| Hurricane Katrina |
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| 2005 Atlantic hurricane season |
| General |
| Impact |
| Relief |
| Analysis |
| External links |
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Many representatives of the news media reporting on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina became directly involved in the unfolding events, instead of simply reporting. Due to the loss of most means of communication, such as land-based and cellular telephone systems, field reporters in many cases became conduits for information between victims and authorities.
Several reporters for various news agencies located groups of stranded victims, and reported their location via satellite uplink. Authorities, who monitored the network news broadcasts, would then attempt to coordinate rescue efforts based on the news reports. This was best illustrated when Shepard Smith and Geraldo Rivera of Fox News, among others, reported thousands of people stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. Rivera tearfully pleaded for authorities to either send help or let the people leave. Geraldo Rivera went so far as to compare the convention center to Willowbrook State School. [1]
Many journalists also contributed to the spread of false rumors of lawlessness among the victims, which many have been interpreted as an instance of yellow journalism. Many news organizations carried the unsubstantiated accounts that murder and rape were widespread, and in some cases later repeated the claims as fact, without attribution. However, only one actual report of a raping occurred during the uproar. [2] A few of the reports of rape and violence were based on statements made by New Orleans city officials, including the Chief of Police. Many officials later claimed these rumors often impeded the relief and rescue efforts. [3]
For some, the hurricane was a career-defining event. For example, Vanity Fair qualified Brian Williams' (of NBC) work regarding Katrina as “Murrow-worthy” and reported that during the hurricane he became “a nation’s anchor.” The New York Times characterised William's reporting of the hurricane as “a defining moment.”[20] Later, questions were raised about this reporting by the Times-Picayune of New Orleans. [4]
Some issues of racial bias in media coverage began to surface as Caucasian flood victims were portrayed in one Agence France-Presse photo as "finding" supplies, while a black person was described in an Associated Press photo as "looting" supplies. The photographers later clarified the two stories, one claiming he witnessed the black person looting a flooded store, while the other photographer described the white people as finding the food floating in floodwaters. [5] The image was widely reused on the internet in various modified forms, and was known as "Lootie". This was also criticized as an example of pervasive racism. [6]
Media reporting also included coverage of political and religious leaders who suggested that the hurricane which killed 1,836 people was sent as a divine retribution for the sins of New Orleans, or of the South, or for the United States as a whole. [7] [8] [9]
The news media, both traditional and Internet, also played a role in helping families locate missing loved ones. Many family members, unable to contact local authorities in the affected areas, discovered the fate of a loved one via an online photo or television video clip. In one instance, a family in Clearwater, Florida discovered their mother was still alive in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi after seeing a photo of her on TampaBayStart.com, a regional news site.
The storm also brought a dramatic rise in the role of Internet sites—especially blogging and community journalism. One example was the effort of NOLA.com, the web affiliate of New Orleans' Times-Picayune , which was awarded the Breaking News Pulitzer Prize, [10] and shared the Public Service Pulitzer with the Biloxi-based Sun Herald . [11] The newspaper's coverage was carried for days only on NOLA's blogs, as the newspaper lost its presses and evacuated its building as water rose around it on August 30. The site became an international focal point for news by local media, and also became a vital link for rescue operations and later for reuniting scattered residents, as it accepted and posted thousands of individual pleas for rescue on its blogs and forums. NOLA was monitored constantly by an array of rescue teams—from individuals to the Coast Guard—which used information in rescue efforts. Much of this information was relayed from trapped victims via the SMS functions of their cell phones, to friends and relatives outside the area, who then relayed the information back to NOLA.com. The aggregation of community journalism, user photos and the use of the internet site as a collaborative response to the storm attracted international attention, and was called a watershed moment in journalism. [12] In the wake of these online-only efforts, the Pulitzer Committee for the first time opened all its categories to online entries. [13]
In September 2022, the Associated Press issued a style guide change to Katrina stating that reporters when writing about the storm in New Orleans should note that “…levee failures played a major role in the devastation in New Orleans. In some stories, that can be as simple as including a phrase about Hurricane Katrina’s catastrophic levee failures and flooding….” [14]
As the U.S. military and rescue services regained control over the city, there were restrictions on the activity of the media.
