Media Sat On Katrina Video For 6 Months

[kpete]

Media Sat On Katrina Video For 6 Months
A videotape of a briefing that occurred the day before Hurricane Katrina struck is blanketing television news. The coverage is appropriate; the tape proves that Bush and other top officials knew about the severity of the storm in advance and still were slow to respond.

What you won’t hear on TV is that the media have had this tape for six months but haven’t done anything with it. From the LA Times:

Department briefings are routinely recorded, said Knocke, adding that Homeland Security does not know how Associated Press got the footage of the Aug. 28 briefing. It was also obtained that day or the day after by a network and a cable affiliate, but neither aired it, he said.

The contents of the tape are clearly newsworthy. Which media organizations obtained the tape and why wasn’t it aired?

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/03/02/6-months-katrina-video/

[MadMaddie]

1. This is the the other story....of the story....

And it proves that certain media outlets are trying to protect the * cabal....

[spuddonna]

2. Exactly... Why now?

They were too afraid to take it to the air before? Think of how many news stories the newspapers and other media have 'sat' on... stories that weren't told because this admin 'asked' the reporters not to air them.

I think that the media was so cowed by the Dan Rather fiasco, and by fear of being excluded from the little news that comes from this admin. that they held the info until it was 'safe'. Now that the late night comedians can skewer Bush & Cheney with impunity, they feel 'brave' enough to start reporting. Plus, ratings wise, the timing is perfect what with Mardis Gras happening this week...

[bobbieinok]

5. didn't NYT sit on story of domestic spying for 1 year; did NOT

publish before 2004 election???????

[KansDem]

6. Yes!

The New York Times and the NSA's Illegal Spying Operation
Time-Delayed Journalism

<snip>
In the eighth paragraph of Risen and Lichtblau's story comes the shameful disclosure alluded to above:

The White House asked the New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be understand scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted.

Hersh put the word "massive" in his first sentence, and drew undeserved fire for exaggerating the extent of surveillance, which a presidential panel finally admitted was "considerable large-scale substantial". Risen and Lichtblau shirk any direct estimate of how big the NSA's domestic spying has been, though one can deduce from the ninth paragraph of the story that probably many thousands of people had their phone conversations, and emails and faxes illegally spied upon by the NSA.

The Times suggests that it held up the story for a year partly to do "additional reporting". This "additional reporting" seems to have yielded sparse results. Friday's story was extremely long, but pretty thin, once the basic fact of NSA eavesdropping had been presented. The year's work doesn't seem taken the reporters beyond what was urgently leaked to them in 2004 by twelve different government officials concerned about the illegality of what the NSA was doing and the lack of congressional oversight.

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn12172005.html

edited...

[elehhhhna]

3. What network? What cable affiliate? Lemme at 'em.

[npincus]

4. Why didn't NBC bother with this story on "The Today Show"

the most-watched morning show in America?

[KittyWampus]

7. Yes, and it's way more damaging NOW.

Back then Bush was already reeling and dropping way down in the polls.

If more DU'ers would just look at things objectively, we'd see that there are people leaking things out that are damaging Bush and the GOP at a constant rate.

[MADem]

8. AP probably got it as a matter of routine; they HAVE a video service

http://www.apdigitalnews.com/video.html

I think the reason no one focused on this is bacause the pictures coming out of NOLA were so much more compelling. Then Rover managed to push all the stink on Heckuva Job Brownie, and then they kept him on the payroll as a consultant for a couple of months so he'd be effectively muzzled.

Then, when they cut him loose, and people were still crapping on him, he fought back--so they dug up the tape they had already obtained.

No mystery on the AP angle, really. The troubling bit is that no one bothered to actually LOOK at the video before now.