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Bloomberg News using lazy inaccurate Katrina Shorthand to depict New Orleans flooding

Friday, September 18th, 2009

Residents attend a sign-shaking event hosted by Levees.org to demand the 8/29 Investigation. Photo by Armand Richardson, 5-31-08

The Bloomberg wire service, regarded as a premier site for news, ought to hold its writers to a high standard of accuracy and clarity. This applies as well when talking about what caused the damage to the city of New Orleans in 2005 because Bloomberg has so much influence over what the country understands about New Orleans.

So I wrote to Bloomberg today about Kim Chipman’s article “Disappearing Wetlands Taint New Orleans’ Rebound From Katrina.”

I let Ms. Chipman’s editor know that her portrayal of the storm itself as having “displaced 1 million residents and damaged more than half of New Orleans’ housing stock” is simply FALSE.

In the city of New Orleans, the displacement and damage was due overwhelmingly and primarily to the failure of man-made structures, the levees, designed and built by our Army Corps.

To say Katrina caused the displacement and damage is like saying traffic caused the destruction of the Minneapolis bridge.

Both Katrina and the traffic revealed structural flaws. Both Katrina and the traffic revealed blatant civil engineering mistakes.

I encouraged Bloomberg to follow the New York Time’s lead and please issue a correction.

Let’s see what happens.

New York Times issues correction to reporter’s description of New Orleans’ flooding

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

Sister Clare Cramer shakes a sign at rally hosted by Levees.org on May 31, 2008. Photo by Armand Richardson

The New York Times has issued a correction to one of its reporters’ rendition of what happened in metro New Orleans on August 29, 2005.

This is important because a prominent news source like the New York Times has much influence over what America understands about New Orleans.

It seems that on August 13, reporter Timothy Egan employed some overly brief, thus inaccurate wording to describe what caused the 2005 flooding. Such shorthand can lead many to believe New Orleans was simply overwhelmed by a natural disaster rather than the truth – that metro New Orleanians were mainly victims of structural engineering failures.

So the next day, the New York Times editorial board received a massive batch of letters from Levees.org supporters pointing out the unethical and harmful use of “Katrina shorthand.”

And two days later, noted author John McQuaid, co-author of Path of Destruction joined in the rollicking discussion. “This is not a minor semantic point,” he correctly observed.

The NYTimes’ book review section’s editor issued a correction on September 6.

The correction was satisfactory. And it was significant.

And we hope this is the first of many such corrections to be issued by major news sources all across the country.

Because to say Katrina flooded New Orleans is like saying traffic wrecked the Minneapolis bridge.

Both revealed structural flaws. Both revealed blatant civil engineering incompetence.

ASCE’s disaster manual could have been…but wasn’t

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

Another shout out to Mark Schleifstein.

Time after time, he demonstrates what journalism is supposed to be. His latest, an article in the Times Picayune on the American Society of Civil Engineers’ new disaster manual, was no exception:

http://www.nola.com/hurricane/index.ssf/2009/09/disasterinvestigation_rules_ch.html