Historical Context

Introduction

A little over five years ago, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated the gulf coast. When the flood waters left, they revealed lives lost, a city so damaged it still has not recovered, as well as a myriad of problems in the media and government. My interest is how much of that and what part of that the media has brought back for the fifth anniversary- narratives stitched together from the fragments created by journalists who experienced the devastation first hand. To reconstruct this context, we need to look at how journalism interacted with the disaster, how it continues to interact, and how that interaction contributes to collective memory.

Journalism and Katrina

These specials airing five years later consist of old coverage spliced together in a new way with central narrative imposed over them. Before an analysis of the news special, it’s important to examine the original reports and deconstruct the many layers surrounding them.  In the beginning, the media approached this as they would any other hurricane. However, the local meteorologist, John M. Gumm, was among the first to put aside his traditional role and speak to his viewers in a new way, as if they were friends. He urged them to take the evacuations seriously (Izard and Perkins). This was the beginning of journalists stepping outside, or even beyond their traditional roles, which made the media not just one of Katrina’s storyteller, but part of the story. A few national reporters, such as NBC’s Bryan Williams, arrived before the storm to set up camp. Others had to find ways to bring their equipment into a city that had been shut down.

In the first few hours after the storm, the President echoed claims that New Orleans had “dodged a bullet.” (Izard and Perkins 34) The storm hit hard, but for a few hours it looks like New Orleans system of levees designed to keep the low elevation city from being subsumed from the bodies of water surrounding it. However, it soon became apparent that everyone’s worst fears were coming true, and the city streets began to fill with water. Before New Orleans was a central location from which to tell the story of the hurricane, now it was the news story. Coverage of the miles of gulf coast damaged, were pushed to the background while new horrors brought on by the flooding and terrible conditions in New Orleans played out on the television screen.

Local journalists, already strategically in place around the city they knew so well, gathered coverage of the flooding that differed from the national news media. Many of the national news crews stayed in the historical centers or at the Superdome or Convention Center. Izard and Perkins discuss how local media and national media have different roles, as they serve different audiences (23-24), but these geographical limits also limit which stories the national news can tell. While local news sources were burdened with getting information out to the people, the networks were talking to a national audience. Their coverage was focused on facts and victims, with compassion being a central theme in many of their broadcasts. They introduced the bigger picture, adding political and environmental implications to the story of the sheer number of people stranded without basic amenities(Izard and Perkins 25-27).  

Goodbye Objectivity

Objectivity has long been celebrated as one of the central tenets of journalism. However, in a situation as extreme as Katrina, rules change. One reason is that many of the journalists, especially the locals were personally affected. SOMEBODY claims, “The personal impact Katrina had on journalists directly changed how they view the news and norms of their profession.” (Izard and Perkins) Without a personal tie to the city, other journalists were still overwhelmed with emotion. As Williams said, “we were witnesses” (Izard and Perkins). Food, water, and shelter were more available for journalists, but they still suffered (Expand, some slept on cars, abandoned porches… Was this different for national/local media?).

Whatever the cause, the outcome of Katrina is journalist questioning “has objectivity outlived its usefulness?” (Izard and Perkins) The local paper, the Times-Picayune, during and since Katrina has unabashedly become an advocate for New Orleans, and won Pulitzer because of that coverage. Journalist cried on national broadcasts. Anderson Cooper, Tim Russert, and Ted Koppel demand answers from evasive politicians. Chris Wallace asks the Homeland Security, who claims that they did not know about the conditions at the convention center, how could they know when the national news had been relating those facts for days?

In some ways this is celebrated as the media returning to its state purpose of uncovering truth. Journalism had returned to purpose: asking the tough questions to uncover the truth. This can be dangerous. Cooper cautions. Izard and Perkins lay out “lessons learned” but have these lessons really been learned? Has Katrina actually changed journalism in any way we can see five years later? This is important because we see these broadcasts replayed in the memorials are reminded of those times, we can’t help but compare them to what we see today.

