NEW ORLEANS -- In the past five years, I have written at least 500 letters to authors, reporters and journalists patiently and politely pointing out errors that are always backed up by data. My goal is to battle the myths still flying thick around the horrific flooding in New Orleans five years ago.
Some respond with gratitude, and thank me for taking to time to update them. But the great majority refuses to even acknowledge an error, despite stark evidence.
But the shocker is the occasional "it wasn't my point" defense of an error.
Strangely, in the world of journalism, I actually hear this defense: that if a mistake is not central to the point of a piece, then the mistake doesn't matter. Since when did misstatement of facts cease to matter?
"There is no such thing as a harmless mistake in journalism," responded Dr. Sandra Buchholz, noted author and specialist in American Pragmatism to my question about the "it wasn't my point" defense.
I heard the defense again this week from global-warming specialist Mark Hertsgaard defending his piece which recently appeared in The Nation on the comeback of residents in the Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood of New Orleans. His otherwise well-written piece had a misleading passage that any reasonable person would have interpreted as stating that an un-moored barge broke through a nearby levee and caused the flooding in the neighborhood. A quick fact check reveals that post disaster analyses attribute the levee failure to engineering design error.
"...I didn't mention Sandy's point because I saw no need to go into that level of detail about an issue that simply wasn't the point of my article. If my phrasing of a piece written in haste inadvertently conveyed a misleading impression, I apologize..."
"Quite a backhand apology," observed David Winkler-Schmit, a local journalist who has extensively covered the New Orleans levee failures. "Hertsgaard should have taken his medicine, corrected the error and left it at that."
Suppose I reviewed a restaurant one block from Ground Zero of the Twin Tower Collapses in New York City and wrote, "this cozy restaurant is one block from where the Girl Scouts commandeered jets and flew them into the World Trade Center." Using the "it wasn't my point defense," I could claim the Girl Scout mistake doesn't matter because it isn't the point of my restaurant review.
Furthermore, it often seems that it's the things outside the point of an article that people are more likely to pick up and notice. So it's important that dangerously misleading details are corrected immediately before they are repeated, over and over, a process that can happen remarkably quickly.
Mr. Hertzgaard is by no means alone. Bruce Nolan, reporter for the New Orleans Times Picayune used the "it wasn't my point" defense in response to a letter from Guy Johnson, a resident of the Lakeview neighborhood of New Orleans who pointed out that the 2005 flooding should be called a "man-made engineering disaster" in a Sunday, August 2010 piece. Here is Mr. Nolan's response in its entirety.
"Mr. Johnson, what we set out to do here, and I think we did it pretty well, was describe happened to us physically and psychologically in the weeks, months and years after the levees failed under Katrina's pressure. Of course the drowning of New Orleans represents the greatest engineering failure in American history. And that failure was triggered by the stresses of Katrina even though, yes, its center missed the city. All of that is universally acknowledged, although some people stress the engineering failure and downplay quite a lot the presence of the storm. However, for the purposes of this article, I have no dog in that fight. None of that was part of my mission which, again, was to describe how we've changed since then."Mr. Nolan's reply is interesting because he did accurately describe the flooding as due to levee failure and acknowledged that the flooding was the 'greatest engineering failure in American history,' but then says there's no need to be clear about flooding facts in his reporting because it wasn't the point (mission) of his article.
"I am no longer surprised at any lengths people will go to in order to "demonstrate" that they are beyond criticism, says Dr. Buchholz. "This is why I decided, some years ago, that I would no longer be willing to evaluate books submitted to various publishers."
The Nation has published my letter to the editor and Mr. Hertsgaard's reply. Both can be found here.
Sandy Rosenthal is founder of Levees.org in New Orleans. The mission is education on the true facts about why New Orleans flooded. The group has nominated two breach sites to the National Register of Historic Places.
Follow Sandy Rosenthal on Twitter: www.twitter.com/LeveesOrg
What a coincidence, the Old Orleans Levee Board, the Times Picayune archives and U.S. Senate subpoenaed old Orleans Levee Board records began 01/01/1989
NewsBank:Sorry. There are no articles in our database for the source you are browsing (Times-Picayune) on December 31, 1988. If your requested date was two weeks ago or older, the date may fall outside of the range of this archive (1/1/1989 – Current)
Orleans levee District:The Orleans Levee District Board & Committee Agendas, Minutes, &Resolutions Archive 1989 - 2006
Orleans Levee District:According to Mr. John Barry Vice President/ Secretary of the Orleans Levee District who worried that possibly Katrina destroyed the older records. The U.S. Senate subpoenaed the Orleans Levee Board records from 1989-2006
Why has Sandy and her group never mentioned the Fact that all the Orleans Levee Board records were never reviewed? The United States Senate did not subpoena the Orleans Levee Board records that have credible information regarding design and construction of the 17 st. canal floodwall.
That group has been vocal and loud about educating the people with the facts about the levee failures and has not mentioned the pre 1989 records not being subpoenaed.
Sandy Rosenthal and her group has sent out numerous petitions around the U.S. and has appeared on TV concerning Katrina Shorthand, and the placement of Historic Plaques at levee breach sites for the Corps failure to build proper flood protection and more. What she has missed in her mission to inform the public why the levees failed is the fact that the U.S. Senate never subpoenaed the Orleans Levee Board records pre 1989.
Pre 1989 is when the 17st. canal floodwall was being argued, discussed, designed, contracts awarded, and construction began.
The U.S. Senate subpoenaed the 1989-2005 Orleans Levee Board records irrelevant to the design and construction of the 17st. Canal floodwall.
The most critical records concerning the 17st. canal were pre 1989 and they were never subpoenaedby the U. S. senate.
Too bad there is NO group educating the people about the truth concerning the levee failures especially the outfall canals
Also, it would be great if there are classes in Urban Planning type programs that can cover these types of legal/media issues in the colleges around that area for starters, which can hopefully catch on.
Thanks again!
http://press.org/events/npc-luncheon-harry-shearer-comedian
I watched The Big Uneasy in L.A. and found it quite engaging. Reminded me of some Urban Planning and Environmental Geography courses I took at the University of New Orleans a few years ago. May have to venture back for more schooling and tell them it was Harry Shearer who convinced me to return. :-)
Thank you for your continual fight against an ignorant press. I wonder if it would be the" point" if it was their city that flooded due to a governmental design error? Just saying.
Such an error goes straight to the credibility of a reporter, his story, his editor and the publication itself.
It just seems the difference, while nuanced, is that "journalists" is the equivalent of "Liberals" becoming "Progressives" in an effort avoid the attacks from Conservatives regarding the "Liberal Media".
Ivor van Heerden and Team Louisiana, which also examined the destruction of the levees, designed after Betsy in 1965, "declared that the Corps of Engineers managed the hurricane levees in Greater New Orleans “like a circa 1964 flood control museum,” and continued to use design criteria set in 1965 even though much had changed in the intervening forty years. The Corps ignored that local sea level had risen 0.4 feet in the intervening forty years and New Orleans had sunk 1.5 feet. Add them together and the engineers were designing and maintaining levees for a city that was laying two feet lower in the landscape, relative to sea level, than it had in 1965. Hence, the crowns of levees were up to six feet too short, leading to prolonged overtopping during Katrina." --from The Mississippi: A Visual Biography, University of Missouri Press, 2010