From a tipster…

MSNBC will be live from 7AM - Midnight on both Saturday and Sunday. Special taped programs dealing with the hurricane will air during the overnight hours and tomorrow evenings telethon will be rebroadcast at least twice during the day to help raise more money for victims.

Johnny Dollar writes in about the incidents on FOX from a short time ago…

It’s hard to describe. Geraldo was on the verge of tears. Shep was really pissed. It turns out that the people who are in such horrible conditions at the Convention Center are not being allowed to leave. They set up a checkpoint and anyone who tries to walk across the bridge out of town gets turned back. I’ve seen Geraldo get emotional, and I’ve seen Shepard get excited, but I’ve never seen either of them this worked up.

Here’s Dollar’s video…

Jarvis weighs in…

This is Fox, folks. Even Fox is mad.

An emailer writes in “Did you see Kanye West on the NBC telethon? He bashed Bush and they cut him off. All over the net.”

The Corner has more detail…

UPDATE: Crooks and Liars has the video…

UPDATE 2: An insider sent this in from the NBC Hot File…

NBC WILL APPARENTLY AIR THE CONCERT UNEDITED WITH KANYE WEST’S COMMENTS ON THE WEST COAST.

WE’RE HEARING THAT EAST COAST STATIONS ARE BEING FLOODED WITH PHONE CALLS…

IF WE START GETTING THEM.. THE BEST PLACE TO DIRECT THEM IS THE NBC VIEWER COMMENT LINE

UPDATE 3: Lisa De Moraes in the Washington Post wraps up what happened Friday night…

West’s comments would be cut from the West Coast feed, an NBC spokeswoman told The TV Column. (The Associated Press later reported that only his comment about the president was edited out.) The show was live on the East Coast with a several-second delay; someone with his finger on a button was keeping an ear peeled in case someone uttered an obscenity but did not realize that West had gone off-script, the spokeswoman said.

Direct TV is offering its subscribers a Katrina channel on Channel 100. It is an information dump of agency numbers and other info. Also there is a crawl at the bottom where text messages display information for people to query information on loved ones or for the missing to broadcast information on their locations. To get on the crawl you can email KATRINA@DIRECTV.COM

Geraldo Rivera talking with Bill O’Reilly about the situation in New Orleans….

Johnny Dollar has the video…

Anderson was aggressively challenging Trent Lott on the government’s response. Unlike the Landrieu interview the night before where the Senator dodged and weaved, Lott was having none of it and aggressively responded to Cooper’s barrage of questions.

UPDATE: Here’s the transcript…
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It looked earlier like the ratings would be delayed until Tuesday but these came in. The only individual progam info I have is that The FOX Report set a 2005 record last night with almost 4.1 million viewers. But look at the overalls here. No wonder the broadcast nets have started expanding their coverage. They were losing out to cable in a big way on this story…
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CNN’s Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr was travelling with General Honore and reported during The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer on an incident that took place during the General’s tour of the area. Transcript follows…
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Here is FOX News weekend special hurricane coverage schedule for the three day weekend…

UPDATE: ICN has learned that Bill Hemmer will be flying out to Baton Rouge for coverage starting tomorrow.

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CNN’s Carol Lin hosts CNN’s Victims and Relief Desk. The Desk was formed Wednesday as a means of helping link missing and stranded people as a result of hurricane Katrina with families and friends who are searching for them. ICN caught up with Lin to find out more about this undertaking…

ICN: For the benefit of ICN’s readers, can you describe the process that is involved when a request comes in to CNN’s Victims And Relief Desk?

Lin: The television side of this operation gathers short pleas and messages from those alive but stranded in the hurricane zone. We try to air as many as possible so that families might see their loved ones on our air. I also encourage our viewers to go to CNN.com to see the latest “safe list,” which compiles names and locations of people who want their families to know they are OK. People can also e-mail their own stories, photos and names of their missing loved ones. From those, we on the Relief Desk try to cross reference the names with the “safe” list and report the success stories.
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CNN announced today about a special broadcast of On The Story that will cover Hurricane Katrina….