On September 9, Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honoré, the military leader of the relief effort, announced that reporters would have "zero access" to efforts to recover bodies in New Orleans. [15] Journalist Brian Williams also reported that in the process of blocking journalists, police even went so far as to threaten reporters with a weapon. [16] However, at refugee centers such as the Houston Astrodome, press activity was extensive. Immediately following the government decision, CNN filed a lawsuit and obtained a temporary restraining order against the federal ban. The next day, spokesperson Col. Christian E. deGraff announced that the government would no longer attempt to bar media access to the victim recovery efforts. [15]
On September 7, KATU journalist Brian Barker reported that his team was threatened with automatic weapons by U.S. Marshals until they were identified by Brig. Gen. Doug Pritt, commander of the 41st Brigade Combat Team of Oregon, the unit they were embedded with. [17] Subsequently, his team taped the letters "TV" on the side of their vehicles in accordance with standard practice in war zones.
Toronto Star staff photojournalist Lucas Oleniuk was thrown to the ground by police in the French Quarter after taking several photographs, including pictures of a firefight between looters and police and the subsequent alleged beating of a looter by the police. The police attempted to take all of his equipment, however he convinced them to just take his camera's memory cards. In a separate incident, freelance photojournalist Marko Georgiev took photos of a body presumably shot and killed by the police. Police then pointed their weapons at the car and ordered the journalists out. They proceeded to search the car and confiscated one of Georgiev's memory cards. [18]
Six Flags New Orleans is an abandoned theme park located near the intersection of Interstate 10 and Interstate 510 in New Orleans. It first opened as Jazzland in 2000, and a leasing agreement was established with Six Flags in 2002 following the previous operator's bankruptcy proceedings. Six Flags invested $20 million in upgrades, and the park reopened as Six Flags New Orleans in 2003. Following the substantial damage caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the park remained closed to the public in order to make efforts to repair and reopen it. However, in 2009, the city of New Orleans ended its 75-year lease with Six Flags, and the park consequently became permanently closed due to the extreme damage that was too severe to be repaired.
The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate is an American newspaper published in New Orleans, Louisiana. Ancestral publications of other names date back to January 25, 1837. The current publication is the result of the 2019 acquisition of The Times-Picayune by the New Orleans edition of The Advocate in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Hurricane Katrina was a devastating and deadly Category 5 Atlantic hurricane that caused 1,836 fatalities and damages estimated between $97.4 billion to $145.5 billion in late August 2005, particularly in the city of New Orleans and its surrounding area. At the time, it was the costliest tropical cyclone on record, later tied by Hurricane Harvey in 2017. Katrina was the twelfth tropical cyclone, the fifth hurricane, and the third major hurricane of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season. It was also the fourth-most intense Atlantic hurricane to make landfall in the contiguous United States, gauged by barometric pressure.
As the center of Hurricane Katrina passed southeast of New Orleans on August 29, 2005, winds downtown were in the Category 1 range with frequent intense gusts. The storm surge caused approximately 23 breaches in the drainage canal and navigational canal levees and flood walls. As mandated in the Flood Control Act of 1965, responsibility for the design and construction of the city’s levees belongs to the United States Army Corps of Engineers and responsibility for their maintenance belongs to the Orleans Levee Board. The failures of levees and flood walls during Katrina are considered by experts to be the worst engineering disaster in the history of the United States. By August 31, 2005, 80% of New Orleans was flooded, with some parts under 15 feet (4.6 m) of water. The famous French Quarter and Garden District escaped flooding because those areas are above sea level. The major breaches included the 17th Street Canal levee, the Industrial Canal levee, and the London Avenue Canal flood wall. These breaches caused the majority of the flooding, according to a June 2007 report by the American Society of Civil Engineers. The flood disaster halted oil production and refining which increased oil prices worldwide.
Criticism of the government response to Hurricane Katrina was a major political dispute in the United States in 2005 that consisted primarily of condemnations of mismanagement and lack of preparation in the relief effort in response to Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Specifically, there was a delayed response to the flooding of New Orleans, Louisiana.
