Hurricane Katrina Has Changed American Journalism Forever: No Longer Are Reporters on the Ground Just Innocent Bystanders Describing Tragedy -- Now They Get Involved.
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Philip M. Stone September 5, 2005

A fundamental of American journalism training is that the journalist provides just the facts, no opinions, and the people, armed with that information, are left to make their own opinions and decisions. But Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath of old people and babies dying in the streets from dehydration, bodies floating in the flood, looting, and armed gangs shooting at rescue helicopters became all too much for many reporters on the scene.

No longer were they innocent bystanders to the tragedy before them. Where, they asked, was the help, the food, and the drink these people in New Orleans and across the Gulf Coast desperately needed in those first days? And then there were all the politicians thanking and congratulating all their colleagues and government officials for the great response, yet reporters on the ground were showing there was no help at hand. How could reporters reach the convention center and the Superdome, but life-saving supplies could not?

It took just one day of seeing people in such desperate need for the reporter’s rulebook to go out the window, and deservedly so. Some examples from CNN: Anchor Miles O’Brien began an interview with Louisiana US Senator Mary Landrieu by asking the latest news for saving people now in dire need and she, instead, went into a 30-second speech about how great government bodies were in providing help. Miles, incredulous to what he was hearing, just lost it. He started in on the US Senator asking her if she was aware of the true tragedy existing on the ground where he was as they were speaking. She paid little attention to his pleas, she kept wanting to thank government officials, he kept wanting to get her to talk about fixing current conditions, and finally he gave up and the interview ended.

About an hour later it was Anderson Cooper’s turn to interview the same senator. This time she had learned somewhat from the earlier interview and she began by saying she knew how bad things were on the ground, her family had lost homes, but then she started on her “thank the politicians and government speech” and at that point Anderson also lost it. He kept trying to get her to talk about the situation on the ground but the senator was still in “Thank You” mode and that was the end of her second CNN interview.

You don’t often see a US Senator spoken to in such a way, but then these were not normal times.

Television repeatedly showed the video of an old woman who had died where she apparently sat outside the convention center. Her body, in her wheelchair that had been pushed against the wall, was covered with a blanket, a note in her hands – apparently a Will she wrote just before the end. Usually television stations in the US warn viewers when there is something “upsetting” to be shown. But there were no more such warnings.

It was obvious the networks and cable news operations wanted Americans to see, hear, feel and somehow even try and smell the true horror of people dying of dehydration or starvation or lack of medical care, and, yes, living with the indignity of a lack of toilet facilities, right there on their own doorstep. These were not people in some foreign poor land, but their own people in their own homeland. The shame was obvious. The pictures transmitted around the world gave a view of America no one had ever thought possible.

Who can ever forget the interview with a man in Mississippi who told a local reporter how he held his wife’s hand as the torrent rushed at them, and as the current became so great they were separated. As his wife was being swept away she yelled at him to look after the children and grandchildren. The reporter asked if he had found his wife, and his haunting, “She’s gone, she’s gone” with the total look of loss all over his face will forever stay in memory. The reporter could not hold back her tears.

The New York Times had a large page 1 picture of a body floating in a flooded street. Usually bodies don’t make it to the front page of American newspapers. Too upsetting. Many similar video scenes soon became the norm.

One television reporter in his story about a military field hospital set up at the New Orleans Airport start talking about how the supply of  body bags were beginning to get depleted. He caught himself and apologized for bringing up such a taboo subject.  The anchor immediately stopped him and said they wanted all the body bag information, too.

Attitudes on how a story should be reported had obviously changed. There was open disgust at the lack of all the necessary help needed in the first days after the flooding, and the reporters on the ground, and apparently those back in the studios, had seen so much human tragedy with no one seemingly coming to the rescue that enough quickly became enough.

And when CNN sends Nic Robertson, its London-based senior international correspondent who is more at home in Afghanistan and Iraq and other killing fields to report from Canal Street in New Orleans it speaks volumes to how the network saw the story developing. As does having Jeff Koinange, CNNs West Africa bureau chief based in Lagos, reporting on “refugees” in downtown New Orleans. He was asked by Miles O’Brien how that felt and he explained that, yes, he has covered many refugee stories before, but seldom had he seen such squalor or desperation, and to think that he was reporting this story from America was more than he could have ever imagined.

