News with blinders

Right from the start there have been two glaring purposeful “errors” of omission from the mainstream media coverage of Hurricane Katrina and the governments response to it.

First, the Democratic administrations of Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin havebeen given passes. Oh sure there have been stories here and there that have pinpointed theblatant negligence of the dynamic duo of the Bayou. Inadequate evacuation notices, mishandling requests for the National Guard, leaving the school buses to drown in their parking spaces instead of using them to help in the evacuation effort. All of this has been noted. But the rabid dogs of journalism prefer to take their bites out of the response of the federal government, a.k.a. the president and his FEMA.

Following the lead of the Democrats in Washington, the media immediately focused their collective attention on the failures of FEMA and the perceived lackadaisical response to the storm by President Bush. Day by day we weregiven the play by play of how FEMAhad screwed up their relief efforts and how the president was really to blame because he had put one of his unqualified cronies at the head of the agency in the person of Michael Brown. Soon the cries of incompetencemorphed into claims of racial insensitivity to the plight of those in the mostly black city of New Orleans, and those claims turned into accusations of outright racism.

If only we had the “I feel your pain” brigade of Bill Clinton and his FEMA director, James Lee Witt, in place, we were told, then things would have been handled differently. You see Messrs. Clinton and Witt could more readily identify with the good people of New Orleans. They have Southern roots and as Mr. Clinton himself told ABC’s “Good Morning America” recently, he might have done things differently because, “I feel so close to the area.” During the disaster Mr. Witt appeared on the tube telling us how he could have done it better.

Besides, we were told, there was a track record of the Clinton-Witt FEMA and it proved that it was the best ever. One problem with that claim though, it’s not true.

If the mainstream media wanted tomake their claim of FEMA superiority under Clinton-Witt, it would have been fairly simple to go back to a hurricanethat struck during those years, and use it as a measuring stick for the Katrina response. In fact thankfully, it’s not too late to do that today.

Let’s look at Hurricane Floyd. It hit the coast on Sept. 16, 1999, and New Jersey, North Carolina and Florida were very hard hit. At the time it was the worst storm to hit the U.S. in a quarter century. Legend has it that Mr. Witt, under the guidance of Mr. Clinton, handled the storm and the floods that followed with great skill and success. I mean, did you hear any stories to the contrary during the Katrina coverage?

But as NewsMax.com reported on Sept. 7, 2005, there is plenty of evidence that the media could have presented to show that Katrina was not the first major hurricane that presented major response problems for FEMA.

Three weeks after Floyd had passed, Mr. Witt appeared as a guest on the now-defunct CNN show, “Both Sides Now” hosted by Jesse Jackson. Mr. Jackson said, “It seemed there was preparation for Hurricane Floyd, but then came Flood Floyd. Bridges are overwhelmed, levees are overwhelmed, whole towns under water… it’s an awesome scene of tragedy. So there’s a great misery index in North Carolina.”

Now keep in mind that this is nearly a month after the storm. Thecelebrated FEMA chief said, “We’re starting to move the camper trailers in. It’s been so wet it’s been difficult to get things in there, but now it’s going to be moving very quickly.”

It’s been very wet? Is that “Brownie” or the “Great Witt”?

An AP story quotes one North Carolina woman who broke down after suffering the failures of FEMA months after the storm: “I had heard FEMA was going to be downtown, so I got up early to get down there and get in line. I had been let down so many times I had just lost it … I was just standing there in the middle of the street crying, totally disoriented, practically hysterical.”

The Raleigh News & Observer had these observations on Oct. 3, 1999: “We passed hundreds of families sitting outside their now uninhabitable homes, with their water-soaked possessions spreadout on their lawns. Desperately picking through the mess for anything to salvage, most people, particularly the elderly, seemed to be in a state of shock.” And there was evidence that it was those who were located off the beaten path that were thelast to see any sign of FEMA. “The larger towns had a visible FEMA and Red Cross presence. But in smaller towns it looked like utter confusion and despair. No one in charge, no one knowing what to do or where to go for help.”

I guess it’s too much to expect for the mainstream media to go back in history as far as 1999. They are more comfortable treating Katrina as a stand-alone event with no historical perspective on the jobdone by the federal government. It suits their agenda just fine.

Just understand that they have an agenda.

Steve Malzberg, a former talk-show host at WABC Radio, is a radio and TV commentator. He also is a pundit for NewsMax.com