Slate's Press Box: Katrina, Race and the Media

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ALEX CHADWICK, host:

This is DAY TO DAY. I'm Alex Chadwick.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, this basic truth about the victims of the disaster. They are mostly poor and mostly black; we've seen that on television from the very first moments of coverage of the storm. Two days ago, though, writing in the online magazine Slate, press critic Jack Shafer noted that questions of race and class were strangely absent. Jack Shafer joins us now.

Jack, make your case. Would you please? Reporters actively avoiding a discussion of race and economic status?

JACK SHAFER (Slate Magazine): Yeah, I think so. My--I wrote my piece on Wednesday, and up until then on TV you'd see no discussion of this. Now if 99 percent of the refugees that are rescued had had blond hair, you know that one of the reporters or anchors would have said, `Say, is there a Nordic American convention being held in New Orleans?' Yet there was this uncomfortable silence about the nature of the people who were being hardest hit in New Orleans.

CHADWICK: You know, Jack, I think I did hear people say early on, even on Monday when the storm was hitting, that the people who hadn't evacuated were the poor, the people who had no other choice. So maybe it is just a race question that you're raising here, not so much economics.

SHAFER: But if the poor people are the black people, it seems to me that there's some correlation in that the broadcasters and the press should have been discussing that. They weren't telling us that 67 percent of the residents of New Orleans are black. They weren't telling us that 27 percent of them are under the poverty line--and most of them, you can assume, are black--and that there was a reason that these people were stranded. They were--if not impoverished refugees, they were very, very, very close to it. I mean, the New Orleans Times-Picayune in 2002 in its great series about the coming hurricane pointed out that there would be at least a hundred thousand people left behind and that there were no plans, no contingencies, for these people, and they were the very, very poor. And in New Orleans, to be poor is to be black, in most cases.

CHADWICK: You note in your Slate piece that most of the reporters covering the story, on TV anyway, are white. You raise the idea that white reporters, people like you and me, I should point out, are reluctant to talk about race because they're afraid they'll say something that will be misconstrued.

SHAFER: Right. I think that there is a reluctance to speak extemporaneously about race in America, and I chalk it up to a fear that reporters have that they'll have an Al Campanis moment. Al Campanis, who was a very good man, was the general manager of the LA Dodgers in the mid-'80s. And while on Ted Koppel's show, he was defending why there were no black managers. And he really dug himself in deep. He said, `Blacks might not have some of the necessities it takes to manage a major-league team.' And then he said, `For the same reason that they're not very good swimmers. They lack buoyancy.' It's easy to make fun of Al Campanis for saying something really stupid and racist. And I think that there's a tendency, especially when speaking extemporaneously about a breaking news event, that television reporters are very, very reluctant to embrace and discuss race, because they are very afraid that they'll make a sort of career-ending move, as Al Campanis did.

CHADWICK: Well, here's your chance to answer the question you think reporters should be addressing. Why are most of the refugees in New Orleans poor and black?

SHAFER: Because most of the residents of New Orleans are poor and black. White tourists like us, Alex--the socioeconomic level that we come from does not reflect the poverty and the racial makeup of that city. And I think that the press really made a miscue.

CHADWICK: Opinion and analysis from Jack Shafer, press critic for the online magazine Slate.

Jack, thank you.

SHAFER: Thank you.

CHADWICK: I'm Alex Chadwick. Stay with us on DAY TO DAY from NPR News.

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