Cut And Pasted From Instapundit....

I hate when people do this. I think that it is crap blogging, but so many do it these days, and it is not called for what it is.... just lazy junk. But I am being lazy and since the birdbrain at Peking Duck seems to think it is alright to cut, paste and pinch the whole loaf of some droopy liberal dreck op-ed from the "Pinch" Sulzberger inspired whiners and complainers at the tin-foil hat brigade


at the New York Times, so that all his bootlicking brownnoser fawning duck wanna-bees fall over all over themselves to agree to every little leftist anti-Bush comment that he posts,why shouldn't I feel it is ok, or even compelled to do it too! And since it is wine expo week here in Hong Kong and I have had [tonight] and will continue to consume more than my share of great and satisfying wines, here it is....

LOU DOLINAR HAS BEEN LOOKING INTO THE MEDIA FAILURES DURING KATRINA:

Remember the dozens, maybe hundreds, of rapes, murders, stabbings and deaths resulting from official neglect at the Superdome after Hurricane Katrina? The ones that never happened, as even the national media later admitted?

Sure, we all remember the original reporting, if not the back-pedaling.

Here's another one: Do you remember the dramatic TV footage of National Guard helicopters landing at the Superdome as soon as Katrina passed, dropping off tens of thousands saved from certain death? The corpsmen running with stretchers, in an echo of M*A*S*H, carrying the survivors to ambulances and the medical center? About how the operation, which also included the Coast Guard, regular military units, and local first responders, continued for more than a week?

Me neither. Except that it did happen, and got at best an occasional, parenthetical mention in the national media. The National Guard had its headquarters for Katrina, not just a few peacekeeping troops, in what the media portrayed as the pit of Hell. Hell was one of the safest places to be in New Orleans, smelly as it was. The situation was always under control, not surprisingly because the people in control were always there. . . .

I initially heard about the Dome headquarters from Maj. John T. Dressler, who serves with the National Guard Bureau in Washington D.C, an organization that coordinates efforts of State Guard units which serve under their respective governors. Dressler was present in the command tent there and pulled together after-action reports for the Guard as a whole from its fifty-plus individual state commands. His account was so far at variance with the picture the media portrayed that I suspected a hoax, as did my RCP editor. As it turns out, various Guard documents, personal memories, and sworn testimony support his story, which in Louisiana is no great secret. It's just the rest of the country that's been kept in the dark.

Read the whole thing. The Katrina reporting represented a massive media failure, one that they've never really admitted.

UPDATE: Reader Michael Parker emails:

It's only a failure if their goal was to report the news.

It was a raging success if you believe their goal was to diminish Bush.

Given how proud of their Katrina coverage the press remains to this day, it seems like the latter is the most likely.

It's certainly true that they have nothing to be proud of. Indeed, their mis-reporting hampered rescue efforts and may well have cost lives.

The American media has a job to do and that is to keep the American public informed. It is not to promote an agenda or yellow-journaistic news creation al-a William Randolph Hurst turn-of-the-century. The 'Rosebud' anachronism of that strategy is that now people actually can check your facts and also check the color and picture that you are painting. It is shit journalism and has no place in today's world.