Katrina Redux

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 30, 2006 11:12 AM

I am not a big fan of media anniversary hype. The avalanche of "one year after" and "five years after" stories always strike me as a form of journalistic laziness. It is, by definition, arbitrary--why is a story a big deal 12 months after the fact, but not 11 months or 13 or 15? At times, it seems more like an excuse for extravaganzas by news outlets that long ago lost interest in the story but want to appear engaged.

And yet, I find myself pleased that the one-year benchmark, artificial as it is, has produced a spate of good reporting about Hurricane Katrina and finally put the national spotlight back on the Gulf Coast. There have been moving, probing, textured pieces in the major papers, and Brian Williams's prime-time NBC special Monday night was raw and powerful.

I visited New Orleans a few months ago and was stunned, in surveying the miles and miles of ruined neighborhoods, vacant houses, abandoned autos and devastated shopping centers, at how little progress had been made. For all the billions that have been spent, it looks like Katrina just struck in major swaths of the area. It is at once surreal and heart-breaking as you attempt to contemplate the human impact. And several writers have reached a similar conclusion: Words, and even television pictures, cannot convey the magnitude of what happened.

What we have, and what the anniversary pieces are forcing the country to confront, is a major American city that has lost half its population, and the refugees aren't coming back any time soon, if at all. So many schools and businesses remain closed, so many areas lack power, so much rebuilding money is stuck in the government/insurance pipeline, that most of those who want to return are unable to do so. What's particularly infuriating is that the feds have appropriated more than $100 billion in aid, and yet as every story notes, much of it remains unspent due to bureaucratic hurdles.

While a handful of news organizations have been conscientious about sticking with the story, the media agenda marches on--Iraq, Hezbollah, the British terror plot, Joe Lieberman, JonBenet, Tom Cruise, Pluto, Hurricane Ernesto. New Orleans is like Iraq--it was a mess yesterday, it's a mess today and will still be a mess tomorrow. So it fades in and out of the news. And I fear it will continue to fade once anniversary week is over.

How is the press handling the Bush visit? Most papers, including the Los Angeles Times , take the upbeat route:

"Marking the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, President Bush today delivered a message of perseverance and hope, renewing his pledge to help New Orleans recover from the storm's still-devastating impact and, as he eventually did after the storm struck, taking responsibility for the federal government's much criticized response."

The New Orleans Times-Picayune : "In his 13th visit to New Orleans in a year, President Bush sought to reassure residents Tuesday that he and the federal government will stand by the region as it struggles to emerge from the darkest year in its history, with no end in sight."

The New York Times stresses the contrition angle:

"President Bush, still at pains to demonstrate his concern over the devastation of Hurricane Katrina a full year after the storm, said he took 'full responsibility' for the slow federal response to the disaster as he made a carefully choreographed pilgrimage on Tuesday to the city that suffered most."

Newsweek's Jonathan Alter recalls writing a year ago that the time had come for a national assault on urban poverty, as typified by the Lower Ninth Ward:

"Some readers told me at the time that this was naive--that the president, if not indifferent to the problems of black people, as the singer Kanye West charged, was not going to do anything significant to help them. At first this seemed too cynical. The week after the article appeared, Bush went to Jackson Square in New Orleans and made televised promises not only for Katrina relief but to address some of the underlying struggles of the poor. He proposed 'worker recovery accounts' to help evacuees find work by paying for job training, school and child care; an Urban Homesteading Act that would make empty lots and loans available to the poor to start over, and a Gulf Enterprise Zone to spur business investment in poor areas. Small ideas, perhaps, but good ones.

"Well, it turned out that the critics were largely right. Not only has the president done much less than he promised on the financing and logistics of Gulf Coast recovery, he has dropped the ball entirely on using the storm and its aftermath as an opportunity to fight poverty. Worker recovery accounts and urban homesteading never got off the ground, and the new enterprise zone is mostly an opportunity for Southern companies owned by GOP campaign contributors to make some money in New Orleans. The mood in Washington continues to be one of not-so-benign neglect of the problems of the poor."

Fred Barnes looks back on Bush's missteps:

"What might the president have done differently? At least three things, starting with his decision two days after the levees broke--and New Orleans began to flood--to fly over the city in Air Force One without landing. Bush now knows he should have landed . . .

"The second avoidable mistake involved the reluctance of Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans and Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco to declare a mandatory evacuation of the city. Federal emergency officials urged Nagin to evacuate the city before Katrina hit. Bush personally called the mayor on the morning of the hurricane to press him to require all residents to leave. However, the president did not go public with a plea for an immediate and full evacuation.

"He should have. Bush and his aides realize he was far too deferential to Nagin and the governor. He should have lobbied them publicly, not just privately . . .

"Thirdly, the president held back from dispatching federal troops to New Orleans until Blanco asked for them. By that time, disorder had broken out in New Orleans and stories about murders and rapes at the Superdome--stories that turned out to be false--filled the news."

