New Orleans Superdome and Convention Center: The Killing Fields?

The press has spent the last few weeks patting themselves on their backs regarding their coverage of the horrors of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Well, odds are these are the same reporters who hide out at the pool in Baghdad and report body counts in Iraq, but never get near the real news.

We were led to believe that there was wide spread carnage in these two shelters. They got things so riled up, the rescue workers had a morgue in an 18 wheeler to bring out the hundreds of bodies that were supposed to be in there.

Well the official count is in and the Superdome had 6 dead, the Convention Center 4. Of these deaths there were 6 of natural causes, 2 murders, 1 overdose, and 1 person fell to their death.

TEN DEATHS!

That is all. 50,000 people moved and amidst a horrendous storm, a city ravaged, and only 10 people died in these two shelters. All the while the reporters are repeating verbatim that these sites were full of the dead and the dying. The 7 year olds and the infants raped and left for dead.

These same self satisfied reporters who obviously never ventured into the shelters to see and god forbid report on the story. They took anecdotal evidence and ran with it.

So here we sit with a media that will not go back and self correct. Shepard Scott will not go on his newscast and admit he stayed outside of the fray and did not really go into the Superdome to visually report on the murders that he was so passionately telling America. Geraldo self satisfied smirking as he stood outside of the Convention Center screaming about the mayhem outside as he needed police protection himself. The Police Commander who went on TV screaming that they needed help and that the people were killing themselves in there.

The implied racism screaming from our reporters. The implication that the people of New Orleans were so savage, so untamed, and never said but always implied, oh so black. They were completely willing to believe the stories that America was racist, that blacks were being abused, and that the blacks were rebelling in this environment.

The truth is, the opposite occurred. And the reporters were so racist that they were scared to go into these shelters and report the story. Nope, instead they put on their bereaved faces, and never did their job.

You know, this may have been the day when we saw the true face of todays reporters. They themselves will tell us over and over this is the best they have to offer.

I will stick with blogs, thank you very much. 

VIDEO from NRO of the actual accounts of what took place at the Super Dome from Fox Day Side.

Lorie at PoliPundit; How Many More Katrina Stories Will Be Found To Be Inaccurate?

Michelle Malkin; POST-KATRINA CRIME: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED?

Also covering the exaggeration:
Hyscience;About Those Superdome Myths

UPDATE: Seattle Times; Reports of anarchy at Superdome overstated

“I had the impression that at least 40 or 50 murders had occurred at the two sites,” he said. “It’s unfortunate we saw these kinds of stories saying crime had taken place on a massive scale when that wasn’t the case. And they [national media outlets] have done nothing to follow up on any of these cases; they just accepted what people [on the street] told them. … It’s not consistent with the highest standards of journalism.”

LA Times: Katrina Takes a Toll on Truth, News Accuracy

I guess the real question should be, why are we surprised anymore by this? It is a shame though that the MSM cannot fact check or confirm stories anymore. They have the audacity to question blogs for truth in reporting?

The New Orleans Times-Picayune on Monday described inflated body counts, unverified “rapes,” and unconfirmed sniper attacks as among examples of “scores of myths about the dome and Convention Center treated as fact by evacuees, the media and even some of New Orleans’ top officials.”

Indeed, Mayor C. Ray Nagin told a national television audience on “Oprah” three weeks ago of people “in that frickin’ Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people.”

Wizbang adding that the MSM is “Rewriting History – Katrina Media Myths Exposed”
The American Mind: Katrina Mayhem Myths
Ace of Spades nails it; MSM’s Excuse For Reporting Hyperbolic Rumors After Katrina? Black People Just Make Shit Up! Looks like there is someone else wondering why bloggers are held to a higher standard.

The media should know that. Their job is not to report rumors — for crying out loud, bloggers are taken to task for doing just that even though we, you know, don’t — but to verify stories as true and then report them.