Recently, I heard on a news report that "Hurricane Katrina is the greatest natural disaster in US history".

I find fault with that statement. The 1918 influenza epidemic of the Northeast, the five state Tornado that went across the upper mid-west...I believe in the 1930's, the dust storms of the 1930's, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the Chicago fire and there are many more that define the term disaster.

It was predicted that 10,000 people died in New Orleans. The body count has only made it to 426, to date.

On TV, I have seen residents of New Orleans mowing their lawns. I have seen lines of traffic trying to re-enter New Orleans to return to homes.

I have seen flooded out areas, trash accumulation, damaged homes and damaged commercial buildings. But they appear no worse in NO than any other televised areas of destruction from earthquakes, tornados, tropical storms or even Nor'Easters.

Do you think there has been bias in the reporting of Hurricane Katrina damage?

If you think there has been bias, who caused it? The media? The inexperience of the individuals in political office? Or from those who continue to want to blame the government for every incident that comes along?

If you think there has not been any bias... what makes the communities struck by Hurricane Katrina any different than any other community that has fallen victim to a natural disaster?

Do you think there has been bias in the reporting of Hurricane Katrina damage?

I think there has been a lot of misreporting. Fact-checking in situations like this is non-existent, for obvious reasons. There have been various reports of unconfirmed shootings, dead children in refrigerators, and even cannibalism.

The media has (unfortunately) a stake in "sexing up" the story (to borrow a British term). In additional to mundane sensationalism, there is fierce competition amongst the various media sources to "one-up" each other, creating an even more out of whack scenario.

Add to that the fact that actual, legitimate sources (such as Mayor Nagin and others) have made some terrible assumptions and misstatements and you have the recipe for a ton of misinformation being passed on to the public.

If initial media reports were to be believed, the death toll would be 20 times where it currently is. New Orleans would be uninhabitable for months (the French Quarter is actually re-opening tomorrow)

If you think there has been bias, who caused it? The media? The inexperience of the individuals in political office? Or from those who continue to want to blame the government for every incident that comes along?

It isn't bias, it is simply the nature of the beast, exacerbated by the current climate of reporting.

If you think there has not been any bias... what makes the communities struck by Hurricane Katrina any different than any other community that has fallen victim to a natural disaster?

Only the scope of the disaster.

The French Quarter, which thanks to it's higher elevation was largely unflooded, will open a week from Monday.

the more heavily populated areas on town were hit far worse. Hundreds of homes will have to come down, the people won't be back this year.

The damage was not exaggerated in the least. Exagerration implies intent. Thankfully deaths were below what was expected, the Hurricane still caused the emptying of large US city for weeks and killed thousands of people. It put hundreds of thousands out of work.

It may not be the worst natural disaster in US history, the body-count isn't over, but it's certainly in the running.

Do you think there has been bias in the reporting of Hurricane Katrina damage?

If you gave me a clear example of actual biased reporting than I might be able to respond. But in your example of the 10,000 expected dead from what I gather the media was only reporting what they are being told by officials. I don’t see how that’s biased.

Your pre-question text is like the media, focusing on New Orleans, so there might be some bias there. The brunt of the storm and the area with the highest actual hurricane damage is in Mississippi.

If you think there has not been any bias... what makes the communities struck by Hurricane Katrina any different than any other community that has fallen victim to a natural disaster?

Let’s look at your fist statement Key word being Natural disaster, I’m not sure if the influenza epidemic is considered a natural disaster, and certainly not the Chicago fire since it was ignited by a person.

I don’t know a lot about the San Fran earthquake other than the city nearly burned to the ground. Since this was a while back my guess is it still didn’t displace the number of people as Katrina and it certainly didn’t have the economic impact that is following.

I don’t recall in my life time seeing such wide spread destruction. The parts of Mississippi that have been shown on the news remind me of the pictures in Japan after the bombs were dropped. Block after block and miles of buildings just completely leveled.

But I still fail to see how calling this the greatest natural disaster is biased reporting.

Do you think there has been bias in the reporting of Hurricane Katrina damage?

I agree with Fife and Drum here. As Turnea indicated, exaggeration (or bias for that matter) indicates that there was an intent to mislead. I don't believe there was any in this case. The media reported the information that was given to them, and the enormity of the destruction, from what I've seen on television, is astounding.

If you think there has not been any bias... what makes the communities struck by Hurricane Katrina any different than any other community that has fallen victim to a natural disaster?

The range of the destruction and New Orleans is a very famous city. This is certainly the most costly hurricane in terms of dollars, and probably the most powerful to hit our nation. If we are going by lives lost, it doesn't come close to the Galveston hurricane of 1900, which was the deadliest, killing from 8,000 to 12,000 people. For that I think we should be thankful.

I don't find the two positions I see being advocated here mutually exclusive.





Given what seems to have actually happened, I don't really think the media has sensationalized this as much as they usually do. Basically, it was sensational all by itself...no additional jazzing up was necessary. However, anyone who doubts that sensationalizing isn't SOP for media outlets is woefully naive, IMHO. So, while the term 'greatest natural disaster in US history' does so far seem to be appropriate, don't doubt that the media will do whatever it can to heighten such feelings whenever possible. I will say, though, that so far I have been pretty impressed with the lack of such so far. To me, the press has functioned so far as I think it should...reporting on what has happened or is happening with a minimum of bias or agenda.



I think this should be viewed relatively. Galveston was almost completely wiped out in this disaster, and was a little larger than Houston at the time. It was relatively a much larger city then....maybe similar in relative size to other large cities as NOLA is now. So, when comparing the two, consider the impact if something similar had happened in NOLA, with essentially 80-90% of the original population killed. That would be a death toll in the hundreds of thousands, although the geographic scope of the event was certainly much smaller. It does show, though, why ever since then, evacuation has been an established course of action when large hurricanes are forecast.

Do you think there has been bias in the reporting of Hurricane Katrina damage?

Not really sure what you mean by "bias" specifically with regard to this but much of the reporting was jacked up and inaccurate. It scares me to ponder what people out there now think about New Orleans based on what the media reported...and what they decided to not report on. As usual, rather than "report" accurate facts, they created a vision for the sensationalism of the entire situation.