PressEthic

President Bush appointed R. David Paulison as the temporary director of FEMA on Monday September 12 – after former director Micheal D. Brown’s resignation. The former director had received severe criticism from the media, for his handling of the Katrina crisis. An article by Richard W. Stevenson in The New York Times quotes him as saying, ‘The Press was too focused on what did we did do, what didn’t we do, the whole blame game’. It further quotes him, ‘I wanted to take that factor out of the equation, so that the people at FEMA, who are some of the most hard-working, dedicated civil servants I have ever met, could just go do their job.’

Even though, the former statement seems to be meant as criticism for the press,I would view it as an inadvertent compliment. Ofcourse, the press was not solely responsible for Mr. Brown’s removal from the post but it certainly influenced the decision to some extent. The article also quoted President Bush’s defensive answer to press queries regarding the resignation, ‘Maybe you know something we don’t know’.

The whole situation reflects positively on the kind of job the press has done in holding federal, state and local authorities accountable for the mismanagement in New Orleans. Regardless of their own particular agendas, and other such limitations, media sources managed to unite in holding negligence accountable. I would like to point out that genuine accountability must not be confused with random finger pointing and accusations.

Coming from a country where the press has limited or no freedom of speech, it is a liberating experience to be in the midst of these events. Having grown up witnessing, incidents of journalists being arrested for anti-government comments, I can truly appreciate the power of free media. The bold criticism of the American media is a far cry from the timid minced words of criticism by the press in my home country (Pakistan).

Today (September 13, 2005), the headline on the Politics page of CNN’s website for a brief period of time was President Bush’s statement,'I take responsibility' for federal failures after Katrina’. Congratulations to the press and the democratic process for extracting what is a near impossible admission from a politician – acceptance of blame.