�Came hell and high water�: the intersection of Hurricane Katrina, the news media, race and poverty (original) (raw)
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Race and Media Coverage of Hurricane Katrina: Analysis, Implications, and Future Research Questions
Analyses of Social …, 2006
We analyze three aspects of media depictions of Hurricane Katrina, focusing on the relationship between race and coverage of the crisis. Examination of media language use explores the debate surrounding the terms "refugees" and "evacuees"as well as descriptions of "looting" versus "finding food"-in light of the predominantly Black demographic of the survivors in New Orleans. Assessment of the story angle indicates a disproportionate media tendency to associate Blacks with crime and violence, a propensity consistent with exaggerated and inaccurate reports regarding criminal activity in Katrina's aftermath. A review of new media sources such as mass e-mails identifies stereotypical depictions of storm survivors that both converge and diverge from coverage found in more traditional media outlets. Psychological explanations, implications for public attitudes and behavior, and future research questions are explored.
Race and Media Coverage of Hurricane Katrina
We analyze three aspects of media depictions of Hurricane Katrina, focusing on the relationship between race and coverage of the crisis. Examination of media language use explores the debate surrounding the terms "refugees" and "evacuees"as well as descriptions of "looting" versus "finding food"-in light of the predominantly Black demographic of the survivors in New Orleans. Assessment of the story angle indicates a disproportionate media tendency to associate Blacks with crime and violence, a propensity consistent with exaggerated and inaccurate reports regarding criminal activity in Katrina's aftermath. A review of new media sources such as mass e-mails identifies stereotypical depictions of storm survivors that both converge and diverge from coverage found in more traditional media outlets. Psychological explanations, implications for public attitudes and behavior, and future research questions are explored.
Media Framing and Racial Attitudes in the Aftermath of Katrina
Policy Studies Journal, 2007
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, many African Americans held fairly negative attitudes about effective and speedy government response to the storm. We employ framing theory to examine the role of race in shaping attitudes following Katrina. We hypothesize that a dominant media frame of Black storm victims led African Americans to develop a stronger empathy with storm victims, and thus, more negative views about government response. We test this hypothesis using a unique national poll of adults conducted in September 2005 that over sampled African Americans. Our results support the hypothesis that race strongly shaped attitudes following the storm.
In late August zoo5, the United States was exposed. Flurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast and became the most lethal and destructive hurricane in U,S. history,' causing y836 deaths, destroying 3oo,ooo homes,' andcosting $r5o billion in damages across three states.3 Media coverage of the storm's aftermath was marked by crime news reports that New Orleans had descended into chaos, anarchy, and lawlessness, Howev er, further investigation revealed that almost all news media reports of looting shootinB rapes, murders, and mayhem were unsubs tantiarcd, exaggerated, or false,* Federal and state government officials now believe thar the erroneous news reports "slowed the response to the disasrer and tarnish[ed] rhe image of the victimsj'5 . Critical rhetorical scholars argue that popular culture discourse consrirutes a difuse text, embodied by discursive signs, fragmenrs, and recurring srorylines that tap into, invoke, and activate Larger fir€ta--rl arcatives or cultural myths that extend over time and space,6 yet are independently experienced by people,' The deep formal structures of news discourse create audience expectations based on previous or similar texts, forms, and experiences, offering mythic storylines and motivations that resolve cultural problems in familiar and nostalgic ways,t while concealing ideologies and cultural fears or anxieries.e In this chapter, we argve that Katrina's aftermath became a great human catastroPhe, because dominant U.S-news media produced a diffuse mythic narrative, transforming New Orleans into a primitive swamp thar unleashed primordial and sinful crearures in the form of dangerous black brures who looted, reped, murder ed, and took over the ciry The nerrative implied rhat large militaristic forces, harnessed by white paternalistic heroes, were necessary ro rescue New Orleans' women, chil dren, and elderly from the black beasrs, Bur, mythic heroes never arrived in Katrina's aftermath. Instead, institutional officials demon ized black looters, absolved themselves of failures, lion ized local white civil servants and John Wayne lookalikes, and vilified the hur ricane victims as "third world" racial Others and criminals. The nanative expresses deep cultural fears that our democratic government and institutions will nor save us in times of trial, and our sacred white western heroes are simply relics of a time gone by.
News Images, Race, and Attribution in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina
Journal of Communication, 2010
This study looks at the effect of news images and race on the attribution of responsibility for the consequences of Hurricane Katrina. Participants, Black and White, read the same news story about the hurricane and its aftermath, manipulated to include images of White victims, Black victims, or no images at all. Participants were then asked who they felt was responsible for the humanitarian disaster after the storm. White respondents expressed less sense of government responsibility when the story included victims' images. For Black respondents this effect did not occur. Images did not affect attribution of responsibility to New Orleans' residents themselves. These findings are interpreted to support the expectations of framing theory with the images serving as episodic framing mechanisms.
