pet peeve: misrepresentations of the size of New Orleans

[onenote]

In reporting on Katrina and her aftermath, the media cannot seem to get a grasp of the fact that New Orleans (and Orleans Parish, which are essentially the same in terms of area) represents only a portion of the greater New Orleans metro area and that the Mayor only has jurisdiction over the city. For example, CNN is currently reporting that there are still 400,000 homes without power "in the city." That's a neat trick since the City's population is around 480,000 and there are just over 200,000 housing units "in the city."

onenote

[Art_from_Ark]

1. You can almost always count on American Pravda to get something wrong

[magellan]

2. Now we know why they keep giving BushCo a pass

If they're too lazy or incurious to educate themselves about the site of a major national catastrophe, forget about them digging for difficult facts. I discovered the information about the size of NOLA online last week...just because I wanted to know.

With our media, the old warning "Believe half of what you hear" is being generous.

[jjanpundt]

Thanks for straightening that out, because I've been confused

isn't Jefferson Parish also New Orleans? Are their residents being forced to leave too? It's been over 30 years since I visited New Orleans and even then I never quite grasped the idea of where one parish/county began or ended.

[onenote]

5. jeff parish is not new orleans

as I understand it, Orleans Parish and the City of New Orleans are co-terminous. The official census bureau data for Orleans Parish and the City of New Orleans list exactly the same population. As far as I know, only Orleans Parish (excluding a portion in the western part of the Parish) is the only area under a mandatory evacuation order, although I could be wrong about that.

onenote

[crispini]

3. oh, everyone gets that stuff wrong.

it is sooooooo common for every place in a major metropolitan area to get called by the name of the predominant city.

it annoys the crap out of me, frankly, as a resident of (75% Democratic) Dallas, which does NOT include the (Republican) suburbs of Irving, Plano, Richardson, Garland, Mesquite, Grand Prairie, Grapevine, Carrollton, The Colony, Allen, Farmers Branch, Rockwall, Duncanville, DeSoto, Lancaster, on and on and on.

But nobody's heard of those places, except maybe Irving, so it all gets called Dallas. It's annoying. NONE OF THOSE PLACES ARE DALLAS!

[bluedawg12]

4. NOLA 480,000 Greater NOLA 1.2 million

according to 2000 US census.

Numbers don't lie - people do.