Gulf coast residents: accuracy in reporting essential to disaster news

Carol Forsloff - The
suffering of the Gulf coast residents can be heard in their voices and
seen in their faces.  What they ask, however, is for reporters, viewers,
listeners and readers sift truth from fiction so they don't become re-victimized.






Ivor van Heerden, Ph. D., whistleblower and spokesperson for people reporting re-victimized by Hurricane Katrina.

Ivor van Heerden was one of those victims after
Hurricane Katrina.  He was fired from his job at the Hurricane Center,
demoted and generally shunned by the powers-that-be from the University
after he began speaking up about the Army Corps of Engineers and the
lack of responsibility of the organization and its oversight.

There is another crisis unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico with the oil spill and how those facts are translated can make a difference to the future of people tomorrow who may be victimized, misunderstood, misused or misinterpreted today.  The issue involved here is caution in reporting disaster news because words can impact lives.

Today,
following vindication by a judge, now five years later, Prof. Heeden is
involved in a legal dispute about his reputation and his job that might
never have happened if there had been accurate appraisal of the facts
at the time, according to people who have tracked the situation now for
years.

Sandy Rosenthal, President and Founder of Levees.org, has
worked to make the facts known about Hurricane Katrina.  She has also
worked hard to make sure newspapers report the facts clearly and
honestly.  As she worried then and worked tirelessly for truth, she
worries again during the oil spill disaster that fingers might point in
the wrong direction and the wrong heads roll again.

Rosenthal
underlines how newspapers that may have never visited the region had
opinions or cited news, some of which was inaccurate. She spent many
hours tracing these stories in order to correct them, as did other
members of her organization she founded after the hurricane.

She
explains why as this, "It was bad enough when the newspapers in
Louisiana would get the information wrong. It was worse when people
would come for a few days, or not at all, then write their views. Often
they would get information from another newspaper, also outside the
state. Then both were wrong, and the problems multiplied.

Even
today I see articles discussing how people knew New Orleans could be
flooded and yet remained nevertheless. It perpetuates the guilt we have
had to live with for years. What was often said about us, or inferred,
was we somehow brought the mess on ourselves. Or they blamed the
President, the Governor or the Mayor of the City of New Orleans, Ray
Nagin.

 What folks didn't point their fingers to was the Army
Corps of Engineers, an issue the Times Picayune did note both during and
after the hurricane. They were here; their reporters were on the
streets. It made a difference, even though it was difficult, and they
didn't always get all the facts."

Right now Ivor van Heerden is
the central figure in a lawsuit against the University where he was
employed at the time of the hurricane. He was the whistleblower in
charge of the Hurricane Center at Louisiana State University then and
afterward was demoted when he began speaking out and telling people it
wasn't the hurricane but the lack of adequate building and construction
of the levees that was responsible for the flooding of New Orleans.

 The
oil spill in the Gulf frightens New Orleans residents. Rosenthal's
email note beside her name declares it every day. What she has said
regularly to this reporter is how it is important for those to write the
news do it as objectively and sensitively as well, knowing that the
direction of where fingers may point may not be where they belong.

That's
the ongoing message from those who went through the hurricane. It is
the message now about honest reporting and consideration for the
residents on the coast.

The issues on the coast, Rosenthal
underlines, are critical to everyone. What happened to a man who had the
courage to speak what an independent judge four years later said was
the truth, took the attention away from repair of the levees to the
blame game instead, Rosenthal has said many times.

" People were
blamed who shouldn't have been perhaps, while others were left
unscathed." is her message and from others who must live with the issues
and consequences after disasters, like a University professor now

fighting for his reputation and his future.