As part of CNN’s special coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, CNN journalists will share their first-hand experiences during a special edition of On the Story on Sunday, Sept. 4, at 10 a.m. (ET). The program will be live before an audience at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Correspondent and Mississippi native Kathleen Koch as well as photojournalist Mark Biello will join the program while on the ground in the Gulf Coast region. Other participants with first-hand accounts of the storm’s impact and the response from federal, state and local officials include correspondent John Zarrella, White House correspondent Suzanne Malveaux and business news anchor Ali Velshi. For the first time since the deadly storm hit, CNN reporters will take a step back to recount the challenges they face and answer questions from a live audience. Congressional correspondent Joe Johns will anchor.

FOX News’ Phil Keating…

“As of two hours ago, the siege of New Orleans, which was in urban crisis like never before seen, the anarchy that has been seen on the streets every single night. That is coming to an obvious end. We’ve got eight-mile long convoys, followed by other convoys almost as long in length. FEMA trucks, 18-wheelers bringing in truckloads of water, truckloads of MREs. I have seen more helicopter activity today over the city than I have seen all week long.”

CNN is adjusting its programming for Saturday and Sunday due to the Hurricane disaster. Here is a rundown…
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CNN’s reporters blog…

Chris Lawrence: We’re now driving on Interstate 10, and there is just an incredible scene. It looks like people are actually living on the highway.

Some of them may be waiting to be picked-up. But I’m not exaggerating when I say probably thousands of people are just sitting on the interstate, sitting on the side of the road, and shielding their faces from the sun. It is an intensely hot day.

Even port-a-johns have been set up on Interstate 10.

You can tell the job of trying to get all these people out of New Orleans is enormous.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: The scene inside Charity Hospital is disgusting. I think that is probably the best word for it. It really is unbelievable.

There’s no electricity. There’s no working plumbing. They haven’t had power since Monday. They have had no water since Tuesday.

In these conditions, the doctors are trying to take care of critically ill patients. I walk through the halls with doctors and they just literally grab at my shirt and say, “Tell them to send help. We need boats. We need amphibious vehicles.”

Charity is one of the largest hospitals in Louisiana. It is surrounded by six to eight feet of water. The only way you can get here is by boat or amphibious vehicle. We took a boat here yesterday.

I was told that someone was shooting at doctors and patients as they were trying to get out of this place to other hospitals where they can get better care. This is the most mind boggling thing I have heard.

But I find that MSNBC countdown bug that shows the number of days since Katrina made landfall, and is down to the minute, really tacky…

UPDATE: It’s not just tacky…it’s actually quite annoying, particularly since they made it even bigger. And this isn’t helped by MSNBC’s anchors devoting time to telling us about it. I don’t care to know thank you very much. Countdowns are for rockets and New Years Eve; not the number of days since a Hurricane hit….

UPDATE2: They reorganized it and, thankfully, dropped the clock. Now it just lists days. While I would think we could do without any mention like that, this is far better than what was on earlier today…

FOX’s Steve Harrigan a short time ago reacting to the sound of gunfire…

I just can’t believe what I’m seeing. I’ve heard talk about cavalry and help but this is like the Wild West here. We’ve got guys riding around in pickups with automatics drawn. In broad daylight. In downtown New Orleans.

Johnny Dollar has the video…

FOX News’ Jeff Goldblatt…

The epic journey to Houston. It was supposed to mean a meal, some water, and a sense of dignity for thousands of New Orleanians. Instead, at least right now, it represents just another slap in the face. You have buses by the dozens that have now been turned away here at the Astrodome. They will end up eventually in some other place probably in Texas, but at least for now, we have seen people sleeping in the parking lot today. We have seen people begging for food and for water, and the reason being that the Astrodome reached its capacity of 12,000 people at nine last night.

From CNN:

CNN.com Numbers:

Monday, 8/29 - 9 million video plays, 130 million page views
Tuesday, 8/30 - 6.7 million video plays, 105 million page views
Wednes., 8/31 - 6.8 million video plays, 125 million page views
Thursd., 9/01 - 5.4 million video plays, 115 million page views

Totals - 27.9 Million Video Plays, 475 Million Page Views

Citizen Journalist Numbers:

CNN has received more than 16,500 e-mails from citizen journalists. More than 750 of these submissions have included either video or images.

