Aziz Poonawalla Calls BS...
Dean
Regarding my earlier "What the f___?" piece (see below), Aziz challenged me in email, saying he's pretty sure almost all the most inflated and exaggerated claims about horrors in New Orleans seems to have come primarily from pundits, secondarily from politicians, and from almost no actual news sources unless you count Shepherd Smith and Geraldo Rivera.
As I think about it, he may have a point. Although the punditocracy is an undeniable part of the news business, can we honestly blame reporters? Now, I'm not so sure.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Aziz Poonawalla Calls BS...
- What the F___ Huh? What the F___ing F__k???
- Superdome Myths
Look, the problem is that we have conflated "media" with "journalism". In teh past, during the Edward R Murrow days, journalism was a separate entity. Today it is part of what is primarily an entertainment industry. The confluence of ratings and advertising dollars makes the marriage between journalism and media an opaque one. But that doesnt mean that true journlaism is extinct.
Frankly, the best journalism out there is from PBS and NPR, because they derive the vast majority of their money from outside the typical commercial impulses. Private donations, corporate, and government all fund these public broadcvasting services, making them extrordinarily immune to the whims of any single one of those groups (which is why I am adamantly and even militantly opposed to cutting govt funding for them, minor though the fraction of their funding that comes from govt is).
But there are real journos working in the media and most of the people in the field - the ones who actually do the legwork, travel, call, investiate, file FOIA requests, etc - are as committed to their profession as I am to mine or you arer to yours. They are human, after all, and professional pride exists in all aspeccts of human endeavour (even politics - see Barack Obama for an example).
Pundits are purely an entertainment function. I DONT listen to them. Not at all. I do listen to talk radio when NPR gets dull, but thats again entertainment (the best talk radio host in eth universe: Chris Baker). As such they are all about the "gotcha" question, the "factoid", the "human interest" baloney.
Have you heard any of NPRs reporting? check out npr.org and listen to the stories filed from NOLA after Katrina. They are masterpieces. Likewie, their coverage of the Israeli Palestinian conflict is superlative - and you know it is, because they are labeled outrageously biased by the partisans on both sides. You KNOW youre approaching truth when BOTH sets of ideolouges on a given issue are pissed off.
Its essential we search for, and reward, true journalism. I have intended to pledge money to NPR for the past few years and now that I have graduated, intend to make it an annual thing. If you decry the state of our media, then reward good behavior and encourage the independent and professional expression of journalism so that it may continue. It really is out there.
Unfortunately, the reports as they were reported were modified, so the online versions no longer seem to exist, but I recall seeing a report on nola.com with a National Guard unit with a real name reporting a 7 year old girl with her throat slashed, rapes, and the like.
Here is a copy of one of the original reports of the 7 year old girl. There were many others on more reputable sites at the time. However, for the most part the 'error' has been erased from the face of the earth. There has been no 'oops we screwed up' but rather what seems to be a concerted effort to erase the facts.
here’s a story on Classic Values reporting the same finding though – that the news sources seem to be covering up their error instead of admitting their mistake.
Ah and and here is the original story from NOLA.com.
Is this another case of a reporter passing second hand facts as if he were there doing the interview?
Brian Thevenot should be blackballed from the field.
But what do you think are the chances he will be held accountable?
Yes. They annoy the crap out of me even when I agree with them.
There is no such thing as non-biased reporting. I try to figure out what's really going on by reading various reports from different sources. Then, I look at the discrepencies and go from there. I usually have an idea of who I can trust and who I can't.
If the NY Times disagrees with the Wash Post, I usually go with the Wash Post. If the Wash Post disagrees with the Wash Times, I will look at what they're talking about. If it's something I've seen either one has been "mistaken" about before, I go with the other.
The New Orleans boondoggle had the added attraction that everybody was getting it wrong. Everybody. I was a little sceptical about some of it, but when you see a police spokesman talking about shootings in the Superdome, what can you do but believe him?
I do try to make sure that I don't believe something just because I want to believe it. That's when I try to check extra hard.
One problem is journalists are biased, lazy, ignorant and searching for a Pulitzer so their current story is THE BIGGEST THING IN THE UNIVERSE!!!!!
Another problem is that opinion has been getting more and more into what's supposed to be straight news.
I barely read newspapers for news anymore. I used to spend over an hour a day reading just the NY Times. Now, I probably spend less than an hour reading 4 or 5 newspapers and quite a bit of that time is spent on reading the sports sections of the NY papers. It's just not time well spent. I also don't get my news from TV. I get it from blogs and Drudge mostly. Even though I could skip Drudge anymore and just go straight to breitbart and cut out the middleman.
It might be a neat trick to try and differentiate from Geraldo and an AP report...but the AP and Geraldo both got it wrong (and I, unlike 99.99% of humanity, actually like Geraldo's reporting for the most part). It was more sensational for TV reports - because, well, they had film...but the reports were wrong. The MSM failed...
But, then again, this isn't exactly a news flash, is it? We all know that television news is inherently flawed - it should be banned, in my view, because of its inability to actually tell the truth, even if the reporter is determined to present the truth. Meanwhile, the newspapers and magazines are badly flawed because the people who work in the industry are disconnected from the reality of normal people. How many newsies are former cops, firemen, soldiers, doctors, housewives, insurance salesmen, etc.? They don't live like we do, and so don't understand what we do...add to this a knee-jerk bias in favor of disaster and opposed, in the by and by, to anything to the right of Joe Lieberman, and you've got the horrific media we've got.
What to do about it? Beats all hell out of me - I guess we just have to put up with it. The last five years have proved to me that the American people are fully capable at arriving at the correct decision even with flawed newsmedia.
Perhaps Aziz could actually trace these reports and cite some actual evidence. While it's nice to know he's "pretty sure" that "almost all" of the exaggerated horrors came from pundits and politicians, he seems to have precious little to back that up.
Now, I can say with certainty that I saw several of the on-the-ground reporters repeating that there were "reports" of the horrors suggested above in the Superdome and Convention Center.
pundits and politicians may have amplified these original reports, but the pundits, especially, don't write much from original reporting, which means they had to get it from someone.
The problem is, the media takes what some idiot says and broadcasts sensational stories/claims without questioning them or at least making it clear the source may just be some idiot making things up. That's the irresponsible part.
And I think what happened between reality and the public perception and the media is much more complicated than just being able to point fingers at one thing and say "that's the problem."
What happened as far as the aftermath of a disaster, and the information that got out, is a normal historical phenomenon. The officials who were there, and the people of NOLA, and even some of the people of the press, were experiencing a horrendous crisis. And there are contributing factors to that that I'm sure most psychologists don't completely understand.
What I notice now is how upset people are about not knowing what the truth is about what was reported in terms of body count and heinous crimes. That kind of makes me think, why do you think the media feeds you that sensational stuff up front? Because that's what the public wants.
That's not what I'm upset about. I'm upset about the inhumane treatment of the people of the Gulf Coast, and the poor performance of every level of government that contributed to that.
And I also agree that if the Superdome and convention center had been populated by primarily white people, the public would never have bought into the concept of those people behaving like "out of control animals."