Lost in the Flood
Why no mention of race or class in TV's Katrina coverage?
By Jack Shafer
Posted Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2005, at 4:22 PM PT
What the newscasters didn't say
I can't say I saw everything that the TV newscasters pumped out about
Katrina, but I viewed enough repeated segments to say with 90 percent
confidence that broadcasters covering the New Orleans end of the
disaster demurred from mentioning two topics that must have occurred
to every sentient viewer: race and class.
Nearly every rescued person, temporary resident of the Superdome,
looter, or loiterer on the high ground of the freeway I saw on TV was
African-American. And from the look of it, they weren't wealthy
residents of the Garden District. This storm appears to have hurt
blacks more directly than whites, but the broadcasters scarcely
mentioned that fact
Now, don't get me wrong. Just because 67 percent of New Orleans
residents are black, I don't expect CNN to rename the storm
"Hurricane" Carter in honor of the black boxer. Just because
Katrina's next stop after destroying coastal Mississippi was counties
that are 25 percent to 86 percent African-American (according to this
U.S. Census map), and 27.9 percent of New Orleans residents are below
the poverty line, I don't expect the Rev. Jesse Jackson to call the
news channels to give a comment. But in the their frenzy to beat
freshness into the endless loops of disaster footage that have been
running all day, broadcasters might have mentioned that nearly all
the visible people left behind in New Orleans are of the black
persuasion, and mostly poor.
To be sure, some reporters sidled up to the race and class issue. I
heard them ask the storm's New Orleans victims why they hadn't left
town when the evacuation call came. Many said they were broke—"I live
from paycheck to paycheck," explained one woman. Others said they
didn't own a car with which to escape and that they hadn't understood
the importance of evacuation.
But I don't recall any reporter exploring the class issue directly by
getting a paycheck-to-paycheck victim to explain that he couldn't
risk leaving because if he lost his furniture and appliances, his
pots and pans, his bedding and clothes, to Katrina or looters, he'd
have no way to replace them. No insurance, no stable, large extended
family that could lend him cash to get back on his feet, no middle-
class job to return to after the storm.
What accounts for the broadcasters' timidity? I saw only a couple of
black faces anchoring or co-anchoring but didn't see any black faces
reporting from New Orleans. So, it's safe to assume that the
reluctance to talk about race on the air was a mostly white thing.
That would tend to imply that white people don't enjoy discussing the
subject. But they do, as long as they get to call another white
person racist.
My guess is that Caucasian broadcasters refrain from extemporizing
about race on the air mostly because they fear having an Al Campanis
moment. Campanis, you may recall, was the Los Angeles Dodgers vice
president who brought his career to an end when he appeared on
Nightline in 1987 and explained to Ted Koppel that blacks might not
have "some of the necessities" it takes to manage a major league team
or run it as a general manager for the same reason black people
aren't "good swimmers." They lack "buoyancy," he said.
Not to excuse Campanis, but as racists go he was an underachiever.
While playing in the minor leagues, he threw down his mitt and
challenged another player who was bullying Jackie Robinson. As Dodger
GM, he aggressively signed black and Latino players, treated them
well, and earned their admiration. Although his Nightline statement
was transparently racist, in the furor that followed, nobody could
cite another racist remark he had ever made. His racism, which surely
blocked blacks from potential front-office Dodger careers, was the
racism of overwhelming ignorance—a trait he shared (shares?) with
many other baseball executives.
This sort of latent racism (or something more potent) may lurk in the
hearts of many white people who end up on TV, as it does in the
hearts of many who watch. Or, even if they're completely clean of
racism's taint, anchors and reporters fear that they'll suffer a
career-stopping Campanis moment by blurting something poorly thought
out or something that gets misconstrued. Better, most think, to avoid
discussing race at all unless someone with impeccable race
credentials appears to supervise—and indemnify—everybody from
potentially damaging charges of racism.
Race remains largely untouchable for TV because broadcasters sense
that they can't make an error without destroying careers. That's a
true pity. If the subject were a little less taboo, one of last
night's anchors could have asked a reporter, "Can you explain to our
viewers, who by now have surely noticed, why 99 percent of the New
Orleans evacuees we're seeing are African-American? I suppose our
viewers have noticed, too, that the provocative looting footage we're
airing and re-airing seems to depict mostly African-Americans."
If the reporter on the ground couldn't answer the questions, a
researcher could have Nexised the New Orleans Times-Picayune five-
parter from 2002, "Washing Away," which reported that the city's
100,000 residents without private transportation were likely to be
stranded by a big storm. In other words, what's happening is what was
expected to happen: The poor didn't get out in time.
To the question of looting, an informed reporter or anchor might have
pointed out that anybody—even one of the 500 Nordic blondes working
in broadcast news—would loot food from a shuttered shop if they found
themselves trapped by a flood and had no idea when help would come.
However sympathetic I might be to people liberating necessities
during a disaster in order to survive, I can't muster the same
tolerance for those caught on camera helping themselves in a
leisurely fashion to dry goods at Wal-Mart. Those people weren't
looting as much as they were shopping for good stuff to steal.
MSNBC's anchor Rita Cosby, who blurted an outraged if inarticulate
harrumph when she aired the Wal-Mart heist footage, deserves more
respect than the broadcasters who gave the tape the sort of
nonjudgmental commentary they might deliver if they were watching the
perps vacuum the carpets at home.
When disaster strikes, Americans—especially journalists—like to
pretend that no matter who gets hit, no matter what race, color,
creed, or socioeconomic level they hail from, we're all in it
together. This spirit informs the 1997 disaster flick Volcano, in
which a "can't we all just get along" moment arrives at the film's
end: Volcanic ash covers every face in the big crowd scene, and
everybody realizes that we're all members of one united race.
But we aren't one united race, we aren't one united class, and
Katrina didn't hit all folks equally. By failing to acknowledge
upfront that black New Orleanians—and perhaps black Mississippians—
suffered more from Katrina than whites, the TV talkers may escape
potential accusations that they're racist. But by ignoring race and
class, they boot the journalistic opportunity to bring attention to
the disenfranchisement of a whole definable segment of the
population. What I wouldn't pay to hear a Fox anchor ask, "Say, Bob,
why are these African-Americans so poor to begin with?"
---
You are currently subscribed to telecom-cities as: archive@mail-archive.com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To set DIGEST mode and only receive one list message per day with all the daily
traffic, please visit the list website at
http://www.informationcity.org/telecom-cities
