For example, the stories about the chaos and such at the Superdome have been blown way out of proportion. Yes, it was true that it was quite a bad scene in there, but that had to be expected. The poor people were Not told that they had to evacuate until it was too late, and the only lace that they could evacuate to at that point was the Superdome. That place is a sports arena, built for American football games, not a shelter of any kind, it is not a place made for thousands of people to spend days at a time in it. That alone would lead to problems, and the fact that the building did not have its own separate electricity system and lost power along with the rest of the city during the storm made it nasty in there. The toilets no longer were flushable, and soon filled with piss and shit and puke and such, that was unavoidable, so they were nasty places to do no doubt. However, it has been proven that they were not the hideouts for rapists that attacked any woman that went in there like it was first reported. No rapist would want to hide out in a stifling hot totally dark bathroom that reeks of piss and shit and such just to fuck some woman that came in there. Yes, there were rapes at the Superdome, but only like two or three, not the untold numbers first reported. In fact, there were less rapes in there than on an ordinary day in New Orleans, and that would be due to the fact that many in there thought that were going to die, and sex and such was just not on their minds that much. Same with the dudes going around selling weed and other drugs at exorbitant prices, although I am sure that there were some drugs in there, the Pigs searched everyone very thoroughly for just that sort of things before they allowed them in the Superdome to start with, and again, not too many people would be looking to party down in a scene like that where their very lives were in great danger. So, it seems that none of that really happened, at least not at the extreme level that the media reported that it did. The same goes for the stories of the rampant lawlessness in the streets, the gangs raping, looting, and pillaging. Rapes were way down in New Orleans during that time, far less then what they normally see during a similar period of time. Much of the looting was people taking shit that they needed, like food and water. The media only showed the folks that took shit like plasma TVs and expensive clothes and guns and booze and shit, but most of that looting was for sustenance stuff. How else were the people supposed to get anything during that time, they were told that this would fuck things up a bit for like five days, and saw that it totalled everything for years and they did not have enough supplies to last, and had no choice except to break into a store and steal the shit. Those that stole TV sets and such did not get much of anything anyway, because all that kind of shit was destroyed by the storm and will never work. So, the intense crime wave that we heard about was not that big of a deal after all. Same with the shooting at the relief workers, that only happened a bit, and that was when people has no idea who the fuck that was coming their way and just reacted badly. Again, they were put in a situation that they were not adequately prepared for and felt they had to do something. Once it was determined that these were relief workers, and not the Army or the Pigs, that shit stopped.
So now it seems that the media did us all a great disservice here by telling us all that so much of this shit happened when it really did not. They are not even making lame excuses for that, just essentially saying as little as they can on the subject. That makes it start to look a lot like this was not really an accident or a mistake on the part of the media. It starts to look as if they wanted to report things like this for some reason, and what that reason is might surprise you. The obvious answer is for rating, and the money that ratings bring in. September was what is called a "sweeps month" in America, that is a month where ratings for radio and TV stations are taken officially and used as the barometers to set advertising rates. So the higher the ratings, the higher the ad rates, and TV in America falls all over itself at sweeps time with that, and the katrina thing could be looked at that way, as it hit just as the sweeps period was starting.However, that was not such a ratings bonanza, as the katrina thing was just the same old story day after day, with the same footage, and it became rather boring after a while, and American TV viewers do not reward boredom with ratings, they want action like Walker, Texas Ranger or drams like Lost or whatever, not stories of horrors every day, so ratings would not be a factor here, as Katrina was not good for them, but rather bad instead. No, the media seems to have another reason for reporting things the way that they did, it seems that they feel they have a bone to pick with Washington. Ever since this current Presidential Administration came into office, they have treated the media as if they are just a nuisance to be tolerated and not anything they like. This became much more so after September 11th, 2001, when Washington cracked down hard on the press and essentially told them what to say or else risk losing their spots and be labeled unamerican. The contemptuous tone and manner that so many in the Administration have had to the media has gotten steadily worse. When the War In Iraq started, it got downright terrible. It has been no secret that Washington has told the media what they want them to say and report during this war and they have enforced that vigorously. Many reporters have quit their beats in frustration because they do not like being used as mouthpieces and others that have refused to go that way have been kicked out of the inner sanctum. The media knows that it is not allowed to report what is really happening in the war, and that pisses them off a lot and they got their revenge with Katrina. The common thread in all the stories of horror and depravity that came out of New Orleans last month was making Washington look bad. Everyone pointed the finger at them even though a lot of it was not their fault at all. Every wild story that came out about some dudes eating the flesh of the dead people or of gang rapes on infants or of rampant lawlessness made Washington look like shit. They painted Bush is a bad light, and made him look as if he did not care about his own people, just about making war. These stories are primarily why Bush's approval ratings are at all time lows, and getting lower every day it seems. If the media wanted to get back at him for treating them like shit and censoring them and such, they have done about as good a job as they could have done on it. Since they are offering no excuses or anything for their mistakes, it seems that they know that they have done a good job too.
