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Politics : Bush Administration's Media Manipulation--MediaGate? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: longnshort who wrote (4963)	9/13/2005 11:49:53 AM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 9838

Europeans getting tainted hurricane news Chicago Sun-times ^ \| 09/13/05 \| John O'Sullivan suntimes.com Europeans getting tainted hurricane news September 13, 2005 BY JOHN O'SULLIVAN LONDON -- Two narratives of Hurricane Katrina dominated the news media of Europe over the last weeks. One was the story of the hurricane tearing its way through the Gulf shores of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, especially New Orleans. This was a powerful and gripping account of how small towns had been half-swept away, people stranded in their homes as the waters rose, those seeking refuge attacked by criminals and looters, buses left abandoned to the flood when transport was golden, and the authorities overwhelmed by countless calamities. In Europe these human stories stimulated sympathy for Katrina's victims. Governments there have now sent considerable aid. But the sympathy was oddly skewed. It was directed less toward American victims than toward victims of America. People stranded on their roofs and evacuees crowded into the New Orleans Superdome were seen not as unlucky victims of a natural disaster but as social casualties of an uncaring Washington and of a vicious social system. That perception arose from the second media narrative of Katrina. This was not, as it might have reasonably been, a careful assessment of why the various civil authorities -- city, state and federal -- had failed both to prevent Katrina and to rescue people from its consequences in reasonable time. We are likely to get such an assessment in the next few months. The blame looks likely to be shared by a great many people, beginning with Mother Nature herself. It is very unlikely, however, that most of the blame (or even a large chunk of it) will fall on President Bush. His actual failures were going along with congressional Democrats' demands for a Homeland Security Department (which now looks too bureaucratically confusing to be efficient) and not showing enough urgency in his post-Karina speeches. These are essentially second-order failures. Bush has to correct them, or he will continue to fall in the polls. But they caused nothing. Yet the second European narrative was a simple morality play in which all the blame for Katrina fell on Bush, either for his actual policies or for what he allegedly symbolizes -- i.e., an uncaring social philosophy that neglects the poor and minorities. Almost every aspect of the hurricane and its aftermath were attributed to these two aspects of Bush at such an early stage that, even if the media allegations, hints and inferences had been accidentally true, the evidence for them would simply not have been available. Hurricane Katrina herself, it was suggested on one broadcast, was the product of his refusal to sign onto the Kyoto accords on carbon emissions. If Katrina truly were the result of carbon emissions, the blame would be shared by those European nations that signed onto Kyoto but failed to observe its limits. But it isn't -- there is no evidence that such hurricanes are increasing in line with the rise in carbon emissions. The failure of the levees was said to be result of the Bush administration's budget cuts. Then it was inconveniently discovered that those levees that failed had in fact been recently repaired and strengthened. As for federal stinginess to Louisiana and New Orleans, Douglas Hanson of the "American Thinker" blog pointed out that since 1999, Louisiana has received more than $143 million in direct grants for security, communications and other disaster response initiatives -- an amount that doesn't include direct grants to the city of New Orleans. In fiscal year '03 alone, the city received about $6.3 million for first responders and $6.4 million for port security. These errors went on and on. One BBC reporter declared, "Meanwhile, the poorest were similarly abandoned, as the horrifying images and stories from the Superdome and Convention Center prove." Yet even as government failed, churches, charities and the private sector stepped into the gap and sent volunteers and supplies to the city. This was the selfish America of Bush. Was then the root cause "small government"? Both the BBC and the Guardian speculated that the flooding of New Orleans was the cost of this Bush philosophy. But domestic discretionary spending has risen faster under Bush than under any president since LBJ. And "small government" hardly seems a correct description of a FEMA that told some volunteer Indiana firefighters that their first task in Louisiana would be to attend classes on sexual harassment (apparently standard procedure in FEMA). As for the constant repetition that Bush and his America were neglecting the poor and minorities, Frank Johnson, a skeptical-minded columnist in the London Daily Telegraph, pointed out that by checking evacuation figures against census figures, one discovered that the great majority of blacks -- about 70 percent -- reached safety before the storm and that four of the five local government districts worst affected by the storm had white majorities ranging from 67 percent to 88 percent. How did Johnson know? Not from Europe's television news programs or from its newpapers. As he pointed out, they share -- indeed, they live off -- the liberal biases of the establishment U.S. press. No, he had been following the crisis through new media: "The only way to follow anything that happens in the United States today is not to rely on what drifts back into the British media from the overwhelmingly liberal American establishment newspapers and national television bulletins: almost the sole source for, say, the BBC. Instead we must search America's blogs and Web sites." Of course, they have their biases, too. Contrary to the claims of establishment journalists, however, the biases of blogs are held in check -- or corrected when not held in check -- by other blogs written from different political standpoints. For the moment, the rest of Europe takes its news from the BBC and other such conventional sources. But that will gradually cease if establishment news media continue to report their own social prejudices under the guise of news. In the last two weeks, Europeans would have been better informed if they had never seen a news program or read a newspaper. We are lucky that they sent help anyway.

To: longnshort who wrote (4963)	9/13/2005 12:26:21 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9838

Bush: 'I take responsibility' for U.S. failures after Katrina Bush to address nation Thursday about Katrina Tuesday, September 13, 2005; Posted: 12:20 p.m. EDT (16:20 GMT) WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush said Tuesday he takes responsibility for the federal government's failures in responding to Hurricane Katrina. "Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government and to the extent the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility," Bush said during a joint news conference with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. Earlier in the day, the White House said the president will address the nation Thursday night about the Hurricane Katrina disaster. The 9 p.m. ET address is the latest administration reaction to Katrina, which roared ashore on August 29, flooding most of New Orleans and forcing evacuations across much of the Gulf Coast. "The president will talk to the American people about the recovery and the way forward on the longer-term rebuilding," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters, according to Reuters. Bush is expected to make his address from storm-wracked Louisiana, where the president toured damaged New Orleans neighborhoods on Monday. News of Bush's televised address comes a day after the resignation of Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Mike Brown, who quit after questions were raised about his qualifications and for what critics call a bungled response to Katrina's destruction. (Full story) Bush chose David Paulison, director of FEMA's preparedness division, as interim director. Paulison said Tuesday he planned to focus on getting people out of shelters "and into some type of either semi-permanent or permanent housing." Speaking at a news conference, he also pledged to help victims by working with state and local officials. "This has to be a partnership, because ultimately the communities are entitled to take responsibility and empower themselves," Paulison said. Paulison, who is also administrator for the U.S. Fire Administration, was a former fire chief in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Brown's resignation came three days after Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff recalled him to Washington and replaced him as point man for Katrina relief efforts. Since then, Vice Adm. Thad Allen, the Coast Guard's chief of staff, has been leading FEMA's mission along the Gulf Coast. Chertoff said he expects to make other appointments to FEMA in coming days, "including a permanent deputy director to augment the resources available to assist with FEMA's vital mission." Asked Monday about the resignation as he toured the devastated city of Gulfport, Mississippi, Bush said he had not talked with Chertoff and could not comment. Brown's fall came quickly. On September 2, Bush told the 50-year-old lawyer, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." (Watch Brown's interview with CNN on September 2 -- 2:11) Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, applauded the latest development. "I think it is clearly in the country's interest," Kennedy said. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said he was not surprised. "Things didn't go as well as it should have," said the Tennessee Republican. But Frist added, "Now, I am very pleased where we are."