The Disappointing Usefulness of Simple Stereotypes
Posted by Lance on 24 Oct 2007 at 3:12 pm | Tagged as: Louisiana Politics, Society, Notes on the war, Race, Lance's Page, Media, Domestic Politics
A reporter for the local paper of Jena, LA is pretty disgusted with the coverage of the events surrounding the trials involving the “Jena Six.” We have expressed confusion and frustration over the coverage here, here and here. As I have continued to read about the case his description of events seems more and more to fit the facts. Go ahead and read the whole thing, but we of course cannot be surprised.
We have seen in the cases of the Duke lacrosse players, Haditha, Blackwater and many more instances the desire of people to rush to judgment with the media’s full throated encouragement as long as it fit a narrative people wanted to see garbed. Whatever the truth of these four incidents, the willingness of the media to report rumors and unfounded conjecture as fact and reasoned supposition has been appalling, and unsurprising in who the villains and victims of their narrative turn out to be. If one had asked ahead of the coverage which party would be chosen as the bad guy/guys in each case, resorting to stereotypes of liberals would have been far more predictive than any kind of more nuanced or reasoned approach.
The coverage of Katrina was similarly awful, and unfair to pretty much everyone involved (including even the pathetic Michael Brown.) While a flawed effort, it is in many ways one of the most remarkable rescue operations ever undertaken, and one of the most successful:
MYTH: “The aftermath of Katrina will go down as one of the worst abandonments of Americans on American soil ever in U.S. history.”–Aaron Broussard, president, Jefferson Parish, La., Meet the Press, NBC, Sept. 4, 2005
REALITY: Bumbling by top disaster-management officials fueled a perception of general inaction, one that was compounded by impassioned news anchors. In fact, the response to Hurricane Katrina was by far the largest–and fastest-rescue effort in U.S. history, with nearly 100,000 emergency personnel arriving on the scene within three days of the storm’s landfall.
Dozens of National Guard and Coast Guard helicopters flew rescue operations that first day–some just 2 hours after Katrina hit the coast. Hoistless Army helicopters improvised rescues, carefully hovering on rooftops to pick up survivors. On the ground, “guardsmen had to chop their way through, moving trees and recreating roadways,” says Jack Harrison of the National Guard. By the end of the week, 50,000 National Guard troops in the Gulf Coast region had saved 17,000 people; 4000 Coast Guard personnel saved more than 33,000.
These units had help from local, state and national responders, including five helicopters from the Navy ship Bataan and choppers from the Air Force and police. The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries dispatched 250 agents in boats. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), state police and sheriffs’ departments launched rescue flotillas. By Wednesday morning, volunteers and national teams joined the effort, including eight units from California’s Swift Water Rescue. By Sept. 8, the waterborne operation had rescued 20,000.
While the press focused on FEMA’s shortcomings, this broad array of local, state and national responders pulled off an extraordinary success–especially given the huge area devastated by the storm. Computer simulations of a Katrina-strength hurricane had estimated a worst-case-scenario death toll of more than 60,000 people in Louisiana. The actual number was 1077 in that state.
Yet most of America would laugh at that characterization. Why? Because that wasn’t the way it was portrayed, even if all those facts were present in the coverage, the narrative around them was of a whole different character.
Finally, we should not be surprised that a media which cannot get even close to an accurate rendering of a story involving a few people in a small town in Louisiana has, on the whole, trouble grasping an infinitely more complex event such as Iraq, nor that simple stereotypes are a better predictor of the majority of coverage than any rational calculation of what is or is not significant.
Hat tip: Instapundit
Technorati Tags: racism, Jena Six, Katrina, Iraq, media, Louisiana, Duke lacrosse, Blackwater, Haditha
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