If the media has done that, how the fuck can they make sanctimonious talk about Washington and how it fucks with them if they engage in the same things? They have themselves in a uptight, righteous fit about how they are muzzled and censored in Iraq and how they cannot report the truth to the people, but if they find these wild fucking stories and do not bother to corroborate them, they are not telling the people the truth then either. It seems as if the truth is not what they are after, it is some kind of ego boost or something. Yes, it is bad how Washington has been to the media, they do treat them like shit, but there are other ways of handling that issue. Slanting the news to make Washington look bad is not the way to go here at all. There needs to be dialogue between Washington and the media on this issue and a compromise needs to be worked out. However, it looks as if the White House is not that interested in compromise with the media or anyone else for that matter, and that fuels the fire. The media are only human beings, and people that got into their line of work because they generally wanted to do something for society, to help man learn more about his society by reporting on it and such, and are not happy being treated like nuisances or puppets. Washington does not have to do it wither, because if they showed their efforts in the true light and the media reported it as such, enough people would still support them so they could continue what they are doing. Nothing would come to a halt, just be modified a little, but Washington is apparently not interested in modification of any kind. But it is equally as reprehensible for the media to go and take a huge story like Hurricane Katrina and slant it just to make Washington look bad. They bitch about Washington using innocent lives for their evil purposes in Iraq and they can't tell you about that, yet they used the lives of the innocent trapped in New Orleans and such to put their point across. They exploited people every bit as badly as Washington does, and are also as unrepentant about it too. All that this shows is that there is yet another war going in America in addition to the War On Terror, the War In Iraq, and the War On Drugs, and that seems to be a war between Washington and the media. All that either side cares about anymore is trying to ignore and abuse the other and the truth is being totally obliterated by that tactic. The media just refuses to learn how to operate under different circumstances, and that would not be that hard to do, and they'd find out that they could do a lot more under those circumstances than they thought if they put their minds to it. However, they seem to want to butt heads with Washington like a bullhorn sheep and try to get their way that way. One thing that politicians and media types have in common is that they both have big fucking egos. Many of the media types, while wanting to help mankind, also want to get themselves in the center of things and have all the attention on them, see Christianne Amanpour for that one. Everyone knows that the fuckers in Washington have egos the size of the universe, and those egos are clashing with those of the media. It has become a pissing contest, who can disrespect who more. The ones that really get disrespected are the American people, because they lose out on everything because these two sides are fighting like little girls. If one of the great freedoms of America is the freedom of the press, that freedom is being lost, and not solely because of Washington either, although they surely play a big role in all of this, as they do in everything big in America. But their arrogance and ego are not the things derailing freedom of the press totally, that Is helped along by the obstinate attitudes of the media, who want to fight Washington more over their egos than report the facts to the people like they are supposed to. The more that they engage in that pointless activity, the more they shall erode freedom of the press. Whether they care about that or not is open to debate, but they sure cannot count on Washington to care about it for them, they benefit greatly from press controls and that's why they are so fast to impose them all the time. The media is supposed to be one of the things that keeps America from becoming a Police State or whatever, and if they concentrate on their own egos more than trying to do their job, they shall fail, and that will make all the great newspapermen of America's past roll around in their graves, for they had to endure hardships and bullshit from Washington in their day and they managed to get the job done, and today's media people are failing those great pioneers totally with the kind of shit they are pulling on stories like Katrina. This silly pissing war between Washington and the media needs to stop right away before it causes a casualty every bit as bad as one caused on a battlefield, maybe even worse, because the loss of the freedom of the press would be an eternal casualty for America, and maybe an ultimately fatal one too.