Due to the loss of most means of communication, such as land-based and cellular telephone systems, field reporters in many cases became conduits for information between victims and authorities.
This was best illustrated when Shepard Smith and Geraldo Rivera of Fox News, among others, reported thousands of people stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.
Many news organizations carried the unsubstantiated accounts that murder and rape were widespread, and in some cases later repeated the claims as fact, without attribution.
[2] A few of the reports of rape and violence were based on statements made by New Orleans city officials, including the Chief of Police.
[6] Media reporting also included coverage of political and religious leaders who suggested that the hurricane which killed 1,836 people was sent as a divine retribution for the sins of New Orleans, or of the South, or for the United States as a whole.
Many family members, unable to contact local authorities in the affected areas, discovered the fate of a loved one via an online photo or television video clip.
In one instance, a family in Clearwater, Florida discovered their mother was still alive in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi after seeing a photo of her on TampaBayStart.com, a regional news site.
In some stories, that can be as simple as including a phrase about Hurricane Katrina’s catastrophic levee failures and flooding….”[14] As the U.S. military and rescue services regained control over the city, there were restrictions on the activity of the media.
The next day, spokesperson Col. Christian E. deGraff announced that the government would no longer attempt to bar media access to the victim recovery efforts.