Hurricane Katrina had many social effects, due the significant loss and disruption of lives it caused. The number of fatalities, direct and indirect, related to Katrina is 1,833 and over 400,000 people were left homeless. The hurricane left hundreds of thousands of people without access to their homes or jobs, it separated people from relatives, and caused both physical and mental distress on those who suffered through the storm and its aftermath, such as Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
This article contains a historical timeline of the events of Hurricane Katrina on August 23–30, 2005 and its aftermath.
Susan Roesgen is an American television reporter. She has worked in radio and television broadcasting for more than two decades, including prime time news anchor positions at several TV stations. She has worked as a general assignment correspondent for CNN from 2005 to 2009, and now works for New Orleans TV station WGNO, the local ABC television affiliate.
Ronald Edward Virgets was an American writer, commentator, and journalist. A native of New Orleans, Louisiana, he lived there for most of his life.
Oakwood Center is a major shopping mall in Terrytown, Louisiana, on the West Bank of the Mississippi River in the New Orleans metropolitan area. It was originally named "Oakwood Mall", and some signage and local usage continue to call it that. It is geographically in Terrytown, but the mailing address is adjacent Gretna, Louisiana. The anchor stores are Dick's Sporting Goods, Old Navy, Shoe Dept. Encore, JCPenney, and Dillard's. There is 1 vacant anchor store that was once Sears.
Walter James Amoss III is former editor of The Times-Picayune. Under his leadership and that of the publisher, Ashton Phelps Jr., the paper won two Pulitzer Prizes in 1997 for public service and editorial cartooning, and in 2006 won two more Pulitzer Prizes for its coverage of Hurricane Katrina.
The New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) has primary responsibility for law enforcement in New Orleans, Louisiana. The department's jurisdiction covers all of Orleans Parish, while the city is divided into eight police districts.
Chris Rose is a New York Times Best-Selling New Orleans, Louisiana, writer and journalist. For years best known for light-hearted writing in the Times-Picayune, he gained greater attention for his chronicles of the effect of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans since 2005.
The Louisiana Superdome was used as a "shelter of last resort" for those in New Orleans unable to evacuate from the city when Hurricane Katrina struck on August 29, 2005.
Renee Peck is an American writer, best known for her weekly column in The Times-Picayune titled "This Mold House." Peck spent three-plus decades working as a feature editor and reporter for The New Orleans Times-Picayune, covering everything from food to TV to home and garden.
Helena Nancy Moreno is a Mexican-American realtor, equestrienne, former journalist, and politician serving as the president of the New Orleans City Council and First Division Councilmember-at-Large.
Ted M. Jackson is an American photojournalist, writer and public speaker who has spent over three decades exploring the human condition while covering news, sports and features for the Times-Picayune in New Orleans, Louisiana. He contributes to the newspaper’s extensive gallery of photographs of the Greater New Orleans Area.
Carol Guzy is an American news photographer. Guzy worked as a staff photographer for the Miami Herald from 1980 to 1988 and The Washington Post from 1988 to 2014. As of April 2022, Guzy is a contract photographer for ZUMA Press.
On the morning of September 4, 2005, six days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, members of the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD), ostensibly responding to a call from an officer under fire, shot and killed two civilians at the Danziger Bridge: 17-year-old James Brissette and 40-year-old Ronald Madison. Four other civilians were wounded. All the victims were African-American. None were armed or had committed any crime. Madison, a mentally disabled man, was shot in the back. The shootings caused public anger and further eroded the community's trust in the NOPD and the federal response to Hurricane Katrina overall.
Trymaine D. Lee is an American journalist. He shared a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news coverage of Hurricane Katrina as part of a team at The Times-Picayune of New Orleans. From 2006 to 2010, Lee wrote for The New York Times and from early 2011 to November 2012 he was a senior reporter at The Huffington Post. Since then Lee has been a national reporter for MSNBC, where he writes for the network's digital arm, and hosts the podcast Into America.
it's hard for the Majority group to see racism or subordination because everything seems okay to them
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