Keith Olbermann detonated a bomb on Countdown tonight….
Politician after politician — Republican and Democrat alike — has paraded before us, unwilling or unable to shut off the “I-Me” switch in their heads, condescendingly telling us about how moved they were or how devastated they were — congenitally incapable of telling the difference between the destruction of a city and the opening of a supermarket.
Greta Van Susteren will be heading to New Orleans tomorrow. She has been broadcasting from Houston for nearly a week.
CNN reporters blog…
Drew Griffin in New Orleans, Louisiana:
I am stunned by an interview I conducted with New Orleans Detective Lawrence Dupree. He told me they were trying to rescue people with a helicopter and the people were so poor they were afraid it would cost too much to get a ride and they had no money for a “ticket.” Dupree was shaken telling us the story. He just couldn’t believe these people were afraid they’d be charged for a rescue.
The Hollywood Reporter’s Paul J. Gough writes about the news orgs’ long term plans for coverage of the Katrina disaster…
Broadcast news prepared for short-term challenges and a long-term commitment in and around New Orleans as coverage of Hurricane Katrina entered its second week.
“I think it will dominate our news agenda for the foreseeable future,” NBC News anchor Brian Williams said in an interview Sunday night.
After days where the only reliable communication in and out of the three-state hurricane zone was by satellite truck, food and water were scarce and news crews’ safety became an issue in the then-lawless Gulf Coast, network executives said those concerns were now not as much at issue. Some technological problems remain.
CNN political contributor Donna Brazile talked today on The Situation Room about her family’s story in New Orleans during the disaster. Transcript follows…
UPDATE: TVNewser reports that Brazile’s sister has been rescued….
BLITZER: Our CNN political contributor, Donna Brazile, is a
long-time friend. She’s also a New Orleans native with lots of family
affected by Hurricane Katrina. Donna has been working tirelessly over
the past week to take care of their needs. She is joining us now.
Donna, our heart goes out to you, but tell our viewers the story,
what happened, because you have a lot of relatives. You’re one of nine
children.
(more…)
This afternoon on The Situation Wolf Blitzer introduced an CNN exclusive interview with former President Bill Clinton on the government response to Hurricane Katrina, the Bush/Clinton Katrina fund and other disaster-related issues. Here is a partial transcript and excerpt…
BLITZER: Just a few hours ago in Houston, Texas, former Presidents
George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton announced the first steps that they
are taking in trying to raise a lot of money for the victims. All
donations to the Bush/Clinton Katrina fund, as it’s being called, will
be given to the governors of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
MSNBC’s David Shuster blogs…
We first met 75-year-old George Rockwell at Biloxi‘s largest shelter.
In the shadow of Keesler Air Force Base, his entire identity, including papers, proving his status as a 25-year veteran who served in Vietnam, have been washed away.
Rockwell said they were left in a briefcase. He was hopeful any wet documents could be dried out for safe-keeping.
So we invited Rockwell to ride with us to his home for a look. At his house, a simple trailer, he pointed to his Katrina escape route.
Former President Bush will be appearing on Larry King Live tonight on the Kartina disaster and other issues. Here is a transcript of one segment of the program…
KING: “Even the president said the reaction should have been faster, that he was wasn’t satisfied.”
BUSH: Sure, … certainly I’m not satisfied, but I’m just talking about the blame game, and there was one particularly vicious comment that the president didn’t care, was insensitive on ethnicity, insensitive about race. Now that one hurt because I know this president, and I know he does care. But you know, what can he do? He can just go out and do what he’s doing today, showing that the federal government’s involved, has been involved, will continue to be involved. Huge numbers of dollars have been appropriated or signed off on for the Congress, both Senate and the House, and he’s got to push forward. He cannot listen to every critic from the editorial page of the New York Times.”
Talking with King on President Bush’s choice of Judge John Roberts as the next Supreme Court Chief Justice.
BUSH: “I’m very, very pleased that the president has nominated Mr. Roberts to be the chief justice. He’s brilliant, a surprise yes, brilliant man, a brilliant man with the highest ranking from the bar association, and I hope that he is promptly confirmed.”
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s Melanie McFarland writes about the “race angle” (via FTVLive)
Of course, Katrina’s class issue was not the first horror that raked the conscience. Television gave us more than enough nightmares to go around –such as the fact that, if you turned on NBC or MSNBC, you could see people in their death throes. Television made the Gulf Coast’s dire need palpable.
Still, the race-and-class story is slapping us in the face. The woman in my mind, who is white, is an exception in a pitiful slide show of mothers with listless children in their laps, of elderly men and women slumped over in wheelchairs, and dead people on the side of the road. As CNN’s Wolf Blitzer clumsily put it in a fly-by segment on “The Situation Room,” “Almost all of them that we see are so poor, and they are so black.”
The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz recaps what happened last week while he was on vacation but does get in a correct hat tip to Jack Shafer… (also via TVN)
CNN’s Anderson Cooper interrupted Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) thanking some of her colleagues, declaring that he had “been seeing dead bodies in the streets here in Mississippi” and that for people to hear politicians exchanging praise “cuts them the wrong way right now, because literally there was a body on the streets of this town yesterday being eaten by rats because this woman had been laying in the street for 48 hours . . . Do you get the anger that is out here?”
TV Week’s Michelle Greppi takes a look at what the broadcast media that have been covering the Katrina disaster have gone through this week…(via TVNewser)
Television journalists covering Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath last week faced difficulties and dangers reminiscent of war zones and the chaos that can afflict Third World countries.
Even after the winds and rain died down, news organizations struggled to communicate with and protect the scores of news people deployed to cover the mounting disaster caused by massive flooding.
Then came the evacuations, chaotic desperation, thousands of reported deaths and growing threat of disease, along with lawlessness, looting and vigilantism. The events turned New Orleans and parts of the Gulf Coast into a desperate scene for which apocalyptic cliches were inadequate.
In 30 years as a journalist, “I have come across stories like this, but they all had international datelines,” said John Stack, senior VP of news gathering for Fox News Channel. “I measure my words. This is unprecedented.”
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