Rather Biased's Parting Shot

[Yonivore]

Dan Rather finds that there is an increasing "climate of fear running through newsrooms" these days. I certainly hope that this is so -- the former monopolists in the newsrooms should fear that, unless they report with less bias, their audience will continue to decline in the face of compe ion. And, at a minimum, they should fear that if they present blockbluster reports based on fabricated evidence, as Rather did, they will lose their jobs.

However, the MSM's coverage of Hurricane Katrina suggests that there is no such fear factor. Indeed, Rather himself deems this coverage represents "one of television news' finest moments."

I wonder which part of the coverage Rather liked best. Perhaps it was the appearance on NBC's Meet the Press of Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, La. He recounted for a national audience the story of a woman stranded in a nursing home who kept calling her son for help, day after day, until she finally died on September 2, ostensibly because the federal reaction to Hurricane Katrina was too slow. Only the story was false. The patients at St. Rita nursing home died on August 29, the same day the hurricane struck New Orleans. The purportedly slow federal response had nothing to do with it. How did this Ratheresque error occur? Perhaps NBC, like CNN, wanted Broussard to "get angry."

Or maybe Rather was happiest with the bogus death count estimate of 10,000 that the MSM put forth. I'm partial to this one because it springs, in part, from a central fallacy of the leftism of the MSM and others -- that people have no capacity to act without the government's help. The in ial impact of the storm could not have caused anything like 10,000 deaths, nor was this the impression the MSM wanted to convey. The estimate assumed instead that, with government not functioning, a substantial number of residents who did not evacuate the city lacked the intiative to move to higher ground (or to the Superdome, as they were told to) as the water level rose, and the decency to help the incapacitated do so. In effect the estimate assumed that a large number of residents lacked the sense, as the old saying goes, "to come in out of the rain." Only a liberal (think Bill Clinton, for example) would have such a low regard for the ability of humans to engage in minimal self-help. And, given the demographics of New Orleans, it would also help for the liberal to be a racist.

Rather says the Katrina coverage was great because reporters were "willing to speak truth to power." Putting aside the hoariness of the cliche, can Rather possibly be so clueless that he doesn't know that much of what the MSM reported turned out not to be true at all? Or is it that he just doesn't care? It's hard to avoid the conclusion that for Rather, "speaking truth to power" means "smearing Republicans with whatever means come to hand." In other words, the MSM coverage of Hurricane Katrina was fake, but accurate.

[jochhejaam]

What a shame that reporting events factually or with a fair and balanced ideological bent is no longer a primary objective. With some, reporting with truth and integrety has become obsolete and has given way to slanting a story for the sake of political expediency. That's the mindset of the far left, to gain a political advantage at any cost. It's pathetic to see that type of journalism day in and day out.

The good news is that the majority of americans, regardless of political affliliation, want the truth.
They take it upon themselves to search and destroy fallacious reports and stories that are foisted off as truth (myth busters if you will) so many of the lies and distortions that are purposefully reported as truth are exposed and end up being counter productive to those that are reporting with a callous disregard for moral principle.

[boutons]

"smearing Republicans with whatever means come to hand."

It SUCKS to have your smeared back in your face, does it?

dubya's claim that nobody imagined the water would come over the levees was a lie.

And now this, where the "unimaginable that happened" didn't even happen:

washingtonpost.com

Experts Say Faulty Levees Caused Much of Flooding

By Michael Grunwald and Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, September 21, 2005; A01

NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 20 -- Louisiana's top hurricane experts have rejected the official explanations for the floodwall collapses that inundated much of New Orleans, concluding that Hurricane Katrina's storm surges were much smaller than authorities have suggested and that the city's flood- protection system should have kept most of the city dry.

The Army Corps of Engineers has said that Katrina was just too massive for a system that was not intended to protect the city from a storm greater than a Category 3 hurricane, and that the floodwall failures near Lake Pontchartrain were caused by extraordinary surges that overtopped the walls.