Brian Williams reflects to the L.A. Times on covering the storm a year ago:

" 'I saw fear, I saw death, I saw depravity, I saw firearms being brandished, I saw looting -- and this in one of the great cities in the United States,' the 47-year-old anchor said in a recent interview. 'It's always going to be a part of me. I don't think I've ever been so angry about a subject that intersected with my work.' "

I made my rather strong feelings about the JonBenet fiasco known yesterday; here are some other voices, starting with Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine:

"Anyone who has spent more than six months reporting, editing, or watching the news could have guessed that John Mark Karr was just a sicko who was looking for attention. But, no, the news shmucks couldn't help themselves. They had to dredge up the Jon Benet story because -- why? -- they had such fond memories of writing every damned hour about a dead little girl?

"I got a call last week from one of the cable networks asking whether I'd been following what the blogs were saying about Jon Benet. I said proudly that I had no frigging idea what they were saying, if anything, and that I didn't care. The cable news person said, 'good for you,' and went looking elsewhere. There's always somebody ready to talk about Jon Benet. It's at moments like these that I feel ashamed for my 'profession.' They call this news? They call this journalism? It's not the voyeurism that's most offensive. It's the stupidity."

HuffPoster Bob Geiger is equally appalled:

"What is amazing to me is the media circus that has followed this 'case' for almost two weeks now without really a shred of proof that anything had truly developed in the 10-year-old mystery. And we're not just talking about an informational mention on page six or seven of the local newspaper, or a 90-second story buried in the second half of a one-hour newscast.

"We're talking about hour upon hour of coverage, with some cable news networks devoting the entire hour of a 60-minute newscast to a developing story that could very well have turned out to be a lot of noise about nothing. We're talking about alleged journalists and editors whose judgment made them decide that John Mark Karr's plane ride from Thailand to the United States, where he sat, who he talked to, what he ate and even what procedure was used to allow him to use the bathroom was their very top story.

"All of this without the most basic elements of proof that freshman journalism students taking Reporting 100 are taught to look for.

"Unbelievable."

But the Chicago Tribune's Phil Rosenthal isn't buying:

"The knee-jerk reaction is to say the media ought to apologize for inundating viewers and readers with stories tying John Mark Karr to the murder of JonBenet Ramsey, a flood that presumably crested with Monday's announcement that he will not be prosecuted for the crime.

"Sorry, but it's knee-jerk reactions that got the media into this situation, so that might not be the best course of action. "After all, it wasn't the media that made Karr the prime suspect for 12 days in a 10-year-old murder case. You can thank authorities in Thailand and Colorado for that. The media reported doubts almost from the start."

The New Orleans D.A. walks out on a Brian Ross interview, calling his questions stupid.

Well, the Isikoff/Corn book on Iraq hasn't even hit the stores yet and it's being picked apart. (Which is only fair, since Newsweek and the Nation broke the news yesterday that Richard Armitage was the other secret source in the Valerie Plame outing.) National Review's Byron York wastes no time in weighing in:

"'Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War,' the new book by the Nation's David Corn and Newsweek's Michael Isikoff, is the most in-depth single account yet of the CIA-leak investigation. But representatives of two central figures in the case, former Cheney chief of staff Lewis Libby and top White House aide Karl Rove, say the authors never got in touch with them, much less interviewed them, for the book.

"'Neither Isikoff nor Corn ever contacted us to discuss anything about the book,' says Barbara Comstock, a spokeswoman for the Libby defense team. 'We were never contacted,' says Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Rove."

Corn, in an e-mail to York, says it's not true, that they did try to reach both men and made a formal request to the White House.

Did the veep go too far? Americablog's John Aravosis says yes:

"I'd like to know who Dick Cheney was talking about when he said Monday that 'some' Americans say we should appease the terrorists so they don't hit us again. I've never heard any American suggest any such thing, and certainly no Democrat. (Was Cheney talking about a Republican, perhaps even someone in the White House?)

"So please, dear media, just like you pestered John Kerry incessantly about who those supposed 'world leaders' were who didn't want Bush to win re-election, please demand that the vice president name names and provide us with quotes."

Pat Carr, a Rochester, Minn., councilman, has been getting praise on the Web site of the city's paper, the Post-Bulletin --which, it turns out, was secretly written by Pat Carr.

CNN anchor Kyra Phillips complains about her sister-in-law--and doesn't realize her mike is on during a Bush speech. Wonkette has the YouTube video.

In other female anchor news, how Katie Couric lost lots of weight without even trying .

The new co-host of "Today" is revising and extending her remarks, as the New York Post reports:

"Meredith Vieira says she called former boss Barbara Walters Monday -- telling her that a quote attributed to Vieira calling 'The View' a 'joke' was taken out of context.

" 'I did call Barbara because I was very upset, and she was upset, too,' Vieira told The Post.

"Vieira, interviewed in Time magazine, was asked about former co-host Star Jones' stormy departure from 'The View' last June. 'I feel very sad for everything that's happened and for everybody involved,' Vieira told the magazine. 'I'm proud of the work we did there, but it's not a good time in the history of that show. It's hard to watch. It sort of became a joke.'

"Vieira says Walters was understanding of the situation during their morning phone chat.

" 'She said [the "joke" quote] 'doesn't sound like you, but if it was you, I'll have to hurt your husband,' " Vieira said. 'I think she's used to things being taken out of context.'

"Vieira said her 'joke' comment was meant to describe, in her opinion, the way in which the media was treating 'The View' in the weeks following Jones' exit."

What? Blaming the media?