How Corporate Media Are Washing Away Katrina From America's Mind

August 29 marked the fourth anniversary of the day Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. The devastation wrought by both the hurricane itself and the government's inept response prompted remarkably critical corporate media coverage that promised to fight for Katrina survivors and change the way we talk about poverty and race (FAIR Media Advisory, 9/9/05).

As NBC's Brian Williams told the St. Petersburg Times (3/1/06), "If this does not spark a national discussion on class, race, the environment, oil, Iraq, infrastructure and urban planning, I think we've failed." But four years later, corporate media outlets seem to have largely forgotten about Katrina and its survivors, let alone the conversations about race and poverty that were supposed to accompany it.

The Institute for Southern Studies issued a report (8-9/09) in which more than 50 Gulf Coast community leaders graded officials on their response to the ongoing disaster; the Obama administration received a D+, while Congress received a D. (George W. Bush received a D- in an earlier survey.) One million people are still displaced, rebuilding continues at a glacial pace, and the levees being rebuilt have been judged insufficient to protect New Orleans from another Katrina-level flood.

But amazingly, according to a search of the Nexis news media database, neither the Washington Post nor the L.A. Times ran a single piece on Katrina in the past week. ABC and Fox News didn't mention the hurricane or its aftermath once.

CBS ran two segments (8/28/09, 8/31/09), as well as a brief headline (8/29/09) on Barack Obama's weekly radio address that discussed post-Katrina reconstruction. The one mention on MSNBC came on the Ed Show (8/27/09), when host Ed Schultz singled out right-wing talk radio host Neal Boortz for his hateful remarks about displaced Katrina survivors, such as his recent commentary: "Obama wants to rebuild New Orleans? Why? 'Build it and they will come'? 'They'? The debris that Katrina chased out?"

NBC ran four segments, all of which put a remarkably upbeat spin on the situation. In one piece (8/30/09), reporter Ron Mott declared that while a third of the homes in New Orleans are still vacant or abandoned, "positive news abounds. The population is steadily climbing as are test scores in the overhauled public school system." Another segment (8/30/09) reported that "the city and its most famous cultural treasure are now well on the mend," while a day earlier (8/29/09), Saturday Today anchor Lester Holt introduced a short piece on "encouraging new signs for the city," in which reporter Mott announced that "much has improved and a lot of people are working."

The New York Times published a few pieces on Katrina, including an op-ed chart (8/28/09) and a report (8/30/09) on Obama's speech. The cover story of its weekend magazine (8/30/09) was a long piece by Sheri Fink, of the nonprofit journalism outfit ProPublica, on the "deadly choices" at a New Orleans hospital following the hurricane--one of the few anniversary pieces to touch even obliquely on issues of racism, quoting one doctor who helped euthanize patients as saying he was worried about "the animals" outside--that "these crazy black people who think they've been oppressed for all these years by white people" might start "raping...or, you know, dismembering" people.

The Times also ran an article (8/31/09) that talked about how the goal in New Orleans isn't to "revert to the city that existed here before the flood," but instead focusing on "revitalization." (See Extra!, 7-8/07.) Further down it mentioned that "fundamental problems" still exist, like high unemployment, and some neighborhoods that "seem barely touched" since four years ago. Race, though, wasn't mentioned a single time.