Covering Katrina

It took bloated bodies floating in the streets of New Orleans to shake the mainstream media out of their comfortable slumber, but in the wake of Katrina, the nation's journalists finally remembered their calling: to afflict the powerful and comfort the afflicted. Even Fox News tried it in spurts.

Not that the disaster coverage was flawless. Bush-friendly spin dies hard, and who knows whether the get-tough policy will stick. But for a few days, the media all but doubled as the nation's disaster relief, helping save lives with a response that seemed to be days ahead of the federal government's. Following are some of the high and low points of the coverage.

The Say It Loud Award "You simply get chills every time you see these poor individuals.... So many of these people, almost all of them that we see, are so poor, and they are so black." --CNN's Wolf Blitzer, September 1st. Give the guy credit. Covering the disaster for the first forty-eight hours, uptight talking heads pretended like race had nothing to do with who was left behind. Blitzer helped put the hot topic on the table; he just fumbled through the phrasing.

The Good Fox News Award Shepard Smith. Normally a rabid Murdoch attack dog, Smith camped out on an I-10 exit ramp in the Big Easy with a small nation of refugees and refused to mouth Fox's preferred GOP talking points of blaming the locals. He even shouted down Fox's prime-time right-winger Sean Hannity, who sat comfortably in his air-conditioned New York studio.

The Bad Fox News Award The increasingly unhinged Bill O'Reilly, who piled on the New Orleans poor. "If you don't get educated, if you don't develop a skill and force yourself to work hard, you'll most likely be poor," he said. "And sooner or later, you'll be standing on a symbolic rooftop waiting for help." He later described the stranded victims as "drug-addicted" thugs.

Best Televised Sound Bite "Go fuck yourself, Mr. Cheney." --a passer-by in Gulfport, Mississippi, on September 8th, as Veep Dick Cheney spoke with reporters during a belated damage assessment/photo-op.

The Money Quote "The truth is people aren't frustrated here. People are dying here. Walking through the rubble, it feels like Sri Lanka, Sarajevo, somewhere else, not here, not home, not America." --CNN's Anderson Cooper, September 2nd. Cooper morphed from a goofy, disaster-chasing, "watch me stand in a storm while I talk on TV" reporter into a frontline truth teller.

The Now They Tell Us Award Time and Newsweek. In the wake of the Katrina debacle they detailed how Bush operates in a "bubble" and an "echo chamber," and that he's an "oddly self-congratulatory," "cold," "snappish," "petulant" chief executive who prefers yes men at the ready. Too bad Americans weren't clued into that in 2003, before Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq.

The Best of the New Breed Brian Williams. Katrina unfolded as the first major American news event in thirty years that didn't come complete with the calming voices of Brokaw, Jennings and Rather. But NBC's anchor emerged as the nation's new grown-up, slipping into the Superdome early, transmitting reports via his cell phone.

Backbone Award CNN, for going to court to challenge Bush's attempt to ban images of the body-recovery efforts. It's a shame CNN still isn't allowed to shoot flag-draped coffins returning from Iraq.

Biggest Suckers The Washington Post. Relying on an anonymous Bush aide who was in deep damage-control mode, the paper repeated the White House accusation that, five days after Katrina hit, the state's Democratic governor still hadn't declared a state of emergency. Wrong -- she declared an SOS three days before Katrina slammed ashore.

Easiest Cheap Shot "Don't you guys watch television? Our reporters have been reporting about it for more than just today." --ABC's Ted Koppel, September 1st, berating FEMA's then-chief Michael Brown for acknowledging that rescuers had just learned of refugees trapped at the New Orleans Convention Center. In truth, ABC didn't begin reporting the story until that afternoon, at 2:30 p.m.

Cushiest Interview ABC's Diane Sawyer and her September 1st sit-down with Bush, when she let pass without comment Bush's hollow excuse, "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees." Nobody except a generation of scientists and the Army Corps of Engineers.

Best Rant "Most chillingly of all, this is the Law and Order and Terror government. It promised protection -- or at least amelioration -- against all threats: conventional, radiological or biological. It has just proved that it cannot save its citizens from a biological weapon called standing water." --MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, September 5th. The former ESPN anchor wielded his wicked writing touch, torching the administration with a biting five-minute takedown that bounced around the Net as an instant classic.