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View Full Version : First Reports almost always turn out wrong


lsbets
09-27-2005, 05:00 PM
http://www.nola.com/newsflash/topstories/index.ssf?/base/national-52/1127847903290110.xml&storylist=topstories

"NEW ORLEANS (AP) — On Sept. 1, with desperate Hurricane Katrina evacuees crammed into the convention center, Police Chief Eddie Compass reported: "We have individuals who are getting raped; we have individuals who are getting beaten."

Five days later, he told Oprah Winfrey that babies were being raped. On the same show, Mayor Ray Nagin warned: "They have people standing out there, have been in that frickin' Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people."

The ugliest reports — children with slit throats, women dragged off and raped, corpses piling up in the basement — soon became a searing image of post-Katrina New Orleans."

Here is the interesting part:

"But now, a month after the chaos subsided, police are re-examining the reports and finding that many of them have little or no basis in fact.

They have no official reports of rape and no eyewitnesses to sexual assault. The state Department of Health and Hospitals counted 10 dead at the Superdome and four at the convention center. Only two of those are believed to have been murdered."

Tom
09-27-2005, 07:00 PM
Interesting that the mayor and police chief were on OPRAH while all this was going on in THIER town!

CNN got in there, why couldn't THEY?

boxcar
09-27-2005, 11:54 PM
And who's the blame for these false reports? How 'bout the mainstream media which incessantly complain about the "new media" (internet bloggers, amateur reporters, etc.) and how these kinds of media cannot be trusted because they never bother to verify the reports with second or even third sources?

Unbelievable!

Boxcar