Jeff Smith’s column for the October issue of Recoil, “Disaster Reporting that Avoids Reporting on the Disastrous Response of the Government,” has been posted in the commentary section of the site:
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.
