On August 29, 2005 Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast of the United States causing destruction to hundreds of thousands of homes. Multitudes of families were left homeless on the streets searching for a safe haven as chaos slowly started to rise. As the streets of New Orleans were flooding various news stations rushed over to the take note of the disaster stricken area. While the families of New Orleans suffered over their loss the media started to benefit off of the disaster caused from Hurricane Katrina. The media started to gather the attention of millions of viewers across the nation portraying all of the events happening in the city of New Orleans. The media’s portrayal of New Orleans started to influence the viewers’ ideas of the city as the media told their “tale” about the suffering citizens and the chaos at hand. While the media outlets benefitted from all the attention various aspects of the city were affected in either a positive and/or negative way depending on the way the media portrayed events.
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Because Hurricane Katrina affected many different aspects this led to the search for if the media’s portrayal of the storm overall benefitted the city of New Orleans or if it harmed the reconstruction of the city. Following the arrival of Hurricane Katrina several news outlets directed their attention to the citizens and city of New Orleans exposing everything they could about the aftermath of the storm. During this time there were some media outlets that painted the picture of desperate citizens in need of food and shelter providing more attention to the citizens of New Orleans. New sites noted how the thousands of homeless families were standing in the streets desperate for food and any other items that could help their families. Reporters even noted how citizens, mainly white residents, were brave survivors as they waded in the water down the streets (Garland 6). The news outlets also covered areas of the city where the poor citizens lived in which brought more attention to the disastrous areas of New Orleans. The media emphasized the coverage on the impacts on poor minorities in the poverty stricken areas which should have helped set a new political agenda to get at the root causes of poverty (Voorhees, Vick, and Perkins 417). This type of portrayal of the citizens had a positive outcome for New Orleans because numerous amounts of viewers sympathized for these people, which in return brought much attention to rebuilding the city. While sources claimed some media outlets made the citizens look like they were innocent victims that needed help, other sources argued that media outlets took another approach to gain more viewers. There were media outlets claiming several accounts of gruesome crimes such as “storm victims raping and killing one another” and “girls and boys being raped in the dark while their throats were slit” even though there was not enough information to back it up. Research indicates that media sources greatly exaggerated the violent claims and severity of the violence during the storm and many of the reports claimed were false (Brezina and Kaufman 702). The media outlets also admonished the poor black citizens for looting stores even though the citizens were in desperate need of food since the government was not providing any food for these people. Even news sites claimed that the black citizens were looting even though these sites captioned pictures of white citizens as people who were scavenging for food (Kaufman Sarah 2006). The way some media outlets portrayed this view New Orleans had a negative effect on the citizens of because the people, especially black citizens, were portrayed as savages even though most of the crimes reported were not gruesome like the media painted it out to be. This negative portrayal made thousands of people weary about coming to the area to help out with disaster relief and it gave millions of viewers a bad impression of New Orleans. While the media portrayed the citizens of New Orleans in different ways, the news outlets started to portray the city of New Orleans
Because Hurricane Katrina affected many different aspects this led to the search for if the media’s portrayal of the storm overall benefitted the city of New Orleans or if it harmed the reconstruction of the city. Following the arrival of Hurricane Katrina several news outlets directed their attention to the citizens and city of New Orleans exposing everything they could about the aftermath of the storm. During this time there were some media outlets that painted the picture of desperate citizens in need of food and shelter providing more attention to the citizens of New Orleans. New sites noted how the thousands of homeless families were standing in the streets desperate for food and any other items that could help their families. Reporters even noted how citizens, mainly white residents, were brave survivors as they waded in the water down the streets (Garland 6). The news outlets also covered areas of the city where the poor citizens lived in which brought more attention to the disastrous areas of New Orleans. The media emphasized the coverage on the impacts on poor minorities in the poverty stricken areas which should have helped set a new political agenda to get at the root causes of poverty (Voorhees, Vick, and Perkins 417). This type of portrayal of the citizens had a positive outcome for New Orleans because numerous amounts of viewers sympathized for these people, which in return brought much attention to rebuilding the city. While sources claimed some media outlets made the citizens look like they were innocent victims that needed help, other sources argued that media outlets took another approach to gain more viewers. There were media outlets claiming several accounts of gruesome crimes such as “storm victims raping and killing one another” and “girls and boys being raped in the dark while their throats were slit” even though there was not enough information to back it up. Research indicates that media sources greatly exaggerated the violent claims and severity of the violence during the storm and many of the reports claimed were false (Brezina and Kaufman 702). The media outlets also admonished the poor black citizens for looting stores even though the citizens were in desperate need of food since the government was not providing any food for these people. Even news sites claimed that the black citizens were looting even though these sites captioned pictures of white citizens as people who were scavenging for food (Kaufman Sarah 2006). The way some media outlets portrayed this view New Orleans had a negative effect on the citizens of because the people, especially black citizens, were portrayed as savages even though most of the crimes reported were not gruesome like the media painted it out to be. This negative portrayal made thousands of people weary about coming to the area to help out with disaster relief and it gave millions of viewers a bad impression of New Orleans. While the media portrayed the citizens of New Orleans in different ways, the news outlets started to portray the city of New Orleans