As Aug. 29 recedes into the conscious time of many Americans, the great storm that devastated 70 miles of Mississippi’s Coast, destroying the homes and lives of hundreds of thousands, fades into a black hole of media obscurity.
Never mind that, if taken alone, the destruction in Mississippi would represent the single greatest natural disaster in 229 years of American history. The telling of Katrina by national media has created the illusion of the hurricane’s impact on our Coast as something of a footnote.
The awful tragedy that befell New Orleans as a consequence of levee failures at the time of Katrina, likewise, taken by itself, also represents a monumental natural disaster. But, of course, the devastation there, and here, were not separate events, but one, wrought by the Aug. 29 storm.
There is no question that the New Orleans story, like ours, is a compelling, ongoing saga as its brave people seek to reclaim those parts of the city lost to the floods.
But it becomes more and more obvious that to national media, New Orleans is THE story – to the extent that if the Mississippi Coast is mentioned at all it is often in an add-on paragraph that mentions “and the Gulf Coast” or “and Mississippi and Alabama.”
The television trucks and satellite dishes that were seen here in the early days have all but disappeared.
While there has been no study to quantify the amount of coverage accorded to the plight of so many here or in New Orleans, it is obvious to any observer that the number of news stories on New Orleans is many times that of those focused on Mississippi.
So, why does that matter?
It matters first as it relates to journalism’s obligations to cover human beings whose conditions are as dire as those that exist here.
The depth of the suffering and the height of the courage of South Mississippians is an incredible story that the American people must know. But, in the shadows of the New Orleans story, the Mississippi Coast has become invisible and forgotten to most Americans. Read more…
