On Christmas Day, “Meet the Press” Reports Hurricane Katrina Super Dome Deaths as True

Tim Russert on Meet the Press re-played a small bit of the misinformation the media reported regarding Hurricane Katrina. Unbelievably, he and two other giants of media, Tom Brokaw and Ted Koppel, spoke as if it was true and said nothing about its gross inaccuracies.

See Meet the Press Transcript for December 25, 2005

Russert replayed a video from a photo journalist who was inside the Super Dome:

MR. TONY ZUMBADO: You would never, never imagine what you saw in the Convention Center in New Orleans. … Dead people around the walls of the Convention Center, laying in the middle of the street in their dying chairs where they'd died, right there in their lawn chair--they were just covered up, in their wheelchair, covered up, laying there for-- dead. Babies, two babies, dehydrated and died. I just tell you, I couldn't take it. It was unbelievable.

MR. RUSSERT: Raw emotion, Tom Brokaw.

MR. BROKAW: And Tony has been all over the world for us. You know, he's seen wars and he's been in the Third World for us. And what he was giving a portrait of was America as the Third World in that particular tragedy. I thought it stripped away in this country what we've all known but failed to acknowledge: that--this kind of permanent underclass that we have in this country, with so few resources available to them. To the rest of the world, it was shocking….

MR. RUSSERT: Ted Koppel, many people commented that the press seemed to find its voice in the Hurricane Katrina story.

MR. KOPPEL: …. I think that's what so frightened people in this country, was the sense that, you know, the system broke down. …But the question had to be asked: if that been a section of a city that was populated by middle-class white people, would the response have been the same? … It's not that anybody was sitting there saying, "Oh, we don't have to worry about New Orleans. It's mostly black anyway, 60, 70 percent black."

Meet the Press played the Zumbado comments as if they were fact:
- “Dead people around the walls of the Convention Center”
Was that true? Did any of these media giants correct this? No.
- “laying in the middle of the street in their dying chairs where they'd died”
Was that true? Did any of these media giants correct this? No.
- “Babies, two babies, dehydrated and died.”
Was that true? Did any of these media giants correct this? No.
- “It was unbelievable.”
It was all untrue, but reported as fact then when things were very confusing and again now when the investigations have been completed. Apparently, these media giants believed the misinformation then and still do now.