'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Rumors of violence

This is an interesting account by Matt Welch of how dark rumors about the disorderly and violent tendencies of the low-income and mainly black evacuees from New Orleans have often preceded them to their places of (let's hope) temporary refuge...

But Welch also writes that "none of the reports were true."

I think that was referring to reports of violence committed in Baton Rouge, after evacuation. But he also pulls in several pieces of evidence showing that the reports of violence inside New Orleans prior to evacuation were in some cases untrue and in others greatly exaggerated.

Welch writes about the staggering lack of information suffered by everyone in New Orleans during the worst days last week, and how that contributed to the ease with which scary rumors got circulated. (He doesn't mention the private security companies, like Blackwater, that were also making successful-- and I should imagine, very lucrative-- bids for contracts to "protect" media stars and others eager to get into the city to do their stand-uppers. I wonder how their sales pitch went, exactly?)

Welch adds:

it's entirely possible that, like the chimeric Baton Rouge hordes, exaggerations about New Orleans' criminality affected policy, mostly by delaying rescue operations and the provision of aid. Relief efforts ground to a halt last week after reports circulated of looters shooting at helicopters, yet none of the hundreds of articles I read on the subject contained a single first-hand confirmation from a pilot or eyewitness. The suspension-triggering attack--on a military Chinook attempting to evacuate refugees from the Superdome--was contested by Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Laura Brown, who told ABC News, "We're controlling every single aircraft in that airspace and none of them reported being fired on." What's more, when asked about the attacks, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff replied: "I haven't actually received a confirmed report of someone firing on a helicopter."

I just note that even though I was born after the second World War, in England there were still lots of stories about the hostility that kids evacuated from London during the Blitz faced from the (mainly rural) communities that received them.