NYT Public Editor says Times coverage of NO poverty, levees failed readers

[DeepModem Mom]

The Public Editor
Covering New Orleans: The Decade Before the Storm
By BYRON CALAME
Published: September 11, 2005

THE early coverage of the devastation of New Orleans revealed a depth of poverty and a troubled levee system that caught many by surprise. As a national newspaper with high aspirations, The New York Times assumes a responsibility to alert its readers to significant problems as they emerge in major cities such as New Orleans.

Poverty so pervasive that it hampered evacuation would seem to have been worthy of The Times's attention before it emerged as a pivotal challenge two weeks ago. And the inadequacies of the levee system deserved to be brought to the attention of readers more clearly long before the storm hit.

Yet a look back over the past 10 years of Times coverage of New Orleans in its news columns raises serious questions about how well the paper helped readers recognize and understand these two major problems that have compounded the devastation and tragedy of the storm....

***

Given the dimensions of poverty in New Orleans and the city's dependence on a levee system, The Times's news coverage of these problems over the past decade falls far short of what its readers have a right to expect of a national newspaper....

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/11/opinion/11publiceditor.html?hp

[Erika]

1. Yes, the urban poor were shown a blind eye

They all knew they were there, but no one showcased them. In many ways our press is as bad as the W administration for failure to show the caste system now existing in America.

[Name removed]

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[Lindacooks]

2. The decade before the storm? More like the quarter century.

When Reagan took over and started dismantling the federal government.

[Nite Owl]

3. How far they have fallen

Instead of spending all the time they could on Whitewater and every damned little thing they could against Bill Clinton for eight years they could put that investigative power into something that would actually have made a difference. They apologized weakly about their coverage of the Iraq war too but only after the damage was done. And then there was their refusal to run to the story about the box on *'s back during the debates because they were afraid it could have thrown the election even though they had the proof. Apologies don't mean much unless sincere change follows. Like all the media it's not what they do report so much as what they refuse to report.

[Guaranteed]

5. So it sounds like they're going to start covering the ridiculously

high numbers of impoverished areas in our nation in order to help in solving the problem!!

Right?

[Halliburton]

6. must've took tips from Judy's journalism handbook

[hedda_foil]

7. Fuck you, NYT! If you can't be bothered to learn the basics ...

The least the could do is assign an intern to read DU. We had substantive threads going on all of these issues by Saturday BEFORE the hurricane hit. WE knew that there would be hundreds of thousands of people too poor to get out on their own. WE knew that there were huge problems with the levee system. We did YOUR research, as usual.

THE LEAST YOU COULD DO IS READ IT!