Are We Seeing the Death of the MSM

Reports of New Orleans mayhem probably exaggerated, police say
New Orleans police now say that reports of crimes mostly exaggerated
By MICHELLE ROBERTS
Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS - 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, Mayor C. Ray Nagin told Oprah Winfrey: "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.

The stories were told by residents trapped inside the Superdome and convention center and were repeated by public officials. Many news organizations carried the witness accounts and official pronouncements and in some cases later repeated the claims as fact, without attribution.

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.

The MSM are self-destructing. Their rampant rumor mongering, poor reporting and campaign of hate against President Bush is destroying any vestigial reputation they might have had. Reporters no longer care whether they are reporting the truth, they only care about sensationalism. The MSM is becoming the WWF of journalism.

Full Story: Rumors as News

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