But with the help of complex computer models and stark visual evidence, scientists and engineers at Louisiana State University's Hurricane Center have concluded that Katrina's surges did not come close to overtopping those barriers. That would make faulty design, inadequate construction or some combination of the two the likely cause of the breaching of the floodwalls along the 17th Street and London Avenue canals -- and the flooding of most of New Orleans.

In the weeks since Katrina drowned this low-lying city, there has been an intense focus on the chaotic government response to the flood. But Ivor van Heerden, the Hurricane Center's deputy director, said the real scandal of Katrina is the "catastrophic structural failure" of barriers that should have handled the hurricane with relative ease.

"We are absolutely convinced that those floodwalls were never overtopped," said van Heerden, who also runs LSU's Center for the Study of Public Health Impacts of Hurricanes.

In an interview Tuesday, Corps spokesman Paul Johnston said the agency still believes that storm surges overtopped the concrete floodwalls near the lake, then undermined the earthen levees on which they were perched, setting the stage for the breaches that emptied the lake into the city.

Johnston said the Corps intends to launch an investigation to make sure it is correct about that scenario. But he emphasized that Katrina was a Category 4 hurricane when it smashed into the Gulf Coast, whereas Congress authorized the Corps to protect New Orleans against a storm only up to Category 3. "The event exceeded the design," Johnston said.

The center's researchers agree that Katrina's initial surge from the southeast overwhelmed floodwalls along the New Orleans Industrial Canal, flooding the city's Lower Ninth Ward as well as St. Bernard Parish. They believe that a little-used Army Corps navigation canal known as the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet helped amplify that surge, although they acknowledge that this surge was larger than the system was designed to control.

But the researchers have strong evidence that Katrina's subsequent surge from the north was several feet shy of the height that would have been necessary to overtop the 17th Street and London Avenue floodwalls. It was the failures of those floodwalls that emptied the lake into the rest of the city, filling most of New Orleans like a soup bowl.

On a tour Tuesday, researchers showed numerous indications that Katrina's surge was not as tall as the lakefront's protections. They showed a "debris line" that indicates the top height of Katrina's waves was at least four feet below the crest of Lake Pontchartrain's levees. They also pointed out how the breached floodwalls near the lake showed no signs of overtopping -- no splattering of mud, no drip lines and no erosion at their bases. They contended that the pattern of destruction behind the breaches was consistent with a localized "pressure burst," rather than widespread overtopping.

The center has also completed a computerized "hindcast" of Katrina, which has confirmed the evidence before their eyes. Their model indicates that most of the surge around the lake and its nearby canals was less than 11 feet above sea level, and that none of it should have been greater than 13 feet. The Army Corps's flood-protection system for New Orleans was designed to handle surges of more than 14 feet above sea level.

"This should not have been a big deal for these floodwalls," said oceanographer G. Paul Kemp, a hurricane expert who runs LSU's Natural Systems Modeling Laboratory. "It should have been a modest challenge. There's no way this should have exceeded the capacity."

The center's researchers said it is too early to say whether the breaches were caused by poor design, faulty construction or some combination. But van Heerden said the floodwalls at issue -- massive concrete slabs mounted on steel sheet pilings -- looked more like the sound barriers found on major highways. He also suggested that the slabs should have been interlocked, and that the canals they were supposed to protect should have had floodgates to keep out water from the lake.

Former representative Bob Livingston (R-La.), who helped lead the charge for Corps projects in Louisiana when he chaired the House Appropriations Committee, noted that the earthen levees along Lake Pontchartrain had all held, while the concrete floodwalls had failed. He was especially concerned about the 17th Street barrier, saying it "shouldn't have broken."

"I don't know if it's bad construction or bad design, but whoever the contractor is has a problem," said Livingston, now a lobbyist on Capitol Hill.

Former senator J. Bennett Johnston (D-La.) said he remembers numerous briefings from Corps officials about the danger of a hurricane overtopping the New Orleans levees. But he said he never envisioned a scenario like this one. "This came as a surprise," he said.