Victims and Relief Desk Numbers:

CNN’s Victims and Relief Desk, has received approximately 15,000 emails since it began the morning of Wednesday, Aug 31.

Rick Bird of the Cincinatti Post looks at the story so far…

It has become common that TV reporters and anchors have been overcome with emotion. They almost seem to be telling us that their own words and pictures cannot convey the devastation and horror. That may be because they instinctively understand the usual “aftermath” coverage doesn’t apply. They know it is an epochal event that may very well change America in months to come. And how do you put that into a sound bite?
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The national news networks are downplaying the hardships they faced, compared with the real suffering. Still it is interesting to hear some stories on how the networks have maintained their presence:

NBC sent a team to Dallas to rent RVs, pack them with supplies, then send the caravan to New Orleans to house their crews. The network even reportedly contracted its own gas tanker truck to keep its news vehicles running.

ABC and Fox reportedly got into the boat business, buying and renting what they could to travel on Lake Pontchartrain.

Cell phones are charged in cars, but that has not been reliable, since many reporters in New Orleans lost their vehicles. The only truly reliable device has become the satellite phone.

New York-based networks admit they have gone hours at a time this week without hearing from their reporters. That includes Brian Williams, the NBC anchor who chose to stay in the Superdome.

Soledad O’Brien conducted an aggressive interview with FEMA director Mike Brown on American Morning this morning. Here is a transcript…
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Paul J. Gough writes in the Hollywood Reporter about FOX News Channel anchor Bill Hemmer’s first week. (via Reuters)

His first day on the job was supposed to be Monday, tasked with the regular gig of anchoring the noon broadcast on the top-rated news channel. But the former CNN staffer was pressed into service a day early to co-anchor the network’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina.

And he hasn’t stopped ever since.

On Thursday, Hemmer anchored several daytime slots on Fox News. It was his fifth consecutive day of anchoring the unfolding story. He said he’s been continually surprised by the twists and turns of the story. And he said it’s difficult to comprehend, from watching the coverage, the depth of the tragedy.

“There was a period of time on Fox News on Tuesday, where every report that we were getting up and down the Gulf Coast was more dire than the report previously,” Hemmer said Thursday afternoon. “This went on for a period of six to eight hours, and the enormity of this destruction was revealed.”

Mackenzie Carpenter in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette writes about the large numbers of viewers who keep tuning in to the Hurricane disaster coverage…(via Romenesko)

Snipers firing at rescue helicopters. Looters — or people who are just plain hungry — pushing bags of food through fetid floodwaters. Dead bodies in blankets lying unclaimed in the hot sun. An elderly couple trapped in a truck surrounded by alligators.

These and other heartbreaking, horrific images from New Orleans and the Mississippi coast have unfolded relentlessly on television screens in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina this week, pushing cable television ratings into the stratosphere and gripping millions of viewers — but also repelling some, who find the gruesome visuals almost unbearable to watch.
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Among those driving up the ratings was Janet Bartlett, 67, of Shaler, who has been carefully monitoring Fox News anchor Shepherd Smith’s reports from the freeways of New Orleans.

“I turn it [the television] on the first thing in the morning when I wake up until I go to work, and then I turn it on again when I come home,” said Bartlett.

Indeed, many television viewers are experiencing what media psychologist Stuart Fischoff describes as classic addiction symptoms.

“Visual imagery involves a much more primitive part of our brain, a monitoring system to sense danger,” Fischoff said. “The trouble with this story is that it’s not in a resolution stage yet, things are just getting worse. Usually, when we’re anxious, we seek information to reduce anxiety, but in this case, we’re just increasing it.”

Disaster coverage “feeds a demographic of grief junkies, who are tapping away at the remote control like a rat tapping for crack pellets,” added Matthew Felling, media director at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Media and Public Affairs. “Not only does misery love company, it also makes for compelling television.”

The AP’s Frazier Moore…

Fox News Channel correspondent Jeff Goldblatt interrupted his dispatch to warn a man he saw filling a plastic jug from a fountain.

“Sir, that water isn’t clean,” he told the man.

