| Sep. 4th,
2005 @ 07:30 pm Lost in the Flood [from SLATE] |
Current Mood:  angry Current Music:
Octane (SIRIUS Ch. 20 - DISH Network Ch. 6020) More people
reading my mind. This was actually from mid-week but still packs a
punch.
Lost in the Flood
Why no mention of race or class
in TV's Katrina coverage?
By Jack Shafer
http://www.slate.com/
What
the newscasters didn't say
I can't say I saw everything that
the TV newscasters pumped out about Katrina, but I viewed enough
repeated segments to say with 90 percent confidence that
broadcasters covering the New Orleans end of the disaster demurred
from mentioning two topics that must have occurred to every sentient
viewer: race and class.
Nearly every rescued person,
temporary resident of the Superdome, looter, or loiterer on the high
ground of the freeway I saw on TV was African-American. And from the
look of it, they weren't wealthy residents of the Garden District.
This storm appears to have hurt blacks more directly than whites,
but the broadcasters scarcely mentioned that fact.
Now, don't
get me wrong. Just because 67 percent of New Orleans residents are
black, I don't expect CNN to rename the storm "Hurricane" Carter in
honor of the black boxer. Just because Katrina's next stop after
destroying coastal Mississippi was counties that are 25 percent to
86 percent African-American (according to this U.S. Census map), and
27.9 percent of New Orleans residents are below the poverty line, I
don't expect the Rev. Jesse Jackson to call the news channels to
give a comment. But in the their frenzy to beat freshness into the
endless loops of disaster footage that have been running all day,
broadcasters might have mentioned that nearly all the visible people
left behind in New Orleans are of the black persuasion, and mostly
poor.
To be sure, some reporters sidled up to the race and
class issue. I heard them ask the storm's New Orleans victims why
they hadn't left town when the evacuation call came. Many said they
were broke—"I live from paycheck to paycheck," explained one woman.
Others said they didn't own a car with which to escape and that they
hadn't understood the importance of evacuation.
But I don't
recall any reporter exploring the class issue directly by getting a
paycheck-to-paycheck victim to explain that he couldn't risk leaving
because if he lost his furniture and appliances, his pots and pans,
his bedding and clothes, to Katrina or looters, he'd have no way to
replace them. No insurance, no stable, large extended family that
could lend him cash to get back on his feet, no middle-class job to
return to after the storm.
What accounts for the
broadcasters' timidity? I saw only a couple of black faces anchoring
or co-anchoring but didn't see any black faces reporting from New
Orleans. So, it's safe to assume that the reluctance to talk about
race on the air was a mostly white thing. That would tend to imply
that white people don't enjoy discussing the subject. But they do,
as long as they get to call another white person racist.
My
guess is that Caucasian broadcasters refrain from extemporizing
about race on the air mostly because they fear having an Al Campanis
moment. Campanis, you may recall, was the Los Angeles Dodgers vice
president who brought his career to an end when he appeared on
Nightline in 1987 and explained to Ted Koppel that blacks might not
have "some of the necessities" it takes to manage a major league
team or run it as a general manager for the same reason black people
aren't "good swimmers." They lack "buoyancy," he said.
Not to
excuse Campanis, but as racists go he was an underachiever. While
playing in the minor leagues, he threw down his mitt and challenged
another player who was bullying Jackie Robinson. As Dodger GM, he
aggressively signed black and Latino players, treated them well, and
earned their admiration. Although his Nightline statement was
transparently racist, in the furor that followed, nobody could cite
another racist remark he had ever made. His racism, which surely
blocked blacks from potential front-office Dodger careers, was the
racism of overwhelming ignorance—a trait he shared (shares?) with
many other baseball executives.
This sort of latent racism
(or something more potent) may lurk in the hearts of many white
people who end up on TV, as it does in the hearts of many who watch.
Or, even if they're completely clean of racism's taint, anchors and
reporters fear that they'll suffer a career-stopping Campanis moment
by blurting something poorly thought out or something that gets
misconstrued. Better, most think, to avoid discussing race at all
unless someone with impeccable race credentials appears to
supervise—and indemnify—everybody from potentially damaging charges
of racism.
Race remains largely untouchable for TV because
broadcasters sense that they can't make an error without destroying
careers. That's a true pity. If the subject were a little less
taboo, one of last night's anchors could have asked a reporter, "Can
you explain to our viewers, who by now have surely noticed, why 99
percent of the New Orleans evacuees we're seeing are
African-American? I suppose our viewers have noticed, too, that the
provocative looting footage we're airing and re-airing seems to
depict mostly African-Americans."
If the reporter on the
ground couldn't answer the questions, a researcher could have
Nexised the New Orleans Times-Picayune five-parter from 2002,
"Washing Away," which reported that the city's 100,000 residents
without private transportation were likely to be stranded by a big
storm. In other words, what's happening is what was expected to
happen: The poor didn't get out in time.
To the question of
looting, an informed reporter or anchor might have pointed out that
anybody—even one of the 500 Nordic blondes working in broadcast
news—would loot food from a shuttered shop if they found themselves
trapped by a flood and had no idea when help would come. However
sympathetic I might be to people liberating necessities during a
disaster in order to survive, I can't muster the same tolerance for
those caught on camera helping themselves in a leisurely fashion to
dry goods at Wal-Mart. Those people weren't looting as much as they
were shopping for good stuff to steal. MSNBC's anchor Rita Cosby,
who blurted an outraged if inarticulate harrumph when she aired the
Wal-Mart heist footage, deserves more respect than the broadcasters
who gave the tape the sort of nonjudgmental commentary they might
deliver if they were watching the perps vacuum the carpets at
home.
When disaster strikes, Americans—especially
journalists—like to pretend that no matter who gets hit, no matter
what race, color, creed, or socioeconomic level they hail from,
we're all in it together. This spirit informs the 1997 disaster
flick Volcano, in which a "can't we all just get along" moment
arrives at the film's end: Volcanic ash covers every face in the big
crowd scene, and everybody realizes that we're all members of one
united race.
But we aren't one united race, we aren't one
united class, and Katrina didn't hit all folks equally. By failing
to acknowledge upfront that black New Orleanians—and perhaps black
Mississippians—suffered more from Katrina than whites, the TV
talkers may escape potential accusations that they're racist. But by
ignoring race and class, they boot the journalistic opportunity to
bring attention to the disenfranchisement of a whole definable
segment of the population. What I wouldn't pay to hear a Fox anchor
ask, "Say, Bob, why are these African-Americans so poor to begin
with?" |
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