And when Christiane Armanpour, CNN’s London-based senior foreign correspondent who usually reports all the big stories outside the US but was now reporting from Baton Rouge, Louisiana was asked about what she had seen she let fly how terribly and with total disbelief the lack of food and water in those first three days had played to audiences overseas. What she, and those watching from outside the US could not understand was that for overseas calamities the US military is always very quickly on the ground providing the necessary help for local officials, and yet in New Orleans very little seemingly was happening in those first four days.

It brings up an interesting question of why hardened overseas correspondents were drafted into this story. Assuming CNN was not running out of correspondents on its own home turf, could it be that it takes a hardened war correspondent to best report this type of despair and terror?

One of the first indications that might be the case came from Jeanne Meserve a 12-year domestic CNN veteran.  She reported on the hurricane itself, originally camped at a New Orleans radio station but then she and the crew were asked to leave and so they relocated to a parking garage. She did a video piece about that, and there was no doubt from her smiles she thought this was all pretty good fun. And then the storm hit and it wasn’t so much fun any more. And then came the next day when she could go out and see the true damage, talking to people who had lost everything, talking to people injured without help, listening to cries for help.

She telephoned CNN with a late night audio feed. Now her voice was very subdued, she was obviously tired and very close to tears, she had seen hell that day and as she talked you just knew it was all coming from the heart – reporters aren’t supposed to do that!  “We are sometimes thrill seekers,” she told viewers, “but when you stand in the dark, and you hear people yelling for help and no one can get to them, it’s a totally different experience,” and then the tears were obvious. 

Online bloggers quickly picked up on her report and credited Meserve with bringing humanity to the story. And the public approved.

For this story is unlike any other Americans have experienced. The damage is probably worse than the 1906 San Francisco earthquake – that was “just” one city, this damage covers an area about the size of the UK. In 1906 there was no television to show the aftermath, but In 2005 the American people saw for themselves, and heard from the correspondents on the ground, just how terrible conditions were, and how the life-and-death lack of help in those first 72 hours afterwards were making a very bad situation so much worse.

Americans are used to seeing human tragedy from nature’s wrath from all over the world. They had seen the terror of the Asian Tsunami and reacted quickly with help and generosity. They are used to seeing hurricane damage in Florida and tornado damage throughout the Midwest. They expected to see the “usual” spectacular pictures of the Coast Guard performing heroic work plucking people off the top of their roofs with those rescue numbers now approaching 10,000.

But never before had America seen pictures and reports of so many of its own desperate people begging for rescue, pleading for food and water, existing in such squalor, with the survival-of-the-fittest mentality leaving some of the less-than-fit dying in the streets of New Orleans for the world to behold. Never before had they heard of one-third of a city’s police department tossing in their badges, armed gangs taking over the streets at night, fires breaking out and no way possible to even try and put them out.

And it was obvious those in most need were those least able to help themselves – the babies, the very old, the ill, and the poor. And that brought in itself another shame. Quickly the terms changed from evacuees to refugees. But they were not “refugees”, these were Americans in their own country, not some foreign land.

There was no way that any reporter covering such a tragedy could not become involved. NBC anchor Brian Williams summed up at week’s end what had basically happened to the media on the ground, no matter which organization they worked for.  “We have been running on emotion all week,” he told his viewers.

American journalism had turned a new page. And it’s a good thing that it won’t turn back.

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Ed Bradley and The Boat People – September 5, 2005

In 1978 CBS news correspondent Ed Bradley was shooting footage for the documentary "The Boat People." As a so-called "boat" came closer to view Bradley, a tough journalist by any standards, breeched that un-written rule and waded waist deep to help pull the boat to shore. Traditional journalists howled. The documentary aired in January 1979 and won duPont, Emmy and Overseas Press Club Awards.

Co-writer with Bradley of the documentary was Howard Stringer, now Chairman of Sony. The documentary's producer, Andy Lack, was hired by Sir Howard to run Sony Music. Bradley starts this fall his 24th season with CBS 60 Minutes. (mh)