"the Beltway press ... hatched the bogus 'Obama's Katrina' meme"

[babylonsister]

http://mediamatters.org/blog/201005040057


Whitewashing the Bush legacy
May 04, 2010 6:33 pm ET by Jamison Foser


This morning, Eric Boehlert demonstrated that "the Beltway press ... hatched the bogus 'Obama's Katrina' meme":

That speculation-as-news approach then allowed the AP's Woodward -- based on no actual reporting -- to wonder out loud, "Will this be Obama's Katrina?" Keep in mind, nobody quoted or mentioned in the article ever raised the Katrina specter. That was introduced by the AP, and the AP alone. So with the help of the AP, the "Obama's Katrina" ball began to roll.

...

It probably shouldn't have to be noted, but I'll do it here anyway: Journalists are supposed to be in the business of reporting news, not manufacturing it. But in this case, the "Obama's Katrina" angle appeared to be too alluring for journalists to ignore and to not manufacture.

The comparison of the Obama administration's response to the BP oil spill to Bush's handling of Hurricane Katrina is so fundamentally absurd, it can only be made by whitewashing Bush's shameful record.

The Christian Science Monitor, for example, summarized "the Bush administration's outwardly out-of-touch response to hurricane Katrina":

Bush visited the disaster zone five days after Katrina hit. If Obama arrives in Louisiana on Sunday, nine days will have passed since the Coast Guard announced the leak.

So, according to the Christian Science Monitor, the Bush administration was guilty merely of an "outwardly out-of-touch" response -- though Bush made it to the disaster zone faster than Obama!

That's insane.

The problem with the Bush administration's handling of Katrina wasn't that it was "outwardly out-of-touch" -- it was that it was disastrously inept and breathtakingly dishonest. And it wasn't helped by the fact that Bush put a staggeringly unqualified horse trainer in charge of FEMA.

But, in order to pretend that Barack Obama's response to the recent oil spill has anything at all in common with George Bush's response to Katrina, the press has to gloss over all that, and pretend that Bush just seemed a little out-of-touch. This is only the most recent example of the media whitewashing Bush's disastrous presidency. Last week, I noted the remarkably sanitized language McClatchy used to describe Bush's Iraq legacy.

Here's an indication of just how watered-down the descriptions of Katrina have been in recent "Obama's Katrina" stories: Michael Brown has only been mentioned once:

Number of Nexis hits for "Obama's Katrina" in the past month: 97

Number of Nexis hits for "Obama's Katrina AND Michael Brown" in the past month: 1

[Uzybone]

1. laziness, amateurism, immaturity, corruption and ineptness

characterize our "Press Corps" today

[City Lights]

2. I have the beltway press corpse on ignore.

:nuke:

[Cha]

3. Shame on the Christian Science Monitor..

didn't know they were so shallow. The beltway press/AP/mediawhores proves once again how bad they are at covering up bush's crimes..and disingenuously salivating they are at trying to make Pres Obama look bad.

[sandnsea]

6. They changed last year

They went to short articles, little more than repeats of AP news. It appears they've lost their objectivity too. It's too bad, they used to put out some in-depth articles that were complete and reliable.

[Cha]

9. I remember that..you could count

on them for objectivity..that's too bad that another "media" source is down the rabbit hole.

[Jennicut]

4. Bush allowed people to suffer for days while he and his administration fought petty fights

with the Governor of Louisiana. Today, my conservative mother repeated the lie to me that the Gov. Blanco was the one who caused the disaster in Katrina. The media never really wanted to get Bush on the hook it is just that they watched the suffering with their own eyes and were so disgusted they couldn't help themselves. With Obama, where is the outrage on the ground? There is none because there is no people suffering with lack of water and lack of clean bathrooms and living areas, etc. This is not Katrina. It is a corporate disaster. It brings about questions as to off shore drilling being a terrible idea. But Obama did not waste days trying to address a natural disaster as people were literally dying on tv.

[mrcheerful]

5. Not to mention that Clinton had money set aside to repair and beef up the levies

which * then declared didn't need repairs or beefing up so he used the money set aside for levies to give his rich friends a tax cut. Obama had nothing to do with the BP drilling platforms, again that was con deregulations and letting businesses decide to police themselves crap.

[Jennicut]

10. Yup. Bush deliberately looked the other way time and again.

[jillan]

7. Bush had WARNINGs that Katrina was going to hit, just like he had warnings that Al Queda was going

to fly planes into buildings.

That's the difference right there. Obama did not have a warning. Yes I know this was bound to happen sooner or later, but he did not get a memo or news warning him when it will happen.

That's the difference right there. Bush had time to prepare, and didn't. Obama didn't.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

8. If I was in charge I would round up all the Beltway press

[Puzzler]

11. As the Guardian pointed out last year...

... the US media seems to spend much of its time reporting on itself. It's a great way to manufacture rumors, and ultimately manufacture "news".

[tsuki]

13. Yes, they seem to take their "celebrity" very seriously. nt

[graycem]

12. Manufactured by media indeed...

I heard Nora O. on MSNBC ask someone in an interview, "Is this Obama's Katrina?" Two days later she said in another interview, "some say this is Obama's Katrina..." Yeah Nora, YOU are the "some people!" Geeze.

[Phx_Dem]

14. They also hatched the "he almost got away!!!!" meme.

But, he didn't get away, did he? And he didn't "almost get away." Even if the plane had taken off, they would simply have told the pilot to turn around and come back. If it had laned in Dubai, they would have sent him right back.

They catch the guy in 53 hours, and media bitches. Figures.

OMG!!! PANTS ON FIRE!!
:eyes:

[Aramchek]

15. of course they did. The Big Lie is all they have left.