I tried to post this at PressThink

It kept telling me that my Typekey validation had failed. Anyway, here's my post:

Two comments:

1. When the media starts "demanding answers" it tends to be like Cindy Sheehan, asking questions it's not really interested in the answers to. This is not really reporting. It's cross examination, which means trying to promote your own version of things and destroy someone else's credibility. Is that really the job of the press, to tell the public what to think? If journalists want to prosecute, they should go to law school.

2. Dave McLemore's post struck a chord with me. Perhaps my experience with being disappointed by photos I have taken, made me suspect that this disaster was much bigger than I could get from a TV image. I had a feeling that responding to this would be much more difficult to do adequately than previous disasters. For one thing, in most places when the rain stops the water runs off, the river goes down, etc. In New Orleans the water has to be pumped out, and if the pumps aren't working, it it doesn't run off. That alone should tell you that New Orleans was a massive disaster waiting to happen, just like Texas City in 1947, and that if the levees didn't hold they were going to be in deep sewage.

My first thought was that I had heard once that the city of New Orleans was below sea level, and then why would anybody live in a place like that. The more I learned from that point forward just reinforced that thought.

Here's something I have learned, but not from the MSM: FEMA doesn't respond to emergencies directly. It's a middle man. When it gets a request, it contacts others to come and help. That usually takes three or more days. Therefore, the city and state governments are expected to fill the gap. That didn't happen in New Orleans. That's tragic, but it doesn't help anything to start screaming about whose fault it is. That's pretty obvious. First, people who live there are at fault for living there. Second, the city's government and engineers are at fault for relying on pumps powered by the grid. to keep the city dry.

The media are now catching on, but their visceral hatred of George Bush won't let most reporters think this through.

Although I wondered why anybody would live in that city without the ability to get out quick, I didn't feel any anger toward anybody, until I noticed all the fury directed at FEMA, Michael Brown, Michael Chertoff and George Bush. Then I got ticked off.

I've known for years that everybody should have a 72-hour kit to tide them over until help can get to them. Why doesn't the MSM know that? Why couldn't they inform themselves about the realities of emergency management, and report the news without looking for a fall guy? Was everybody in the news industry a nasty little tattle-tale in kindergarten or did they have to learn it in J-school.

The media did a good job at telling us where to send aid, but not why the Red Cross wasn't allowed into the city when it first responded. Apparently all the reporters covering this debacle just assumed that FEMA was supposed to be there first, which is just false. Instead of investigating and getting the facts right, they dissolved into an orgy of fingerpointing and demagoguery while others were busy trying to get something done.

The big story about this was NOT who should be fired. It was that the city's preparation and emergency response capabilities were AWOL. And it would have been nice to explain to viewers and readers what preparations could have prevented the human suffering.

There were mistakes made. That ALWAYS happens. But the response of the federal government was no better or worse than it normally has been. If people weren't already primed with the goofy criticism over Bush taking a vacation, maybe they'd have stopped to think about how the story should have been reported.