Oil and Water: Media Lessons from Hurricane Katrina and the Deepwater Horizon Disaster

OIL AND WATER

OIL AND

WATER

Media Lessons from Hurricane Katrina

and the Deepwater Horizon Disaster

Andrea Miller, Shearon Roberts,

and Victoria LaPoe

University Press of Mississippi / Jackson

www.upress.state.ms.us

The University Press of Mississippi is a member

of the Association of American University Presses.

Copyright © 2014 by University Press of Mississippi

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

First printing 2014

∞

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Miller, Andrea, 1967–

Oil and water : media lessons from Hurricane Katrina and the Deepwater

Horizon disaster / Andrea Miller, Shearon Roberts, and Victoria LaPoe.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-61703-972-0 (hardback) — ISBN 978-1-61703-973-7 (ebook)

1. Disasters—Press coverage—United States. 2. Hurricane Katrina,

2005—Press coverage. 3. BP Deepwater Horizon Explosion and Oil

Spill, 2010—Press coverage. 4. Mass media—Objectivity—United

States. I. Roberts, Shearon, 1984– II. LaPoe, Victoria, 1977– III. Title.

PN4784.D57M55 2014

070.4’4936334—dc23                                                            2013039750

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Hurricane Katrina Timeline

Deepwater Horizon Oil Disaster Timeline

Introduction

1. Seeking Information in Disaster

2. Journalists Live Their Disaster Stories

3. National versus Local Disaster News

4. Who Runs This Disaster? The Media and the Blame Game

5. Sources and Accuracy in Disaster

6. Visuals of Disaster

Conclusion

Appendix 1. Studying the News of Two Disasters: A Timeline

Appendix 2. Annotated Bibliography of Studies Contributing to This Book

Appendix 3. Additional Disaster-Related Research by the Authors

Notes

Index

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This has been a labor of love born out of two tragedies, seven years in the making, and a true team effort. As professionals turned academics, we truly understand the different parts of the stakeholder equation—the social scientist, the audience member, the news creator. We study disaster with an eye on making journalism better and we hope this book is a contribution to that effort.

We would like to thank our professional contacts for their invaluable contributions, including Lynn Cunningham of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Monica Pierre of Entercom, and Chris Slaughter of WWL-TV for providing access to their outlets, journalists, and archives. To the journalists who wanted to remain anonymous, we recognize your efforts as well. We would also like to thank the hard-working scientists of the Gulf Coast who gave us their time during the oil disaster and, a year later, our editor, Craig Gill, and the HIPIP crew: Renee Edwards, David Brown, Stephanie Houston Grey, Michael Rold, and Chris Mapp.

Funding for the HIPIP projects came from a grant from the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium Coastal Storms Program. Funding for some travel came from W. Lawrence and Susan K. Patrick through a Broadcast Education Association Scholarship.

We would also like to thank our families, including Grace and Zachary Miller, Zachary Ramjattan, and Bernadette Roberts. Finally, deep appreciation to our wonderful spouses, Doug Miller, Nicholas Ramjattan, and Ben LaPoe (who was also our fabulous copy editor), for their support, sacrifice, and encouragement.

HURRICANE KATRINA TIMELINE

DEEPWATER HORIZON OIL DISASTER TIMELINE

OIL AND WATER

INTRODUCTION

I think you can compare to Katrina in the sense that people who live here are

smacked in the face again. It is disastrous. There is a lot of uncertainty. It is a

national disaster. It is not going away. This region has taken it on the chin again.

—Sheldon Fox, local television reporter¹

Residents along the Gulf Coast know that to speak of their cities, neighborhoods, and landmarks, they have to clarify, Are we talking pre-Katrina or post-Katrina? Even newcomers are stigmatized as belonging to a post-Katrina reality, devoid of the context and deep-rooted traditions of the people of this region. To date, Katrina remains the most expensive hurricane the United States has ever seen and one of the deadliest.² In less than five years, the region was to add to the superlatives, suffering the greatest environmental and maritime accident of all time—the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster. The headlines here have screamed Oil and Water, and for a region whose livelihood and way of life are these two natural elements, for the Gulf Coast this blessing, in recent times, has been its curse. From elementary school science lab we know that oil and water do not mix. The former settles on top of the latter, clumping in pockets, trapping any water from seeping through. The Deepwater Horizon oil disaster placed a seal on the region’s problems that the Katrina floodwaters exacerbated five years earlier: poverty, crime, unemployment, inadequate public schools, and the worse health indicators in the nation. Yet, despite the overarching downers, this region, known for its southern hospitality, colorful politicians, outdoor lifestyle, and diversity of people has begun a push back against the stigma that it is down on its luck indefinitely. Springtime British Petroleum (BP) ads beckon viewers across the nation to come spend their summer in the French Quarter, on the beaches of Pensacola or Gulf Shores, or at a Mississippi casino. The region’s folks are finding new ways to use new media formats to let the nation and the world know, for better or worse, that the Gulf Coast is open for business.

In the future, climatologists, environmentalists, and historians will have their say on the scope of these two disasters, but this is a book about journalism. The work of journalists unavoidably ends up at the core of the works of others who later dissect major events for fiction or scholarly endeavors. In this book, however, we aspire to go behind the scenes and capture the world of these two crises from the point of view of the tenets of journalism, and the experiences of the journalists who were thrust into these disasters, both as professionals and victims. The journalism of Katrina and the BP oil spill is crucial to the account of these disasters because of the pervasive role it played in saving lives. The stories also helped preserve the solidarity in a region as diverse as the Gulf states, but one connected by the waters that define it. To understand the events and journalism of these two crises, one must first appreciate the characteristics of the region.