Apocalypse: Media Framing of Black Looters, Shooters, and Brutes in Hurricane Katrina's Aftermath
Critical Rhetorics of Race: Chapter 1, 2011
In late August zoo5, the United States was exposed. Flurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast and became the most lethal and destructive hurricane in U,S. history,' causing y836 deaths, destroying 3oo,ooo homes,' andcosting $r5o billion in damages across three states.3 Media coverage of the storm's aftermath was marked by crime news reports that New Orleans had descended into chaos, anarchy, and lawlessness, Howev er, further investigation revealed that almost all news media reports of looting shootinB rapes, murders, and mayhem were unsubs tantiarcd, exaggerated, or false,* Federal and state government officials now believe thar the erroneous news reports "slowed the response to the disasrer and tarnish[ed] rhe image of the victimsj'5. Critical rhetorical scholars argue that popular culture discourse consrirutes a difuse text, embodied by discursive signs, fragmenrs, and recurring srorylines that tap into, invoke, and activate Larger fir€ta-rl arcatives or cultural myths that extend over time and space,6 yet are independently experienced by people,' The deep formal structures of news discourse create audience expectations based on previous or similar texts, forms, and experiences, offering mythic storylines and motivations that resolve cultural problems in familiar and nostalgic ways,t while concealing ideologies and cultural fears or anxieries.e In this chapter, we argve that Katrina's aftermath became a great human catastroPhe, because dominant U.S-news media produced a diffuse mythic narrative, transforming New Orleans into a primitive swamp thar unleashed primordial and sinful crearures in the form of dangerous black brures who looted, reped, murder ed, and took over the ciry The nerrative implied rhat large militaristic forces, harnessed by white paternalistic heroes, were necessary ro rescue New Orleans' women, chil dren, and elderly from the black beasrs, Bur, mythic heroes never arrived in Katrina's aftermath. Instead, institutional officials demon ized black looters, absolved themselves of failures, lion ized local white civil servants and John Wayne lookalikes, and vilified the hur ricane victims as "third world" racial Others and criminals. The nanative expresses deep cultural fears that our democratic government and institutions will nor save us in times of trial, and our sacred white western heroes are simply relics of a time gone by. ParadoxicaLly, such conditions provide an opportunity for uiticaL scholars and nimble politicians to face these problems, identify with human sufferin g, and become heroic. In this chapter, we describe F{urricane Katrina's impacu the critical methods and procedures we used to reconstruct the nar rative embodied by major news stories; and the structural features and functions of the narrative, which are (r) an apoc a\ypdcscene comprised of brudsh black looters and tainted evacuees and (z) fallen heroes, which include failed institutional leaders and local civil servant heroes. We also consider the implications of the media's reproduction of arche' typalblack villains and white western heroes in contemporary contexts, Brief History The National Hurricane Center (hereafter NHC) reported that Hurricane Katrina landed in New Orleans as a Category 4 storm, with driving rain and sustained winds of n5 miLes per hour and a storm surge with 3o-foot-high waves that crashed, topped, and breached the Lake Pontchartrain levees within minures.'o Eighty percent of the Crescent Ciry was fooded, some parts under zo feet of water. Dead bodies were seen floadng in the water," Two days earlier (on August zz), NHC Director Dr. Max Mayfield warned President Bush, FEMA Director Michael Brown, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertofi Louisiana Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, and New Orleans Mayor C. R"y Nagin that the levees could fail, and there could be a large loss of life," Mayor Nagin ordered a volun:.ary evacuation on August 27, tmandatory evasuation on August z8 (the first time in the city's history), and a total evacuation on August 3r. About 3oo,ooo people got out of the city through the only available roure, westbound via the I-ro span bridge, while about 9o,ooo did not," For the remaining residents, Mayor Nagin designated the New Orleans Superd.ome the "refuge of last resorti"a Once the Superdome reached its capacity (about 3o,ooo people), rescue workers sent people to the Convention Center; that number swelled to 2o,ooo people who waited to be rescued for three days under squalid conditions. FEMA ordered 18 medical disaster and rescue teams, along with supplies, equipment, wateL and MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) for ry,ooo people.'5 On August lr, FEMA staff members told director Brown that people were dying at the Superdome, On September z, 6,5oo National Guard roops arrived in New Orleans, providing food and water to the evacuees and restoring order. On September 3 and September 4, +2,ooo evacuees were bused to other U.S. cities.'6 About z,ooo people remained trapped in hotels, hospitals, schools, and homes,'t most of whom were airlifted off rooftops over the next two days.
