Katrina Videos
If you get your news from more than one source (as most people with access to the Internet and TiVo likely do) the significance of the Associated Press's scoop on videos and transcripts of several Bush Administration teleconferences immediately before and after Hurricane Katrina might have become a bit confusing.
While The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times featured front page stories like this:
Washington Post:Video Shows Bush Being Warned on Katrina: Officials Detailed a Dire Threat to New OrleansNew York Times readers wouldn't have stumbled upon the story until A16, indicating it was somewhat less important. Their angle was also quite different: "Unaware as Levees Fell, Officials Expressed Relief," read the headline. The lede refers to a transcript from the day Katrina hit, noting that it "shows that hours after Hurricane Katrina made landfall, federal and state officials did not know that the levees in New Orleans were failing and were cautiously congratulating one another on the government response." That seems a far cry from the lead in the LA Times and Post stories, which read much like that of the Associated Press:
Los Angeles TimesBush Is Warned on Katrina in Video:Footage of a briefing full of dire predictions renews criticism of the government's response.
In dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms, federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees, put lives at risk in New Orleans' Superdome and overwhelm rescuers, according to confidential video footage.While Slate's Eric Umansky wonders about the Times' news judgement:Bush didn't speak during the final briefing before Katrina struck on Aug. 29, but he assured soon-to-be-battered state officials: ''We are fully prepared.''
"… the conversation the Times cites happened at noon Monday, just a few hours after Katrina landed. New Orleans officials didn't even seem to know about the levees until later that afternoon. Given the time, how significant is it really that top officials were still in the dark?Stephen Spuriell, praises the Times for noting that piece of information and criticizes the AP for "exploiting the new Katrina videos to try to make President Bush look like a liar:"Further, some articles included a tidbit that left me wondering why the story was this important at all. From the New York Times:When Bush said, [in a statement on "Good Morning America" several days after the storm] "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees," he didn't mean that nobody ever anticipated that they would break. He meant that immediately after the hurricane passed, the people briefing him told him the levees had not been breached … It wasn't until late Monday night that the White House learned of the flooding … This all fits with what Bush has said.Of course, if you were watching the "Evening News" last night, you would have learned from Bob Orr that the White House actually had a different explanation for the president's statement:RUSS MITCHELL: So, Bob, given what we've just seen, why even days after this meeting did the president insist the White House did not anticipate any problems at all with these levees?And while most of the criticism stemming from the videos indicates that the president was ignorant of warnings about the storm, and Michael Brown appears to consider himself vindicated, on last night's NBC "Nightly News," anchor Campbell Brown noted in the introduction to Lisa Myers' segment on the story on the videos that: "In some cases, the public record supports Brown and shows he was not the only one warning the president. But in others, the record suggests the president was fully engaged.BOB ORR: The White House explains that all of those pre-warnings were based on a Category 5 storm, a very, very powerful storm. When Katrina hit it was a Category 3. And what the White House is saying is that no one predicted that with a Cat 3 storm that the levees would fail.
"The transcript offers new details but does not significantly alter the picture as it has been put together by investigators as to how officials prepared for the hurricane and responded in the first critical days."The L.A. Times offers an explanation of the story's newsworthiness, sort of:
"While the information in the video has been public for months, and was the subject of hearings and reports by Congress and the White House, the footage is giving new life to charges that the administration was detached and unresponsive in the face of one of the nation's worst natural disasters."Perhaps I've only succeeded here in further confusing the matter (in that case, sorry.) These are all questions of news judgement, which is, as always, debatable. Everyone could conceivably read the transcripts of these events that are available and compare them to statements that have been made previously, but I doubt most people have the time. So determining what is worthy of our attention is a judgment that most people don't have the time or the resources to make – so to a large degree, we cede that trust to the press. So, the more sources we get that news from, the better…right? It would seem that way, but with the amount of information that is now so accessible to us, it's that much more difficult to make sense of the importance of stories like this one.