Disaster Pornography

The media was there first, sharing pictures of Katrina’s wake before national aid entered the city, but that coverage has been criticized on what it conveyed and the methods it used to do so. Communication scholars, Benjamin R. Bates and Rukhsana Ahmed, criticize the coverage by displaying how it embodies what they call “disaster pornography”. They argue that the first 72 hours on FOX news and the CNN network displayed visual images of death and disaster with no context and no value outside of entertainment, framing the survivors of the disaster as objects-victims, refugees, and looters. When the audience is allowed to separate themselves by watching this weak other, Bates and Ahmed state that watching television coverage of Katrina becomes entertainment. One must buy the movie ticket (donate money), but after the disaster the audience is not compelled to continue their interest.

Media, Race and Class

This concept of other is complicated when we add in the discussions about race and class, and continues criticism of the media’s involvement in Katrina. Looking back, scholars claim “the raw unfiltered, concentrated media coverage made it undeniably obvious to viewers that the disaster’s most immediate and negative impact fell disproportionately on these vulnerable population segments… (primarily Blacks, children, the infirm, the poor)” (Potter 4). Michelle Miles and Duke Austin state “the mass media played a major role in propagating certain rumors and mitigating others, consequently presenting the concerns of the white community as both real and normative and once again neglecting the concerns of the black communities” (Potter 46)

Invoking Disaster: News Coverage since Katrina

Katrina has now become the point of reference we turn to when natural disaster strikes. When an earthquake devastates Haiti, news sources compare donations to Katrina and 9/11. Other sources take a political lens and describe the disaster “Obama’s Katrina.” Most recently, the BP oil spill returns the media’s focus on petroleum and environmental issues. However, many of the lives still trying to rebuild after Katrina, especially those in the seafood industry, were directly affected by this new environmental disaster. The stories that are being told don’t omit and even play up a connection to Katrina (Jervis).

Media and Remembering

In a disaster, the media takes on many roles, disseminating information at all times, revealing areas where help needed, and later, analyzing and remembering, but it’s main mission could be seen as providing stability. These roles come second nature to journalist, when a majority of them witness trauma more than once during their careers. Yet many journalist labeled Katrina as the disaster they have never seen before and never expected. The sheer magnitude of the destruction and consequential issues shook up journalists, it stands to reason that in some way it would shake up traditional new memorial norms as well.

News Memorials of Katrina

Susan Robison tackles the task of an extensive content analysis of the first anniversary media coverage. Framing her question with a description of how the media and government have been accused of abandoning New Orleans one year after the disaster, she questions how then they approach remembering? Within the national news coverage, using Gameson and Lasch’s signature matrix, she finds some common descriptions that she says “suggest a template for the collective memory that will endure about Hurricane Katrina and the devastation of New Orleans” (Robinson). The most common metaphor is ‘Hulluva Job, Brownie’, referring to the politicians congratulating themselves, although survivors were stranded and without aid. Also, New Orleans was painted as a scapegoat of the villain, the government. This theme of blame is continued to such an extent that the roots of the hurricane seem to be the incompetence of New Orleans and the government. It’s main themes were politics, loss, and capitalism and the main agenda set was that the federal government should be stepping in to further aid the rebuilding (Robinson).

From this basic description of the context, we go on from here to explore the rhetoric of news specials aired by the major news sources in 2010. Our context leaves us with questions: Do the journalists still portray themselves as part of the story? Has sufficient context and information been added to these memorials to discourage labels of "disaster porn"? How are the issues of class and race acknowledged? How do these memorials compare to those for other disasters, and those for Katrina from previous years- is the collective memory shifting?

Works Cited

CHANGE I&P to edited volume and credit chapter authors.

Izard, Ralph, and Jay Perkins, eds. Covering Disaster: Lessons from Media Coverage of Katrina and Rita. New Bruswick: Transaction, 2010. Print.

Jervis, Rick. "First Katrina, Now This: Lives Forever in Recovery." USA Today 18 June 2010 2010, sec. News: 01a. Print.

Potter, Hillary, ed. Racing the Storm: Racial Implications and Lessons Learned from Hurricane Katrina. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2007. Print.

Robinson, Sue. "`We Were All There': Remembering America in the Anniversary Coverage of Hurricane Katrina." Memory Studies 2.2 (2009): 235-53. Print.