MSM: Erratum
In a bid to help that paper of record in it's new "For the Record" policy of corrections for op-eds, a few selections from this past month.
Claim #1:
"Why have aid and security taken so long to arrive? Katrina hit five days ago -- and it was already clear by last Friday that Katrina could do immense damage along the Gulf Coast. Yet the response you'd expect from an advanced country never happened. Thousands of Americans are dead or dying, not because they refused to evacuate, but because they were too poor or too sick to get out without help -- and help wasn't provided. Many have yet to receive any help at all."
Author:
Krugman, Paul
Publish Date:
2 September 2005, "A Can't-Do Government"
Rebuttal:
"As of Friday, the state health department reported 932 deaths in Louisiana from Hurricane Katrina." Source, NYT Online.
=====
Claim #2:
America is once more plunged into a snake pit of anarchy, death, looting, raping, marauding thugs, suffering innocents, a shattered infrastructure, a gutted police force, insufficient troop levels and criminally negligent government planning. But this time it's happening in America.
Author:
Dowd, Maureen
Publish Date:
3 September 2005, "United States Of Shame"
Rebuttal:
A month later, a review of the available evidence now shows that some, though not all, of the most alarming stories that coursed through the city appear to be little more than figments of frightened imaginations, the product of chaotic circumstances that included no reliable communications, and perhaps the residue of the longstanding raw relations between some police officers and members of the public. Source, NYT Online.
=====
Claim #3:
But now, when W., Mr. Cheney, Laura, Rummy, Gen. Richard Myers, Michael Chertoff and the rest of the gang tell us everything's under control, our cities are safe, stay the course -- who believes them?
This time we can actually see the bodies.
As the water recedes, more and more decaying bodies will testify to the callous and stumblebum administration response to Katrina's rout of 90,000 square miles of the South.
But when people around the world look at Iraq, they don't see freedom. They see chaos and sectarian hatred. And when they look at New Orleans, they see glaring incompetence and racial injustice, where the rich white people were saved and the poor black people were left to die hideous deaths.
Author:
Dowd, Maureen
Publish Date:
7 September 2005, "Haunted By Hesitation"
Rebuttal:
Ibid 1 & 2 above as well as:
On Wednesday, however, Dr. Louis Cataldie, the state's medical incident commander for Hurricane Katrina victims, said that only six or seven deaths appear to have been the result of homicides.
During six days when the Superdome was used as a shelter, the head of the New Orleans Police Department's sex crimes unit, Lt. David Benelli, said he and his officers lived inside the dome and ran down every rumor of rape or atrocity. In the end, they made two arrests for attempted sexual assault, and concluded that the other attacks had not happened. Source, NYT Online.
=====
Claim #4:
By the afternoon of Monday, Aug. 29, the flooding of New Orleans was well under way -- city officials publicly confirmed a breach in the 17th Street Canal at 2 p.m. Yet on Tuesday federal officials were still playing down the problem, and large-scale federal aid didn't arrive until last Friday.
The media will be tempted to revert to he-said-she-said stories rather than damning factual accounts.
Author:
Krugman, Paul
Publish Date:
9 September 2005, "Point Those Fingers"
Rebuttal:
By late afternoon (ed - 29 August), the city police and rescuers had begun venturing out to look for stranded victims of Hurricane Katrina; no one knew how many people were in trouble. The worst damage in the city was thought to be in Mr. Milton's neighborhood, a mostly poor area known as the Lower Ninth Ward.
Downtown New Orleans and the French Quarter appeared to have been spared as the eye of the powerful storm passed just east of the city. Dire predictions of 20-foot-deep toxic rivers running in the streets and huge buildings coming apart did not materialize. Source, NYT Online.
=====
Claim#5:
(The President) can keep going back down there, as he will again on Thursday when he gives a televised speech to the nation, but he can never compensate for his tragic inattention during days when so many lives could have been saved.
Author:
Dowd, Maureen
Publish Date:
14 September 2005, "A Fatal Incuriosity"
Rebuttal:
Ibid all of the above.
=====
Claim #6:
President Bush subscribes to a political philosophy that opposes government activism -- that's why he has tried to downsize and privatize programs wherever he can.
