News of Deaths Greatly Exaggerated

The news of deaths at the Superdome and Convention Center were greatly exaggerated, along with the reports of violence throughout New Orleans.

No kidding.

A total of 10 bodies were recovered from both sites, and only one showed signs of criminal intent. This is in stark contrast to the hundreds of bodies that some claimed existed at both locations.

Dr. Louis Cataldie, the state Health and Human Services Department administrator overseeing the body recovery operation, said his teams were inundated with false reports about the Dome and Convention Center.

"We swept both buildings several times, because we kept getting reports of more bodies there," Cataldie said. "But it just wasn't the case."

Orleans Parish District Attorney Eddie Jordan said authorities had confirmed only four murders in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina - making it a typical week in a city that anticipated more than 200 homicides this year. Jordan expressed outrage at reports from many national media outlets that suffering flood victims had turned into mobs of unchecked savages.

"I had the impression that at least 40 or 50 murders had occurred at the two sites," he said. "It's unfortunate we saw these kinds of stories saying crime had taken place on a massive scale when that wasn't the case. And they (national media outlets) have done nothing to follow up on any of these cases, they just accepted what people (on the street) told them. ... It's not consistent with the highest standards of journalism."

As floodwaters forced tens of thousands of evacuees into the Dome and Convention Center, news of unspeakable acts poured out of the nation's media: evacuees firing at helicopters trying to save them; women, children and even babies raped with abandon; people killed for food and water; a 7-year-old raped and killed at the Convention Center. Police, according to their chief, Eddie Compass, found themselves in multiple shootouts inside both shelters, and were forced to race toward muzzle flashes through the dark to disarm the criminals; snipers supposedly fired at doctors and soldiers from downtown high-rises.

In interviews with Oprah Winfrey, Compass reported rapes of "babies," and Mayor Ray Nagin spoke of "hundreds of armed gang members" killing and raping people inside the Dome. Unidentified evacuees told of children stepping over so many bodies, "we couldn't count."

The picture that emerged was one of the impoverished, masses of flood victims resorting to utter depravity, randomly attacking each other, as well as the police trying to protect them and the rescue workers trying to save them. Nagin told Winfrey the crowd has descended to an "almost animalistic state."

Four weeks after the storm, few of the widely reported atrocities have been backed with evidence. The piles of bodies never materialized, and soldiers, police officers and rescue personnel on the front lines say that although anarchy reigned at times and people suffered unimaginable indignities, most of the worst crimes reported at the time never happened.

In other words, it never got nearly as bad as the media was portraying. What else can one expect when the media myopia was operating in full effect. And the state and local officials were no more helpful as they were actually advancing the rumors and hysteria. Specifically - Mayor Nagin and the NOPD Chief Compass. Where exactly have they been getting their information? Did they even question this information? One has to wonder just how and why they would make these statements without having any facts. Were they simply repeating rumors they themselves had heard instead of conducting proper investigations?

It certainly seems that the investigations have occurred well after the fact, which means that some of the events have passed into urban legend and lore - completely divorced from the reality on the ground.

UPDATE:
As I noted on LGF's Open Thread, there are plenty of questions that need to be addressed:

Who was disseminating this kind of information to the media. The article includes the names of two major figures:

1) Mayor Nagin; and
2) Chief of Police Compass.

Both gave credence to the story of anarchy, unspeakable violence, and mayhem that simply didn't happen.

So, here's a list of questions that should be asked:
1) Why would they make these statements?
2) Where did they get this information?
2a) When did they get this information?
3) Did they consider this information to be trustworthy?
4) Did they fact check their sources?
5) If they did not fact check this information, why did they go forward and make statements to the media without issuing the necessary caveats?

Technorati: flood aid; hurricane katrina; hurricane rita; katrina aid; new orleans, rita, galveston, lake charles, levee; beaumont; port arthur; levee breach.

UPDATE:
Linked to Outside the Beltway. Michelle Malkin has more.