Mainstream TV Observations-Katrina

Reposted from "Bob McCannon" mccannon@flash.net

I have been recording CBS and ABC news every night for the last five
nights and lots of ABC and FOX for the last five days. A couple
observations:

1) Today, CNN had an incredibly revealing story. Yesterday, a woman
got on CNN with a cell phone. CNN broadcast her plight. She and the
people around her were stranded in New Orleans; it was a miracle that
she got through. Within hours, "helicopters were buzzing around."
Shortly after, helicopters landed on the roof. Armed guardsmen escorted
buses to the place she was. She and her group were each given
antibiotics and instructions for followup since they had to wade
through the disgusting water to their buses. Where was this woman? I
guess you can guess the type of place she was. Yes, she and her 300
fellow strandees were in the Ritz Carlton hotel.

2) Tonight on the Lou Dobbs Show on CNN I saw the first, long,
mainstream TV news show on the extent of poverty in this country in
years; 20 minutes long, it was undoubtedly a shock to people who only
watch mainstream news.

3) President Bush had an amazing photo-op in Mississippi, holding two
black girls in his arms, kissing them; it went on for eight minutes and
was the clip shown on ABC and on Fox over and over, but not on CBS.

4) Tonight, for the first time, CBS showed an official, a Miss. mayor,
saying, "We have only 800 national guard troops, because we have 3,000
in Iraq.

5) CBS and CNN had references, recorded on radio, to the mayor of New
Orleans' expletive-filled criticism of the federal government,
delivered on radio today. FOX did not show it. No one put him on
television. Why not? I could not help but think of how often Rudi
Guiliani was on TV after 9/11. No one would put the mayor on TV. Why
not?

6) Lou Dobbs identified recent studies by Homeland Security that had
identified the 100,000 people in New Orleans who would NOT BE ABLE to
evacuate. You know who they were, the poor. The army corps of engineers
knew that the levees would not hold for a category four or five storm.

7) ABC had an unusual think tank official who noted that we got water
purification equipment to Tsunami victims within three days, but not
New Orleans.

8) ABC ran an amazing story about how when national guard troops
finally got to the Convention Center in New Orleans, where
indescribable horrors had taken place for five days, their FIRST action
was to send a highly armed force past sick, dying, and thirsty
Americans into the Center to get out a Spanish diplomat.

9) The first water and food that reached the Miss. strandees came from
religious organizations, long before FEMA.

10) Tom Oliphant, on the Lehrer News Hour, noted in the past, the poor
were always taken care of first. Clarence Page observed that during the
crisis in Haiti it looked better than New Orleans and that FEMA's
budget has been cut every year for years. David Brooks, normally a
Republican apologist, noted that this comes on top of Abu Grieve, corp
scandals, failure of public institutions from the time of Hurricane
Andrews on, and Bush spent "three days doing nothing." He also noted
that if the Republican primary were held today, "Rudi Guiliani would
win in a walk."

Hmmmm . . .

Have a good weekend,
Bob