Author:
Krugman, Paul
Publish Date:
16 September 2005, "Not The New Deal"
Rebuttal:
"Well, for the past four years actual tax receipts have consistently come in below expectations, so that the deficit is even bigger than one might have predicted given the administration's don't-tax-but-spend-anyway policies". Source: "Un-Spin the Budget", NYT Online, 11 July 2005. Author: Krugman, Paul
Is the policy "downsize and privatize" or "don't-tax-but-spend anyway"? Wait, this post deals with failures of correction not failures of consistentcy......
=====
Claim #7:
In a ruined city -- still largely without power, stinking with piles of garbage and still 40 percent submerged; where people are foraging in the miasma and muck for food, corpses and the sentimental detritus of their lives; and where unbearably sad stories continue to spill out about hordes of evacuees who lost their homes and patients who died in hospitals without either electricity or rescuers -- isn't it rather tasteless, not to mention a waste of energy, to haul in White House generators just to give the president a burnished skin tone and a prettified background?
Author:
Dowd, Maureen
Publish Date:
17 September 2005, "Disney On Parade"
Rebuttal:
Ibids above, again.
=====
Claim#8:
Who on earth could have known that New Orleans's sinking levees were at risk from a strong hurricane? Anybody who bothered to read the endless warnings over the years about the Big Easy's uneasy fishbowl.
Author:
Dowd, Maureen
Publish Date:
3 September 2005, "United States of Shame"
Rebuttal:
In the spirit of open-ness and transparency, Ms. Dowd should disclose how many of the "endless warnings over the years about the Big Easy's uneasy fishbowl" she read prior to Katrina's landfall. According to a "commercially available archive", from 01 January 1995 to 29 August 2005 the number of articles written by Ms. Dowd related to hurricanes, New Orleans, and levees = zero.
For the record, the number of mentions for hurricanes and Katrina-related information on this blog pre-landfall, 5.
=====
Claim#9:
Under George W. Bush -- who, like Mr. Reagan, isn't personally racist but relies on the support of racists -- the anti-government right has reached a new pinnacle of power.
Author:
Krugman, Paul
Publish Date:
19 September 2005, "Tragedy In Black And White"
Rebuttal:
It is Mr. Krugman who should be supplying facts for his categorical assertion on "the support of racists" for President Bush.
=====
And we are just getting started.
Update: Poor and Stupid, Tim Worstall, and Michelle Malkin all weigh in.
Claim #1:
"Why have aid and security taken so long to arrive? Katrina hit five days ago -- and it was already clear by last Friday that Katrina could do immense damage along the Gulf Coast. Yet the response you'd expect from an advanced country never happened. Thousands of Americans are dead or dying, not because they refused to evacuate, but because they were too poor or too sick to get out without help -- and help wasn't provided. Many have yet to receive any help at all."
Author:
Krugman, Paul
Publish Date:
2 September 2005, "A Can't-Do Government"
Rebuttal:
"As of Friday, the state health department reported 932 deaths in Louisiana from Hurricane Katrina." Source, NYT Online.
=====
Claim #2:
America is once more plunged into a snake pit of anarchy, death, looting, raping, marauding thugs, suffering innocents, a shattered infrastructure, a gutted police force, insufficient troop levels and criminally negligent government planning. But this time it's happening in America.
Author:
Dowd, Maureen
Publish Date:
3 September 2005, "United States Of Shame"
Rebuttal:
A month later, a review of the available evidence now shows that some, though not all, of the most alarming stories that coursed through the city appear to be little more than figments of frightened imaginations, the product of chaotic circumstances that included no reliable communications, and perhaps the residue of the longstanding raw relations between some police officers and members of the public. Source, NYT Online.
=====
Claim #3:
But now, when W., Mr. Cheney, Laura, Rummy, Gen. Richard Myers, Michael Chertoff and the rest of the gang tell us everything's under control, our cities are safe, stay the course -- who believes them?
This time we can actually see the bodies.
As the water recedes, more and more decaying bodies will testify to the callous and stumblebum administration response to Katrina's rout of 90,000 square miles of the South.
But when people around the world look at Iraq, they don't see freedom. They see chaos and sectarian hatred. And when they look at New Orleans, they see glaring incompetence and racial injustice, where the rich white people were saved and the poor black people were left to die hideous deaths.
Author:
Dowd, Maureen
Publish Date:
7 September 2005, "Haunted By Hesitation"
Rebuttal:
Ibid 1 & 2 above as well as:
On Wednesday, however, Dr. Louis Cataldie, the state's medical incident commander for Hurricane Katrina victims, said that only six or seven deaths appear to have been the result of homicides.
