Myths in the making

Abstract

Media commentator Fletcher writes: "Looking back, we can see that New Orleans was not British journalism's finest hour. Speculation rapidly became fact. Hearsay was presented as hard evidence. Caution diminished as the story grew. Only as the waters subsided did it become clear that many stories of murders, rapes and dead bodies were myths. The number of dead did not rise to tens of thousands - though around 1,000 did die in the state of Louisiana - and there was no epidemic. Andrew Gilligan, who reported from New Orleans for the London Evening Standard, says the press cast a slur on a devastated city: 'A city was libelled. As well as losing homes, and in some cases lives, the whole population was libelled as savages and criminals.'"

Peripheral vision as anthropological critique

“…However, critics pointed out that the government had been warned of the dangers of New Orleans's levies being breached but had woefully failed to act (Marable 2006). Furthermore, the media colluded in the peripheralization of the Katrina victims by presenting sensational images of looting and lawlessness combined with fantastical reports of alligators and snakes roaming the streets, corpses being eaten by "rats the size of small dogs, " and unconfi rmed reports of rape and murder in the Superdome (Fletcher 2005). As British reporter Andrew Gilligan observed, "as well as losing homes, and in some cases lives, the whole population was libelled as savages and criminals" (quoted in Fletcher 2005: 13).…”