The torrent of images recalled 9/11, except this stretched for miles. It recalled the Asian tsunami tragedy, except this was home, the victims our neighbors.
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But this spectacle of correspondents buffeted by wind and rain was only the prelude.

MSNBC’s Sean McLaughlin stood in a portable lift Monday morning and hoisted himself to the ceiling of the studio in Secaucus, N.J., to demonstrate how high Katrina’s wall of water might rise when it slammed the Gulf Coast.

But by week’s end, this exercise, like so many other previews, betrayed an all-too-understandable failure of imagination. It suggested surgically imposed devastation - a catastrophe apart from human miseries like death, disease, hunger and thirst.

And separation from loved ones. CNN introduced a “Victims and Relief Desk” service to help connect missing and stranded people with their families and friends. Who could have imagined such a need a week earlier?

After days of this, viewers might reasonably have felt overwhelmed.

At least one correspondent in the middle of it readily admitted he did.

“Even when you’re on the ground, it’s mind-numbing,” CNN correspondent John Zarrella told The Associated Press.

“There’s one horrific image after another. It comes at you from every direction,” he said Wednesday, just arrived in Baton Rouge after reporting from New Orleans since Saturday. “I don’t know how we can absorb the magnitude of this thing.”

The Orlando Sentinel’s Hal Boedeker…

On Fox News Channel, Shepard Smith told a more specific story as he stood on a New Orleans overpass near a corpse: “Someone has clothed him, covered him, put a blanket over his upper body and left him dead in the city that died here with him,” Smith said. “This is a scene seen hundreds and hundreds [of times]. . . . Whether New Or- leans can rebuild is very much a matter for future reports. But New Orleans today is dead.”

That might read a bit melodramatically, but it reflected the despair pervasive in Thursday’s coverage. MSNBC relayed scenes of frustration at the convention center in New Orleans, where people begged for help.

“This is not about low income; it’s not about rich people, poor people — it’s about people,” said an anguished woman clutching a child. “We need help, sir,” said another woman.
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CNN’s Chris Lawrence described the heartbreak of watching mothers and babies struggle at the convention center. “Some of these images that you will see, they’re very, very graphic. But people need to see this. The people down there have been down there for days.”

TV news has done a commendable job in grabbing the public’s attention and explaining the relief efforts. That coverage will continue for weeks.

Verne Gay of Newsday writes about the people in the media who are witnesses to the tragedy as it unfolds…

In one pivotal and by no means isolated moment on Wednesday, Fox News’ Shepard Smith looked down from an overpass at a woman holding a sick child, then seemed to plead with no one in particular to save them.

Or there was the moment yesterday when CNN reporter Chris Lawrence said from outside the Superdome that “there’s no one in charge … it’s just a complete free-for-all … people in high-ranking positions need to be made aware.”

TV reporters also found themselves in the surreal position of telling the very people they were covering that they knew nothing and consequently had no way of helping them. CNN’s Anderson Cooper, who’s been reporting from Mississippi all week - and recently reported on the mass starvation in Niger - said in a phone interview yesterday that “it’s shocking to see this happening in the United States [and] see bloated corpses out on the street for 48, 72 hours that, you know, have been eaten by rats … People keep asking, ‘Where is the Army or the National Guard?’ and I don’t have an answer for them.

“There are a lot of hardworking people here with FEMA and search-and-rescue guys working around the clock, [but] it sure doesn’t seem like the United States of America I know.”

Paul J. Gough in the Hollywood Reporter, writes about TV news networks grappling with what images to broadcast…

While pledging to exercise taste, television news executives said they won’t shy away from showing graphic pictures of the grim aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

On Thursday, several outlets — including NBC, Fox News and CNN — showed video of people who had died not during the storm but in the days following the hurricane. They included pictures of two people covered in sheets who had passed away outside the convention center in downtown New Orleans, where tens of thousands of people waited for food and water. One, in a wheelchair, held a note with next-of-kin information

At the same time, networks passed on showing the full picture of what had happened, particularly at the convention center. NBC News photojournalist Tony Zumbado captured video of the dead and dying that was so graphic that neither NBC News nor MSNBC would air it.