Katrina-Coverage, American-style

[paineinthearse]

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1126750771613&p=1074657885918

Anshel Pfeffer, THE JERUSALEM POST Sep. 15, 2005

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Personally, I'm not very fond of the American media. On the one hand, there are the frivolous, superficial television news shows, with their low standards of newsworthiness and their Hollywood-driven agenda, which forces interviewees to compress complex messages into five-second sound bites. American newspapers, on the other hand, take themselves too seriously: grey, unwieldy and laboriously written, they are uncomfortable to read, both physically and mentally.

The only American news outlet that has endeared itself to me are the unparalleled news magazines, but the events of the last few weeks have somewhat changed my mind. Having been in New Orleans covering the Katrina disaster myself and having seen first-hand the way the American media has responded to the challenge, I began to see the country's newspapers in a different light.

First of all, New Orleans's local broadsheet, The Times-Picayune, had both the resources and the foresight to investigate the city's preparedness for a major flood three years ago. Their findings accurately predicted disaster. (The Times-Picayune has heroically continued to appear; in the first days of the flood, only in an online edition, but within a few days, in a slimmer print edition as well.)

The major US papers, almost three weeks after the disaster broke, are still giving it extensive coverage, especially when it comes to following the stories of the tens of thousands of families that have lost their homes and are currently dispersed across the country. I couldn't help but compare such follow-up coverage with the short attention span of the Israeli press, which promptly forgot about the families that were evacuated from Gush Katif last month, many of whom have yet to find permanent housing solutions.

more....