People sometimes call MRC HQ and tell us that a cable network has mysteriously dumped out of live coverage in a way that seems suspiciously political. My first impulse is to think that sometime daytime producer on their third coffee might have just glitched a bit. I saw a weird case of this jumping in and out of live coverage this morning at 10:40 AM Eastern time. At a Congressional Black Caucus event, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. started complaining about the media giving too much coverage (and disapproval) of looting, when CNN gave him the hook.

JACKSON: Katrina did more than devastate property, it devastated and it has shattered lives. I believe and am fundamentally appalled at the idea that this news media mass now shifted the emphasis from the devastation that people's lives, people who only owned a pan, people who lived in a shotgun home, people who had one television set, whose lives have been completely devastated by this horrific tragedy, the news media has now shifted the conversation from the devastation that their lives have experienced, that their families have experienced to what people do in desperate circumstances, including steal... [volume trails off during last word]

Our friends over at the AP who never tire of using any excuse to Bush-bash are at it again in style.

In another of their rollicking “Newsviews,” Ron Fournier shouts, “Rhetoric Not Matching Relief.” Already implying that the nation is fingering Bush for the pain, suffering and death in New Orleans, Fournier goes on to accuse him of far worse:

Bush got himself in trouble by trying to put the best face on a horrible situation. The strategy is so common in Washington that operatives have a name for it, "spin," and the Bush White House has perfected the shady art.

Jaws dropped across America in the middle of NBC's Concert for Hurricane Relief, hosted by Matt Lauer. In between musical numbers, stars would report on the damage and call for help. Comedian Michael Myers made a serious pitch. Then rapper Kanye West started rambling, clearly improvising, saying that black families are called looters, while white families are described as just looking for food. That must have put the NBC folks on the button, but West shortly after blurted out: "George Bush doesn't care about black people."

A clearly uncomfortable Mike Myers bit his lip, and the director quickly switched the camera to black actor Chris Tucker, who looked surprised to be thrown on camera. Minutes later, Lauer tried to glide past the outrage by saying the criticism on the broadcast is "a part of the American way of life." Yeah, the insane part.  UPDATE: AP has a story up. MSNBC has a video clip. Hmm. Do you think Time regrets its cover from last week saying West was "Hip-Hop's Class Act" and the "smartest man in pop music"?

Today during CNN's "Situation Room," anchor Jack Cafferty suspected the Bush administration had turned the timing of the help sent to New Orleans into a political stunt.

CAFFERTY: Do you suppose, Wolf, that the arrival of the relief convoys and the political photo ops on the Gulf Coast happening at the very same time were a coincidence today?
BLITZER: Well, I'm sure our viewers have some thoughts on that as well.

Later Blitzer said, "Jack, a final thought before I let you go." Responded Cafferty, "It's embarrassing."

CBS correspondent and wife of former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial, Michelle Miller, took a swipe at Congress for the speed of its reaction to Hurricane Katrina:

Questions of race and class are sure to be raised. Compared to Congress's Immediacy in handling the Terry Schiavo resolution while on vacation, it's taken the body four days beyond the Hurricane to meet on what to do during the nation's most horrific natural disaster.

Since when was is stopping a judicially-sanctioned starvation a race/class issue? Additionally, the Congress acted within a slightly shorter frame of time for Schiavo following the order for the breathing tube to be removed than it did for Hurricane Katrina relief (2 or 3 days), but Congress was just heading out to recess in the former case and had been in the middle of a month-long August recess in this one. What's more, Miller fails to consider that congressional leaders may have scheduled today as the day to convene to take action so as to allow for congressmen and senators from Katrina-stricken disaster areas to have time to consult with local officials and FEMA administrators about the amount of emergency funding needed.

The Associated Press posted an article by Barry Schweid detailing hurricane relief aid being sent by a number of other countries. In the process the writer just couldn't help taking a cheap shot at U.S. generosity, which has pumped billions of dollars in foreign aid to others in need. First there was this line which followed a paragraph about Japan's contributions to the disaster relief:

The United States historically has aided victims of disasters, but it is not universally recognized as providing the level of aid expected of a rich nation.

Then, a couple of paragraphs later we have another comment about American aid:

The United States, the world's largest economy, lags behind other rich nations in the percentage of its giving to nations in Africa, the world's poorest continent.

In the days since Hurricane Katrina struck, there has been a lot of hand-wringing and finger-pointing at the Bush administration concerning budget cuts to the Army Corps of Engineers that might have shored up the levee system surrounding New Orleans.  The most recent such tirade comes from Times economic writer Paul Krugman:

Why wasn't more preventive action taken? After 2003 the Army Corps of Engineers sharply slowed its flood-control work, including work on sinking levees. "The corps," an Editor and Publisher article says, citing a series of articles in The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, "never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security - coming at the same time as federal tax cuts - was the reason for the strain."

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.  Here is a picture I would like the Democratic Mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, to see after he blasted President Bush for his slow response to the hurricane devestation. 

Just what was the mayor saving those buses for?  Maybe Election Day, 2006?  Then, it seems, Democrats have no problem moving black people around quickly and efficiently.

Time to face some hard facts as to who shares responsibility for the needless deaths of so many. 

The Early Show on CBS treated FEMA Director Mike Brown and Governor Kathleen Blanco (D-LA) to tough questioning, although Brown was seared by co-host Hannah Storm while Harry Smith, reporting from New Orleans, only slightly singed the state's chief executive, and mostly on relief efforts underway now, not on what the state of Louisiana and the city of New Orleans could have done before the hurricane.

Below are the questions to Brown and Blanco respectively as I transcribed them.:

ABC's Terry Moran this afternoon put politics at the forefront in hurricane disaster coverage when, on a storm-ravaged Biloxi street, he confronted President Bush about how “one of the things you hear here is people saying 'there's a lot of resources being devoted to Iraq. Now this country needs them.' And they're frustrated about that. What do you say to the people who say there's too much money being spent on Iraq and it's time to bring it home?” ABC News led its 1:22pm EDT special with anchor Dan Harris insisting that spending on Iraq is “a common complaint -- what we're hearing from many people about the resources being spent in Iraq.”

Video: Real or Windows Media

Complete transcript follows. UPDATE: Friday's World News Tonight featured Moran's question.

From CNN's The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, Thursday, September 1, 2005, covering the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina: (audiotape on file, emphasis mine)

BLITZER: "You simply get chills every time you see these poor individuals, as Jack Cafferty just pointed out, so tragically, so many of these people, almost all of them that we see, are so poor and they are so black, and this is going to raise lots of questions for people who are watching this story
unfold."

Video: Real or Windows Media

"And they are so black"?? What is that supposed to mean? Can you imagine if Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity had said this? There would be cries of "outrage" and breathless demands for an apology.

As depicted in a recent posting by NewsBusters own David Pierre, cable outlets like CNN have started to depict race as a "hindrance of choice" to the rescue efforts that are taking place on a massive scale in New Orleans.  Predictably, old media outlets like the New York Times have followed suit. 

In an article by the Times David Gonzalez, the fault lies not with a category 5 Hurricane, but with white people in general, and President Bush principally.  Gonzalez starts out this way: