![]() ![]() Brooks and the other guardsmen claimed that they never told anyone they had actually seen bodies in the freezer, but rather that they'd heard other emergency personnel talking about it in a food line set up for police, guardsmen and other rescue workers outside Harrah's New Orleans Casino. 16, interviewing every member of the Guard who was on patrol Sept. ![]() Edwards says he conducted a review around Sept. Latent racism, some suggest, further distorted the picture of devastation and chaos presented around the world. The flooded city of New Orleans, experts say, was hit with a perfect storm of conditions in which fear, despair and wild rumors, like a contagious disease, can thrive. Many of the overblown reports trace back through poorly informed public officials, to overworked police officers and national guardsmen, to frightened evacuees themselves. It is clear, however, that the media was only the last link - if the most influential one - in a chain reaction that led the world to believe gang rape, rampant shootings and infanticide were fast compounding the city's devastation. ![]() But the media also displayed shortcomings of its own: Two of the most prominent and disturbing types of stories from the New Orleans disaster zone - violent criminals committing atrocities inside the two main refugee centers downtown, and rogue gunmen firing at rescue helicopters - turned out to be wildly exaggerated, and in many cases plain false.Įven today, questions remain about various incidents, and why the unconfirmed horror stories were treated as fact and gained such wide currency. Some reporters, including CNN's Anderson Cooper, earned praise for challenging equivocating public officials and a slow government response that left thousands stranded in desperate conditions. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina left the American media with its biggest story since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Only four bodies were discovered inside after the convention center was evacuated, and only one of them was a suspected homicide, according to the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals. "This was news to us," Edwards said of the alleged dozens of bodies in the freezer, which were never found. John Edwards, the commander of Brooks' unit, told Salon he first heard of the Times-Picayune story about two weeks later. " Brooks and several other guardsmen said they had seen between 30 and 40 bodies in the convention center's freezer," Thevenot reported in the Times-Picayune the following day, adding that Brooks told him one of the bodies was a "7-year-old girl with her throat cut." Thevenot interviewed guardsmen, who showed him four bodies that had been deposited inside a food service entrance of the building. The last evacuees had been bused out over the weekend. ![]() The convention center was empty when Thevenot arrived, except for about 250 members of the Arkansas National Guard and other rescue officials in the immediate area. Fox News, MSNBC, CNN and other television news channels had repeated stories of rape and murder there. The New York Times had reported that evacuees witnessed seven dead bodies lying on the floor, and a 14-year-old girl who had been raped. Police Chief Eddie Compass had told the media that people were being raped and beaten inside. 5, the makeshift emergency shelter had achieved mythic status as a place where unspeakable crimes had been committed. By the time Brian Thevenot, a reporter for the Times-Picayune, arrived at the New Orleans convention center on Monday, Sept. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |