[StBernard] Subject: Media, government don't mix

[Westley Annis]

From: The Times-Picayune


Date: April 23, 2007

Subject: Media, government don't mix

While Hurricane Katrina's winds pounded South Louisiana, while frantic
residents clung to their rooftops in Port Sulphur and Chalmette, while canal
walls fell apart and floodwater gushed into New Orleans, while the
government dithered day after day about how to get water and buses to storm
victims, journalists did their jobs.

Reporters and editors worked through Katrina's fury on Aug. 29, 2005, and
they worked through the deadly flooding that followed. Intrepid journalists
navigated the submerged city and told the world what was happening to people
who had stayed behind. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, meanwhile,
was clueless about the scope of the disaster unfolding and what to do about
it.

So it is confounding that U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu is proposing legislation
to confer special disaster powers and resources to some broadcasters as
so-called first-responders.

The premise of the Landrieu bill is fundamentally flawed. It is unwise to
insert the government into the media's response capability in emergencies
like Katrina. Doing so compromises the press' function as a watchdog, which
is especially important in a crisis _ as coverage of the incompetencies of
FEMA, the Corps of Engineers and other agencies has underscored in the past
19 months.

If a broadcast company accepts the grant money for equipment and facilities
proposed in this legislation how could it then feel as free as it should be
to criticize the government's handling of a disaster?

The news media was often at its best after Katrina. Reporters and editors _
print, broadcast and Internet _ proved to be nimble, enterprising and
resourceful.

During those first chaotic days, The Times-Picayune and its affiliated Web
site Nola.com provided essential information to hundreds of thousands of
residents who found themselves stranded in other cities and even to the
beleaguered storm victims who thronged the Convention Center to await
rescue. Other resourceful journalists figured out ways to get the news out
as well.

The Times-Picayune has an obvious self-interest in the issues raised by Sen.
Landrieu's legislation. But we believe that newspapers and their Web sites
play an essential role in the coverage of their communities, especially in
times of disaster.

Sen. Landrieu's legislation ignores that fact. Even if newspapers and news
Web sites were included, though, this still would be a bad bill. It simply
isn't appropriate to make the government and the media partners in disaster
coverage.

Dozens of journalists, print and broadcast, local and national, told the
story of Katrina's devastation from inside the devastation. In many
instances in those early days, journalists were there when no one from the
government was around.

All of us were first responders in a sense. And we told the story of loss
and abandonment without the help of the government. That is the way it
should be.