During six days when the Superdome was used as a shelter, the head of the New Orleans Police Department's sex crimes unit, Lt. David Benelli, said he and his officers lived inside the dome and ran down every rumor of rape or atrocity. In the end, they made two arrests for attempted sexual assault, and concluded that the other attacks had not happened. Source, NYT Online.
=====
Claim #4:
By the afternoon of Monday, Aug. 29, the flooding of New Orleans was well under way -- city officials publicly confirmed a breach in the 17th Street Canal at 2 p.m. Yet on Tuesday federal officials were still playing down the problem, and large-scale federal aid didn't arrive until last Friday.
The media will be tempted to revert to he-said-she-said stories rather than damning factual accounts.
Author:
Krugman, Paul
Publish Date:
9 September 2005, "Point Those Fingers"
Rebuttal:
By late afternoon (ed - 29 August), the city police and rescuers had begun venturing out to look for stranded victims of Hurricane Katrina; no one knew how many people were in trouble. The worst damage in the city was thought to be in Mr. Milton's neighborhood, a mostly poor area known as the Lower Ninth Ward.
Downtown New Orleans and the French Quarter appeared to have been spared as the eye of the powerful storm passed just east of the city. Dire predictions of 20-foot-deep toxic rivers running in the streets and huge buildings coming apart did not materialize. Source, NYT Online.
=====
Claim#5:
(The President) can keep going back down there, as he will again on Thursday when he gives a televised speech to the nation, but he can never compensate for his tragic inattention during days when so many lives could have been saved.
Author:
Dowd, Maureen
Publish Date:
14 September 2005, "A Fatal Incuriosity"
Rebuttal:
Ibid all of the above.
=====
Claim #6:
President Bush subscribes to a political philosophy that opposes government activism -- that's why he has tried to downsize and privatize programs wherever he can.
Author:
Krugman, Paul
Publish Date:
16 September 2005, "Not The New Deal"
Rebuttal:
"Well, for the past four years actual tax receipts have consistently come in below expectations, so that the deficit is even bigger than one might have predicted given the administration's don't-tax-but-spend-anyway policies". Source: "Un-Spin the Budget", NYT Online, 11 July 2005. Author: Krugman, Paul
Is the policy "downsize and privatize" or "don't-tax-but-spend anyway"? Wait, this post deals with failures of correction not failures of consistentcy......
=====
Claim #7:
In a ruined city -- still largely without power, stinking with piles of garbage and still 40 percent submerged; where people are foraging in the miasma and muck for food, corpses and the sentimental detritus of their lives; and where unbearably sad stories continue to spill out about hordes of evacuees who lost their homes and patients who died in hospitals without either electricity or rescuers -- isn't it rather tasteless, not to mention a waste of energy, to haul in White House generators just to give the president a burnished skin tone and a prettified background?
Author:
Dowd, Maureen
Publish Date:
17 September 2005, "Disney On Parade"
Rebuttal:
Ibids above, again.
=====
Claim#8:
Who on earth could have known that New Orleans's sinking levees were at risk from a strong hurricane? Anybody who bothered to read the endless warnings over the years about the Big Easy's uneasy fishbowl.
Author:
Dowd, Maureen
Publish Date:
3 September 2005, "United States of Shame"
Rebuttal:
In the spirit of open-ness and transparency, Ms. Dowd should disclose how many of the "endless warnings over the years about the Big Easy's uneasy fishbowl" she read prior to Katrina's landfall. According to a "commercially available archive", from 01 January 1995 to 29 August 2005 the number of articles written by Ms. Dowd related to hurricanes, New Orleans, and levees = zero.
For the record, the number of mentions for hurricanes and Katrina-related information on this blog pre-landfall, 5.
=====
Claim#9:
Under George W. Bush -- who, like Mr. Reagan, isn't personally racist but relies on the support of racists -- the anti-government right has reached a new pinnacle of power.
Author:
Krugman, Paul
Publish Date:
19 September 2005, "Tragedy In Black And White"
Rebuttal:
It is Mr. Krugman who should be supplying facts for his categorical assertion on "the support of racists" for President Bush.
=====
And we are just getting started.
Update: Poor and Stupid, Tim Worstall, and Michelle Malkin all weigh in.
posted by Georges at 05:54
<< Home