Covering Disaster : Lessons from Media Coverage of Katrina and Rita

"The heroes in this useful book are bound by their passion and devotion for getting unvarnished truth to people caught in massive chaos, bungling, and unfathomable suffering. With hindsight, each institution portrayed in Covering Disaster could have performed their duty better, some much better. The ones that did best experienced this extraordinary calamity along side the audiences they served, and in so doing, connected with people in profound and enduring ways. Other lessons presented by the authors---no matter how telling---pale in comparison to the shared `we're all in this together' reality."--- Robert W. Mong, Jr., Editor, The Dallas Morning News

"Editors Ralph Izard and Jay Perkins did legwork in their own days in media and convey that knowledge, not necessarily in the form of anecdotes, but in covering every pertinent angle in one of the most devastating natural calamities on record: Hurricane Katrina, Izard and Perkins assembled a stable of scholars and veteran writers to document the misery of nature disaster as well as the storytelling, audience, ethical conundrums, mistakes, successes, and triumphs. All manner of platforms also are covered, including public relations and public information, in guiding readers on issues large and small of a colossal event that changed US history. Izard's and Perkins' book will change how we view, analyze, and cover future events as well as put past ones into crisp perspective."---Michael Bugeja, author of Living Ethics Across Media Platforms and Interpersonal Divide: The Search for Community in a Technological Age

"Rarely if ever is there the luxury of stepping back and taking stock of the coverage of the extraordinary events of our time. But the reporting of the twin storms on the Gulf Coast, and the national response to them, broke new journalistic ground, and we're all fortunate that Izard and Perkins made it their mission to document the good, the bad, the ugly, and the lessons learned in the extraordinary coverage of these disasters. As we've just seen in Haiti, there will always be disasters and there will always be journalists telling the world about them. The tools of the trade are changing rapidly, and as Izard and Perkins demonstrate, so are the acceptable boundaries of the journalistic point-of-view. But the authors also remind us of the importance of eternal verities. Covering Disaster provides all of us with as good a road map as we can ever have for reporting on horrors we can't imagine until they happen."---Barbara Raab, Senior Newswriter, NBC News; Adjunct Associate Professor, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism

Jay Perkins is associate professor of communication at the Manship School of Mass Communication, Louisiana State University. He served as a reporter, editor, and political analyst for the Associated Press. He specializes in investigative reporting, computer-assisted reporting, and political consulting techniques.

 

Ralph Izard is professor of communication at the Manship School of Mass Communication, Louisiana State University and professor emeritus at the E. W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University. He has been editor of Newspaper Research Journal and is the author of numerous professional articles in ethics, the First Amendment, and journalistic writing.