PressEthic

The predominant features of the media hype surrounding Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans are the excessive finger-pointing and constant blame-games. Angry broadcast journalists, faced with the ugly ground realities of New Orleans are criticizing the authorities for a lackluster response to the crisis. Meanwhile, newspapers are pointing out that, exorbitant government spending on the Iraq war has drained the nation of resources needed to handle this crisis. Molly Ivins writes in the Chicago Tribune, ‘Unfortunately, the war in Iraq is directly related to the devastation left by the hurricane. About 35 percent of Louisiana's National Guard is now serving in Iraq, where four out of every 10 soldiers are guardsmen.’ In the midst of all this anger it was refreshing to read Simon Winchester’s column in the International Herald Tribune.

He takes a completely new angle on the disaster stating, ‘The last time a great American city was destroyed by a violent caprice of nature, the response was shockingly different from what we have seen in New Orleans. In tone and tempo, residents, government institutions and the nation as a whole responded to the earthquake that brought San Francisco to its knees a century ago in a manner that was well-nigh impeccable, something from which the country was long able to derive a considerable measure of pride’.

The whole piece is emotionally arousing, and delves into how, a less resourceful America was immediately there to aid San Francisco as it lay in shambles. A century later, a wealthier and technologically advanced America could not emulate this act as a society and let New Orleans down. He writes, ‘Washington learned of the calamity through Morse Code messages. Congress met in emergency session and quickly passed legislation to pay all imaginable bills. By 4 a.m. on April 19, William Taft, President Theodore Roosevelt's secretary of war, ordered rescue trains to begin pounding toward the Rockies; one of them, assembled in Virginia, was the longest hospital train ever assembled.’

The interesting fact is that the columnist does not criticize the handling of the New Orleans crisis in detail, or present a theory on what could prompt two such different responses from the same nation. The relatively non-confrontational tone of the column is what sets it apart from the majority of material being written on Katrina lately. There is a positive spirit to the entire write-up in spite of the dreary subject that it addresses. I am by no means undermining the need for confrontational, aggressive writing. Rather, I am wondering how and when journalism became so saturated with it. This column stands out because it makes a political and social statement in the most subtle manner that I have read in a long time. His writing comes close to that elusive quality we all seek as journalists and always seem to fall short of –‘Objectivity’.