Don't Worry, We're Safe Now

Just one week ago the American media was praised for its response to the government’s inefficient handling of the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina. And now that Hurricane Rita has passed by without a major catastrophe, the media is patting government officials on their backs for their oh-so-wonderful job.

An article written by Spencer S. Hsu and Steve Hendrix of the Washington Post does just that. It is filled with positive remarks and details about all of the things that went right during the response to Rita. Though the reporters and the people they quote acknowledge that the storm was nothing in comparison to Hurricane Katrina, the casual reader would feel completely satisfied with the government’s planning and management of the situation by the end of the article.

Here are some of the key quotes from the Washington Post article:

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas said, "We learned a great deal from Katrina that was put in place in Texas.”

Louisiana Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said, “We are all working together as a team."

U.S. Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad W. Allen said, "Our efforts to keep a communications network up have paid off."

And finally, Robert B. Stephan, the assistant secretary of homeland security for infrastructure protection said, "The big difference is that we have been gearing up our entire system for a month now. There's no warm-up period -- the car is started and ready to go."

According to the article, the government had buses ready, plenty of troops on hand, and, of course, plenty of ice ready to be distributed.

And now, the diatribe.

Here is the problem with this article: It is all surface information and it is certainly slanted to put a positive light on the government. All of the quotes were taken from, well, Bush’s people: Homeland Security officials, Republican representatives, and military personnel. Hsu and Hendrix quoted only one Democrat, Governor Blanco of Louisiana, who certainly would appreciate a more positive display after her failures during Hurricane Katrina. All of the people quoted were biased. Where is the balance in this article? Where are the quotes from the people that were not happy with the response?

There were well-documented problems surrounding the evacuation that preceded the hurricane. People were stuck on highways for hours, running out of gas while the lanes on the opposite side of the highway were completely empty. Instead of addressing this major issue, Hsu and Hendrix allowed the officials to claim success on the basis of the “sometimes chaotic evacuation.”

So, I’m left with this question: What was the point of this article? Are we supposed to feel comfortable and secure because our government did such a great job?

I don’t think so. The evacuation made evident problems with our ability to get large numbers of people to safety in the face of a major catastrophe. What if this was a terrorist attack? Is it acceptable that 3 million people were stuck in a poorly managed evacuation for hours? What would happen if the government did not have weeks to prepare?

Why didn’t Hsu and Hendrix ask these questions? It would have provided a more balanced article.

Hsu and Hendrix missed an opportunity to analyze the ability of our government to handle a major attack on this country. Instead, the message was sent that we are okay and we are safe. This message is not only false, it is dangerous. Though we don’t need panic, the last thing we need in this country is a false sense of safety.

willemmarx @ September 26, 2005 - 7:09pm

Not so sure that your comment was all that balanced. The opening paragraph of the Washington Post article you quote from included the phrase:

racing to prove the government had learned from its disastrous missteps earlier this month on the Gulf Coast

.

"Disastrous missteps" as a premise for the article, given that it appeared in the lead, does not sound all that congratulatory.

From the same article:

And while yesterday's early assessments were positive -- with few reports of unanswered calls for help or broad communication breakdowns that crippled the response to Hurricane Katrina -- officials acknowledged that Hurricane Rita had not presented the ultimate test for which they had prepared.

If the aforementioned premise for the article isn't critical of the government, then I'm not sure what is. Does the piece have to be balanced over (1) the coverage of the Rita hurricane, or (2) in its attitude to the Bush administration?

It may fail in the latter if it only reports the views of one side of the political spectrum, but with its introduction taking as read that the US government had previously fallen short of expectation, its attitude to the Bush administration is quite balanced: it starts with an innate, almost latent criticism, and then moves to more positive aspects of how Rita was handled.

From the same article:

And while yesterday's early assessments were positive -- with few reports of unanswered calls for help or broad communication breakdowns that crippled the response to Hurricane Katrina -- officials acknowledged that Hurricane Rita had not presented the ultimate test for which they had prepared.

Again, the writers seem to give a reasonable amount of balance to the continuation of their opening premise. The reports that are to follow, they are warning the reader, in the form of "early assessments" are "positive", but that is only because Hurricane Rita was not all that much of a "test."

Or am I entirely off the mark here and missed the point of your piece? Why are Homeland Security officials and military personnel necessarily "Bush's people?" Could they not also be men and women who have chosen a particular career, and happen now to be serving a Republican administration, just as they might previously have served, or in the future might continue to serve, a Democrat president?

If you're trying to say that the American people should not get cocky about their government's handling of natural disasters, then that is your opinion and you're entitled to it. But if you're trying to say that these two writers were not balanced in the tone and content of their article, I believe that you yourself are misrepresenting the article upon which you have based such a view.

Joseph Michener @ September 26, 2005 - 8:21pm

I, too, noted that officials acknowledged that Hurricane Rita was not comparable to Hurricane Katrina, thus producing a much easier and better managed response from the government. However, this does not eliminate the fact that there were major problems (i.e. the EVACUATION) that were not addressed in this article. I am sorry to repeat myself, but the authors of this story claimed that the evacuation was "sometimes chaotic." I wonder if a person sitting in traffic near Houston for hours on end would agree with that description. Where in the article does it discuss any of the problems with the evacuation in detail? It is this point that led me to believe this article lacked balance.

That being said, I understand why you see my post as being unfair. I am not the best at getting my opinion across in a clear way, but I'm learning. Let me try and clarify some of my statements.

I should not have said, "Bush's people." Perhaps I should have said that the journalists simply quoted people with all positive things to say about the response of the government to HURRICANE RITA (not Katrina). I am quite sure that Hsu and Hendrix could have found people who did not think the response was as great as all of the people in this article did. I apologize if that was not clear, it just seemed pretty obvious to me.

And finally, you quoted the opening of the article and stated that it did not sound very "congratulatory." However, "disastrous missteps" refers to the response of the government to Hurricane Katrina. It is not supposed to sound "congratulatory." It is supposed to set up the rest of the article that depicts how the government corrected the situation in its response to Hurricane Rita, thus deserving congratulations now. The entire point of the article is based on the idea that the government screwed up last month, but then corrected the problems and did a good job preparing for Hurricane Rita. Which, once again, I do not entirely agree with. Yes, the government did a better job, but there were still problems that should have been addressed in the article in detail. Addressing the problems in the response to Hurricane Rita would have provided the balance that I thought was missing.

I think you make a good argument, willemmarx, but I still believe this article has a major hole and is incomplete. Perhaps that is the word that I should have used instead of unbalanced; incomplete. But, for me, when an article is incomplete, it tends to lack balance. And when crucial information is not addressed, the wrong message is sent to readers.

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