The Corps has not identified the contractors who built the floodgates that failed; Paul Johnston said there will be a full investigation into the breaches.

Congress authorizes flood- control projects -- after receiving recommendations from the Corps -- and the Corps oversees their design and construction.

John M. Barry -- who criticized the Corps in "Rising Tide," a history of the Mississippi River flood of 1927 -- said that if Katrina did not exceed the design capacity of the New Orleans levees, the federal government may bear ultimate responsibility for this disaster.

"If this is true, then the loss of life and the devastation in much of New Orleans is no more a natural disaster than a surgeon killing a patient by failing to suture an artery would be a natural death," Barry said. "And that surgeon would be culpable."

==========================

And you red-state, dubya-sucking, lying, smearing assholes try to call the media a bunch of liars? Just more, unending lying and smearing from right. yawn.

shrub is ed
Repugs are ed
Iraq is ed
US govt is ed up by the Repugs (all govt is bad, so let's it up, starve the beast, enrich the rich, and let the next administration deal with the Repug after-abortion)

On the table now is $35B in cuts in programs for poor/low-income familes, supposedly to pay for Katrina, but, that's a lie, because in fact the spending cuts are to offset another $75B in tax cuts for the rich.

And the Repugs continue ing it up with an incompetent crony, a totally inexperienced kid from Ken Starr's staff, to run INS, which is as bad as appointing that -smearing, totally inexperienced Rove to run Katrina reconstruction.

[Dos]

Experts Say Faulty Levees Caused Much of Flooding

WOW is that breaking news!!!!!

[xrayzebra]

Experts Say Faulty Levees Caused Much of Flooding

WOW is that breaking news!!!!!

I'll just bet Haliburton had something to do with this. Don't you Dan and butons?

[boutons]

Always serious comments from the jerking knees of the right-wing dumn rabble in the peanut gallery.

The news is not that the Army Corps Engineers levees sucked, didn't meet ACE standards (11 ft high instead of 7 ft max), were NEVER tested, were built on the cheap (cheapo T-barriers instead of the more solid, more expensive I-barriers), but that the water didn't come over the levees.

[Hook Dem]

"And you red-state, dubya-sucking, lying, smearing assholes try to call the media a bunch of liars? Just more, unending lying and smearing from right. yawn.".....................
Another sewer post from an "educated" liberal.

[Dos]

I wonder where all these experts like boutons were before the hurricane. Are you checking the sea wall of galveston now? Please let us know what you find?

thanks,

[Spurminator]

This just in: Alcohol can empair judgment.

[xrayzebra]

Always serious comments from the jerking knees of the right-wing dumn rabble in the peanut gallery.

The news is not that the Army Corps Engineers levees sucked, didn't meet ACE standards (11 ft high instead of 7 ft max), were NEVER tested, were built on the cheap (cheapo T-barriers instead of the more solid, more expensive I-barriers), but that the water didn't come over the levees.

Is he talking to me? I thought it was a good comment and timely. But what would I know I voted for Bush and he has to put up with my vote for three more years.

[mookie2001]

"And you red-state, dubya-sucking, lying, smearing assholes try to call the media a bunch of liars? Just more, unending lying and smearing from right. yawn.".....................
Another sewer post from an "educated" liberal.

yeah dam elitist

[FromWayDowntown]

Yeah, what about all those lies the media reported about the deplorable conditions at the Convention Center and the Superdome, while FEMA and DHS claimed to have no knowledge of any such conditions. Reckless reporting like that isn't good for anyone and broadcasting those kinds of pleas for help doesn't serve any useful purpose.

I mean, what was the media thinking?!?!

They must believe that they can get away with just about anything!

[Marcus Bryant]

Personally Rather needs to suck it. I don't see what the problem is with taking a magnifying glass to those who tell us what they see through theirs. In a free society, yes, there is a role for a free press to scrutinize those who govern us and other powers that be. But I'd argue that for much of the same concerns that make a free press desirable, you'd also like to have the press itself subject to scrutiny.

