Much Complete Washout of N.O. Reality Not Exaggerated - [feeble update]

It now appears that a good deal of the Media wet dream after Katrina -- babies raped, murders galore, widespread social devolution -- was, according to New York TimeSpeak, "exaggerated." The exact headline is:

Some Reports of N.O. Violence Exaggerated

It's not even a Times story, but an AP story, which is attempting, wimpily, to at least report the fact that the reporting in the wake of Katrina offered some Grand Guignol without the theater, tickets, or enjoyably dissolute patrons. You gotta love that "Some." The Independent is, if nothing else, clearer:

"It just morphed into this mythical place where the most unthinkable deeds were being done," Ed Bush of the National Guard told yesterday's Los Angeles Times. Only now, one month later, is the record being set straight.

So the US media, given a chance now to clear up a few fantasias, once more turns its attention to Brownie, or to Jon Voigt playing John Paul. Anything, in fact, except the truth about your own ability to accurately report the truth.

If you tried to distort some fact about the NY Times even nowhere close to the extent it and its fellow high priests of the 4th Estate have distorted the Katrina chronicles, e.g., "The New York Times Understands Public Discourse" - (ha haaaaaaaaaaaa, hohohohohewhewhewhahahahohoheehahaheeeeeee!!!!) the Times would have its entire bevy of lawyers doing the Hamster Dance on your tympana.

The big errors - the real whoppers - are simply too obese to fit into the precise, clinical genre of the Correction.

One story that appears to still hold up is the reporting by Burnett and the Post on the Morial Center. Especially that bit, overlooked by everyone (1), about the 257 National Guardsmen, sons of Louisiana, Past Masters of the Arts of Self Concealment.

One reads the Times, (the free bits) because its daily self-deceptions, its normative swerve from its own headlight-haloed face, when decoded, offer wisps of insight into the bowels of USian news production, where the light mayn't shine.

(1) Update: The Times of Sept. 28th, 2005, buries the Morial story inside a big picture account of why the National Guard deserves our understanding. It helpfully points out that the fellow commanding the guard at the Morial is an architect in real life. It still does not explain why emergency messages about the Morial did not get to people in a position to offer relief in a timely manner. There were two - count 'em: 2 - places where large quantities of the unraptured had been huddled: the Superdome and the Morial. One - the Dome - got help after the Guard moved its own headquarters there. The other got bupkis.