Boing Boing: Katrina: a cameraman’s journal in NOLA
This diary excerpt is a must-read for anyone that would like to have a feel for what is has been going on in NOLA (New Orleans, Louisiana). It was written nine days ago – but is still highly relevant.
As the anonymous author writes:
I watched one of these news robots on the air last night standing at Camp and Canal Street – where it is safe – doing a national live shot saying that “everything is in place now” and “food is being distributed”, and “the National Guard is deployed in force….on the street” – it was pure fiction. This guy hasn’t left the safety of his air conditioned trailer complete with Subway sandwiches (from Baton Rouge) and Gatorade. It’s pathetic.
If the mainstream news was lying then, it’s probably lying still.
His advice:
As for the media… do a little fact checking, read more than one paper. Stay away from CNN, MSNBC and Fox. NPR and Nightline do a good job of looking beyond the headlines.
Useful, but how helpful is it? It’s crazy that there is still no useful way to manage the torrid media explosion of the past decade. There’s no way we can get a complete picture from a single news source, and there’s no single news source that’s fully reliable.
I just don’t know. For now, I just scan Google News and try to read news from a broad variety of different sources.
-Avi