Rather is not unlike any other public figure. He wants to know that his star is still burning brightly, that he is still a player and that his ass is kissed. The moment he tried to pass off as a nearly 40 year old do ent something that was created in Microsoft Word was the day my already thin amount of respect for him disappeared.

[Spurminator]

It's a difficult thing for a reporter/journalist to juggle his responsibilities to the public. They be neutral but also unafraid to ask tough questions.

If they are not neutral, their questions and insights lack credibility to half of the public.

If they are not tough, they come off as pawns or mouthpieces. Either way, you do the public a great disservice.

[Marcus Bryant]

Rather didn't so his due diligence on materials received from a highly partisan and questionable source in the midst of a presidential campaign. Clearly his motivation was something other than simply the truth. He wants to hide behind the journalistic shroud and throw stones at others for their zeal while going unpunished for his. him.

[Spurminator]

The problem in Rather's case wasn't even the checking of the source, IMO... It was the irrelevance of the story in the first place. It was a manufactured story even before the manufactured evidence.

I won't defend Rather's history. That said, some of his comments are legitimate.

[boutons]

Rather ed up bad, and he's gone, with a huge terminal stain on an otherwise credible, professional career.

dubya and his DHS/FEMA ed up bad, and he's still around, giving out Medals of Freedom to George Tenet for ing up WMD/"slam dunk" intelligence.

[Spurminator]

Stay on topic, dip . Jesus.

[Dos]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9342186/

Is the Orleans Levee Board doing its job?
Critics allege corruption, charge the board with wasteful spending

• New Orleans levee board negligent?
Sept. 14: An NBC News investigation reveals that the New Orleans levee board spent millions on pet projects that had nothing to do with protecting the city. Correspondent Lisa Myers has the story.

Lisa Myers
Senior investigative correspondent

The unveiling of the Mardi Gras Fountain was celebrated this year in typical New Orleans style. The cost of $2.4 million was paid by the Orleans Levee Board, the state agency whose main job is to protect the levees surrounding New Orleans — the same levees that failed after Katrina hit.

"They misspent the money," says Billy Nungesser, a former top Republican official who was briefly president of the Levee Board. "Any dollar they wasted was a dollar that could have went in the levees."
Story continues below ? advertisement

Nungesser says he lost his job because he targeted wasteful spending.

"A cesspool of politics, that’s all it was," says Nungesser. "[Its purpose was to] provide jobs for people."

In fact, NBC News has uncovered a pattern of what critics call questionable spending practices by the Levee Board — a board which, at one point, was accused by a state inspector general of "a long-standing and continuing disregard of the public interest."

Beyond the fountain, there's the $15 million spent on two overpasses that helped gamblers get to Bally's riverboat casino. Critics tried and failed to put some of that money into flood protection.

There was also $45,000 for private investigators to dig up dirt on radio host and board critic Robert Namer.

"They hired a private eye for nine months to find something to make me look wacko, to make me look crazy or bad." says Namer. "They couldn’t find anything."

Namer sued and the board then spent another $45,000 to settle.

Critics charge, for years, the board has paid more attention to marinas, gambling and business than to maintaining the levees. As an example: of 11 construction projects now on the board's Web site, only two are related to flood control.

"I assure you," says Levee Board President Jim Huey, "that you will find that all of our money was appropriately expended."

Huey says money for the levees comes from a different account than money for business activities and that part of the board’s job is providing recreational opportunities.

And despite the catastrophic flooding, Huey says, "As far as the overall flood protection system, it's intact, it's there today, it worked. In 239 miles of levees, 152 floodgates, and canals throughout this entire city, there was only two areas."

But those two critical areas were major canals and their collapse contributed to hundreds of deaths and widespread destruction.

Lisa Myers is NBC’s senior investigative correspondent