show Black families as victims. However, the government and the media made sure that the Black voices we did hear were not critical of the policies. You can cry on TV, say thanks for everyone’s generosity, just don’t say anything bad about the government and its response to all this. This is what social critic Paul Street refers to as the “media’s ideological role - putting the lid on the race-class-empire can.”

With the local media it has been pretty much the same, just with more emphasis on the goodwill of the people. Everyday, they provide these touching stories about people volunteering time, driving to New Orleans, opening their home and donating money. This is all fine and dandy, but again there is a virtual silence on the political realities of the so-called disaster and relief efforts. If you want any serious coverage you have to rely on international reporting or independent media within the US. There you find stories about the how the police and military were preventing some people from evacuating the city. Some reporters, like Naomi Archer spoke with some relief volunteers who said “It's not so much that the government is not responding [with storm relief], they are obstructing the response.” This is just one example of the many stories coming out about how FEMA and the Red Cross were not only doing a poor job of relief work, but even creating barriers for volunteers from around the country to make a difference.

Another story that has been on the margins of mainstream media is the militarization of New Orleans. While images of the military were seen in reporting, the impression that most stories gave were quite benign. Democracy Now reporter Jeremy Scahill paints a much different picture. He reported that military check points were set up everywhere in the city. “There are soldiers all over the city. What's incredible is that you see them doing almost nothing. They're either just standing around or sitting around. There's very little work being done by the military. You do see units like the 82nd airborne patrolling the streets. It looks like the aftermath of a massacre or war zone where you have soldiers patrolling around. You also see a tremendous increase in the number of private security contractors who have arrived on the scene.” One of those private security firms is Blackwater, notorious for its brutal work in Iraq. Blackwater was founded by Betsy DeVos’ brother Erik Prince. Scahill even reported that an abandoned Greyhound Bus station had been converted into a makeshift jail where people were being held for mostly minor infractions.

So now we have a better picture of what was happening to poor people. What about rich people? What do you think they were doing during the early days of September? According to the Wall street Journal corporate lobbying of Congress increased and that "Major U.S. airlines are asking Congress to suspend federal jet-fuel taxes. Oil and gas companies want drilling rights in new parts of the Gulf Coast,” and “Insurance companies want the ability to use tax-free funds to create a multibillion-dollar industry fund to cover future claims from natural disasters (source).” Ah, the wonders of the free market system. “Too bad what happened to those people. At least we can make a profit off of people’s pain. It will even create jobs.”

In many ways the media coverage of Hurricane Katrina is a mirror of media coverage of 9/11. In the first days of the terror attack there was some honest reporting, but soon the news became managed and ideological. “We will hunt down the terrorists no matter where they are.” With Hurricane Katrina it was initially “why is the government taking so long to respond” to how great the country is. We saw heroics of fire fighters and citizens right after 9/11 and now we are seeing heroics of citizens doing relief in New Orleans. Unfortunately in both cases the hard questions, the behind the scenes stories are not being revealed in both the so-called War on Terrorism and Hurricane Katrina.