PressEthic

The New York Times is not happy with the Red Cross or the federal government, as they gave out inaccurate numbers, which were prominently published on the front page.

From the October 13th issue,

The number of people in hotels has grown by 60 percent in the past two weeks as some shelters closed, reaching nearly 600,000 as of Tuesday.

From the October 19th issue,

The Red Cross and federal government said Tuesday that they had been significantly overreporting the number of Hurricane Katrina evacuees in hotels. Instead of 600,000 people, 200,000 remain in hotels, the charity said.

Whats more, the paper did some really complicated math from the original numbers and came up with even more fancy numbers. Now it turns out all that hard work was for nothing, and all those big numbers are making the authorities look very small.

From the October 19th issue

The New York Times and other news organizations reported the Red Cross and FEMA estimates, which meant that the government would have been spending $11 million a night for hotels and motels. Now, relief officials say, 70,000 rooms are occupied, costing $4 million a night.

This is not the first time that exaggerated numbers are being quoted after the Katrina disaster. Previously the death toll reported by the New Orleans authorities turned out to be overestimated as well.

Nevertheless, Red Cross is definitely not a great favorite with the times after this incident. As the October 19th issue claims,

Even now, the Red Cross cannot precisely estimate how many people are in the government-financed hotel rooms or say definitively that the hotel guests are eligible for their rooms. That is because the Red Cross and FEMA use unusually informal arrangements to manage the program.

There is no doubt that such exaggerated numbers don’t reflect well on the organizations that release them. BUT- the fact remains that newspapers are only too eager to splash them across their front pages the very next day. It is understandable that in case of a natural disaster, it is difficult to have extremely accurate data and official sources, should be reliable sources. However, it would seem that after the exaggerated post-Katrina death toll came to light, the media would have been more skeptical of official numbers. Is it a newspaper’s responsibility to investigate and hold off from printing numbers, if they have been given inaccurate information before?---or not?