Hurricane Katrina Presentation

**In the previous post, I linked the slideshow that accompanies research my group and I did about the media's coverage of Hurricane Katrina. Please reference the slides in addition to this post.**

The task of going through media coverage during and after the Hurricane Katrina crisis has been surprising in many ways. The project, to look at coverage as Katrina hit (August 25, 2005- August 31, 2005) and prior (coverage from Sept. 31, 2005 and beyond), allowed me to closely examine the media's influence on our perceptions of Katrina.

My first observation from viewing all this footage and reading numerous articles is how I was not desensitized from the images of Katrina, but just the opposite. Desensitization is the theory that when people are exposed to something to a great extent (often in looked at in regards to violence), the emotional impact of the image is weakened. I was certainly accustomed to images of Katrina prior to this project, but after this project, the weight of what happened, how many people were displaced, how poorly the government responded, the failure of the levees, and the overall tragedy of the situation, seemed all the more real.

I think that by examining reports that extended over a longer period of time and through various mediums, it becomes increasingly apparent why and how we percieve the Katrina catastrophe.

When examining coverage before the crisis, I found that the most effective journalism was that which stressed the urgency, was immediate and up-to-date, and provided useful information to both citizens being directly impacted by the hurricane and also those who needed to understand what was going on from a distance. The NPR report does a nice job relating to a wide audience through a subjective interview of what is happening near New Orleans. NBC's Nightly News coverage chose to present a formulaic, edited and somewhat detached look at the crisis. It showed the community of New Orleans but drew a line between those merely listening in on the coverage from a distance and those who would be impacted by it. The city was described as a "paradise" rather than a community that would be forever impacted and face years and years of trial and tribulation.

Prior to the crisis, the coverage tended to focus on familiar frames of racial disparity, victimization, "chaos", and at some points sensationalized coverage of the disaster. Effective pieces of coverage were those that chose to look at why this happened, how the government was responding, the current state of relief efforts, while trying to emphasis the suffering and awful situation that was going on in New Orleans. When looking at coverage prior, it is apparent how the media was attempting to pull in an audience and convey the chaos that surrounded the tragedy. However, at times the reports lose sight of being informative and their role as productive modes of communication and ultimately political action.

The coverage of Katrina is very hard to look at, even from a distance and years later. The media's role had to walk a thin line in attempting to get people emotionally involved but remaining a source of useful information and a check on government. When looking at the video of Anderson Cooper, you have to ask if his reaction is effective or ineffective? 

I hope the project allows viewers to see the scope of the coverage and compare the different frames and approaches to a story that is so complex.