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 2006
Hurricane Katrina, which hit the Central Gulf Coast in August 2005, was undoubtedly one of the worst natural disasters to strike the United States in the age of round-the-clock media journalism. Television coverage of Hurricane Katrina brought to the forefront the costs of disadvantage along racial and class lines. Needless to say, the victims left behind were disproportionately African American, elderly, and impoverished residents of the area. While the focus of media discussions centered around whether African Americans were abandoned by governmental agencies or if they were to blame for not heeding the call to evacuate, there was a complete absence of coverage and discussion of Hispanic and Asian American residents of the area, who are also disproportionately poor and many of whom lacked English skills to navigate the little help available to residents. This essay briefly discusses the few newspaper articles that examined these populations; Hispanic and Asian American journalists wrote almost all of these articles. I then examine how the lack of attention to these populations shapes our common understandings of race and why this may be problematic both in the United States and in a global environment.
Reporters Gone Wild": Reporters and Their Critics on Hurricane Katrina, Gender, Race & Place
The journal of e-media studies, 2009
The great fiction of the southern United States is frequently characterized by its passionate embrace of place. In her classic essay, "Place in Fiction," the widely beloved Mississippi author Eudora Welty writes, "Place in history partakes of feeling, as feeling about history partakes of place. Feelings are bound up in place. Location is the ground conductor of all the currents of emotion and belief and moral conviction that charge out from the story in its course."1 Welty's rich stories evoke larger traditions of southern art and everyday culture imbued with multifaceted understandings of place. Starting with Welty's insight, in this essay I discuss the relationship of place and emotion and the expression of that relationship in journalistic storytelling-specifically, the rituals and techniques evident in the televised cable network news coverage of Hurricane Katrina as the storm and its aftermath devastated parts of the U.S. South. My aim is not primarily to provide yet another critique of network reporting (although much of it is ripe for such analysis), nor is it to present a systematic content analysis of television news texts. Rather, this essay offers a meta-critique, examining prominent published evaluations of the reporting in the earliest hours of the disaster, with a particular focus on moments in which normative national network news practices quite literally "broke down." I argue, in part, that "senses of place" are essential to better understandings of the "break down" of mainstream network reporting practices. Places are discourses, physical settings and ideological groundings; they are both where one is, and where one should be (as in one should know "their place"). But, importantly, they are about more than physical territory and are, in a broad sense, political. "Places are contested, intersecting, and uncertain, clearly shaped by power relations and human interests."2 While there are no essential meanings of a place or places outside of culture and particular social and historical contexts, as such meanings are understood, reproduced, discussed and enacted in daily encounters, they are powerful in their employment. Much more than a simple geography or a physical space, place matters. The control, credibility and construction of place(s) are essential concerns within mainstream television journalism. One need look no further than their familiar late local newscast "live" reporter standing outside of a long-closed and darkened city hall, county building or state capitol to view the routinized investment of "live" television news in place. Why is the reporter standing where there is nothing happening and nothing new has occurred? In large part it is because the ritualistic performances of television news are so heavily grounded in myths of liveness and their vital connections to place. Among the best illustrations of these investments are the conventions of live, on the spot reporting during large-scale crises or disasters. The practice of rushing to specific geographic points-chosen locations "central" to the crisis-and broadcasting live from such locations regardless of what may or may not be happening at the moment of live broadcast is commonplace. As Riegert and Olsson (2007) explain, such "live, at the place where news is happening" reporting "is as much about ritual and meaning-making as it is about providing information".3 Newscasts continuing with a "breaking" news story pertaining to a local or national crisis for hour after hour, with little, if any, substantive new information to offer its audience and larger public, serve to proffer reporters less as informers than as comforters, advocates and co-mourners.4 Such common rituals work to legitimate and reinforce the mythology of a societal "center" at which media institutions reside.5 Through ritual practices such as the live, on the spot reporter in the midst of crisis or disaster, audiences and publics are persuaded to think of media as standing in for something
WORLDS APART: Blacks and Whites React to Hurricane Katrina
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 2006
Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster that destroyed New Orleans, a major U.S. city, and it is reasonable to expect all Americans to react with sympathy and support for the disaster's victims and efforts to restore the city. From another vantage point, however, Hurricane Katrina can be seen more narrowly, as a disaster that disproportionately afflicted the poor Black inhabitants of New Orleans. Past research demonstrates a large racial divide in the support of issues with clear racial overtones, and we examine the possibility of a racial divide in reactions to Katrina using data from a national telephone survey of White and Black Americans. We find large racial differences in sympathy for the hurricane's victims, the adequacy of the federal government's response, and support for proposed solutions to mend hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, verifying the racial nature of the disaster. Blacks viewed the hurricane victims more positively than did Whites, drew a sharper distinction between and felt more sympathy for those stranded than for those who evacuated New Orleans, and were substantially more supportive of government efforts to improve the situation of hurricane victims and rebuild New Orleans. This racial gap is as large as any observed in recent polls; persists even after controlling for education, income, and other possible racial differences; and documents more fully differences that were hinted at in public opinion polls reported at the time of the disaster. We spell out the implications of this divide for racial divisions within U.S. politics more generally.