THE NY TIMES ADDRESSES THE ROLE OF RUMOR IN NEW ORLEANS

If your only source for news is the New York Times, you're always the last to know anything unflattering to Democrats or the press. And when the Times finally gets around to telling you about it, there's a good chance that they're leaving quite a bit out.

Case in point: The NY Times finally follows where the LA Times, the Times-Picayune and the AP have led, examining the role of rumor mongering in relief efforts after the levees broke in New Orleans. Here's the nut sentence:

What became clear is that the rumor of crime, as much as the reality of the public disorder, often played a powerful role in the emergency response.

Ya think so? Is it possible that all the rumors combined with the meltdown at the city level and the incompetence at the state level might have had a thing or two with how the whole situation played out?

That sentence comes in the 16th paragraph of the story. It should be rewritten and cast as the lead, because it is the main and driving fact of the story: The relief response was hindered by rumors spread by Mayor Nagin and NOPD Superintendent Compass to the media, which spread them all around the world. That rumor mongering was a major reason for the multiple breakdowns. And imagine for a moment, if Nagin and Compass were telling the media so many things that weren't true, what were they telling FEMA? Former FEMA head Mike Brown has been castigated in the press for not knowing what was going on in New Orleans. How was he supposed to know anything reliable when his chief information sources were Nagin and Compass?

But that sentence I quoted above is as close as the Times gets to delivering any understanding of the actual role the rumors of violence and mayhem played. The rest of the story is devoted to debunking many of those rumors. That's a useful thing to do, if a little late. The rumors should be debunked, and the new ones coming from Nagin and Farrakhan about bombs destroying the levees might deserve a little attention as well. Perhaps the Times will get around to that one sometime next spring.

Additionally, the Times never--not once--addresses the media's role in taking the unverified rumors, reporting them as fact and then using them to smear FEMA and the Bush administration. The Times never examines whether or not the media's own rumor mongering contributed to the loss of a single life (hint: it did). The Times never casts its critical gaze back upon itself or any of the many journalists and pundits who got the story wrong and still get the story wrong.

It's clear now that the breakdown in New Orleans is easy to understand. Mayor Nagin failed to evacuate the city properly; that famous photo of the buses is proof. Thousands were left behind to ride out the storm, and then the levees broke, adding a new dimension of danger to an already precarious situation. The crisis brought out the absolute worst in Nagin, his supporting staff and Louisiana's indecisive governor, all of whom immediately blamed the Bush administration, played the race card, played the poor card and are all now playing the rebuild us at your expense card. FEMA was not to blame; it handled disaster relief in Mississippi and Alabama as well as it usually does. It handled the Rita relief in Texas as well as it usually does. FEMA isn't and wasn't the problem in New Orleans. Period.

But you will not learn that from the NY Times. Or from most pundits of either stripe, actually.

BY THE WAY, on a related note, LA Gov. Blanco testified before Congress today. The same panel that ripped Mike Brown gave Blanco a pass. She requested that the panel not ask her specifically about her response to Katrina, and the panel acquiesced. Instead, they got yet another session of bayou panhandling. But get this: After insisting that it's the time for "looking forward and not backward," Blanco accused Brown of lying under oath during his testimony yesterday:

In a tersely-worded statement Tuesday afternoon, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco called former FEMA director Mike Brown`s testimony at a congressional hearing "shocking." She says it was filled with falsehoods and misleading statements, all made under oath.

It's the same game she and so many Democrats played during the debacle--Now is not the time for finger-pointing, but Bush hates black people and is letting them die on purpose. The world let her get away with it then, and she'll get away with it now.

The next phase in all of this could well be a leftist generated call to indict Brown. And Blanco, having been given a pass by the allegedly Republican-controlled Congress, will presumably still be in office and the star witness for the prosecution.

CORRECTION: Blanco's testimony was before the Senate Finance Committee. Brown's was before a House investigative panel. So they weren't, as I reported above, speaking to the same panel. But still...why Republicans in the Senate let her rule out questions about her office's response to Katrina is beyond me.