News of Pandemonium May Have Slowed Aid

Behold the power of the media. Five weeks after Hurricane Katrina laid waste to New Orleans, some local, state and federal officials have come to believe that exaggerations of mayhem by officials and rumors repeated uncritically in the news media helped slow the response to the disaster and tarnish the image of many of its victims. With nearly all communications systems with people on the ground crippled, live television became a primary information source. "The television stations were reporting that people were literally stepping over bodies and violence was out of control," said Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco's press secretary Denise Bottcher, who was at the governor's side. "But the National Guardsmen were saying that what we were seeing on CNN was contradictory to what they were seeing. It didn't match up." "Rumor control was a beast for us," said Maj. Ed Bush of the Louisiana National Guard, who was stationed at the Superdome. "People would hear something on the radio and come and say that people were getting raped in the bathroom or someone had been murdered. I would say, 'Ma'am, where?' I would tell them if there were bodies, my guys would find it. Everybody heard, nobody saw. Logic was out the window because the situation was illogical."
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Robert E. Pierre and Ann Gerhart]
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