For many around the globe, their first exposure to the region was the news coverage of Hurricane Katrina. One of the authors of this book is from Trinidad. Years later, she continues to hesitantly agree when countrymen say: Oh, you live in the place that flooded. But the Gulf region is not a homogenous area. Comprising border cities on the Texas side, like Galveston to the extreme west, and then north Florida cities like Pensacola to the extreme east, the area has traditionally conservative politics. Southwest Louisiana stands out along the Interstate 10 stretch as an anomaly, with French-speaking Acadiana cities and the infamous and historic New Orleans. The city has been the epicenter of not only culture but controversy because it tends to swallow up most narratives of the diversity of the region and the state of Louisiana. To outsiders, Louisiana is a victim of its own vices. A documented pattern of colorful and corrupt (and/or racist) politicians in Louisiana had voters once, with heads spinning, trying to decide whether to vote for the crook or the Klan in the 1991 gubernatorial elections between former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke and corrupt Governor Edwin Edwards.

Just as the history of the region can no longer be told without Hurricane Katrina or the oil spill, Louisiana’s history is hopelessly intertwined with the flamboyant and ruthless Huey P. Long. His election as governor in 1928 began a decades-long hold on the structure of Louisiana politics that remains today. Long commanded gubernatorial powers in Louisiana, much like the nation’s presidents in recent times have been critiqued for expanding federal executive power. From the days of Huey Long to the present, the Louisiana Legislature has, in many ways, been an extension of the governor, explains Bob Mann, political historian who has worked with several Louisiana politicians. Thanks to Long’s precedence, Louisiana’s governor still selects who heads up both chambers, and members are reluctant to act until the governor sets the agenda. More than eighty years later, Mann points out, there is still no independent legislative body in this state.³

The body of work by some of the governors is unsavory. Richard Leche and Edwin Edwards both went to prison. And Long, while not convicted of a crime, exerted ruthless and near-dictatorial powers over Louisiana government, said Mann. Recent governors like Foster, Blanco, and Jindal have done quite a bit to mitigate that image, but I’m afraid the taint on our political system still exists.

Current popular culture has taken the rich history of the region and highlighted only problematic stereotypes. Guns, critters, and gators—that’s the current popular perception of Louisiana with the rise of five very popular television cable reality series. Sons of Guns documents a family gun business in Baton Rouge; Swamp People takes us gator hunting, often with subtitles, due to thick Cajun accents; and Billy the Exterminator does little to quash the stereotype, but much to squash bugs and other southern Louisiana pests. Pawn Stars has added an adjective, making it Cajun Pawn Stars. And the latest to enter the crowded landscape of Louisiana reality shows is Duck Dynasty, about a family who got their millions making duck hunting calls.

But these cliché depictions of Louisiana are not new. For the past eighty-five years, filmmakers have taken advantage of the state’s unique social and physical environment to emphasize hedonism, mystery, ugliness, and romance. If the viewing public was to believe each film’s depiction of Louisiana, her culture, and her people, the state would be the repository of mental illness, said Assistant Professor Danny Shipka, who studies pop culture stereotypes at Oklahoma State University. The progression began with crime in 1950’s Panic in the Streets, then overt racism in 1976’s Mandingo, child prostitution in 1978’s Pretty Baby, murder in 1983’s Southern Comfort, necrophilia in 1980’s Macabre, and a flare for sexual aberration in 1991’s Zandalee.⁴ The buffet of mayhem depicted by Hollywood scripts feeds into the typecasting of the state’s people and culture.

Then came 1994’s The Waterboy—a film that probably should have had its own language option due to the thick, artificial accents of Adam Sandler and Kathy Bates. Few of these films present anything positive in regards to Louisiana, Shipka said, a fact which, consequently, consolidates the socially constructed negative stereotype of the state.⁵

These were the portrayals sold across the nation, and indeed the world, of Louisiana and the Gulf South. In fact the state has exploited this cinematic interest, turning Louisiana, and by extension the region, into the new Hollywood South, thanks to big studio tax incentives dating back as far as Tarzan and the Apes shot in 1918.⁶ Now, Katrina has offered new story lines for filmmakers. A major storm hitting New Orleans was written into the plot of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Denzel Washington’s feature film Déjà Vu. Locals finally have a depiction they can call their own in HBO’s Treme series, which won a 2011 Peabody Award and which Times-Picayune TV columnist Dave Walker states finally gets New Orleans right.⁷ The French architecture, mixed with a hot, humid climate, are the ingredients of the state’s mystifying landscape and unique culture [that] create an innate background for dramatic and exploitative narratives, said OSU’s Danny Shipka. The uniqueness of the culture allows filmmakers to develop features that focus on the idea of the other. Louisiana is an entirely separate world outside of the cultural hegemony, Shipka said, therefore, artistic portrayals commonly posit the culture as strange, provincial, dangerous, sexy, and/or illiterate.

Life in Louisiana is a free-for-all—Laissez le bons temps rouler as they say around the state. Mardi Gras is a destination for partygoers and not an event that leads up to a religious holiday. Some feel it is a constant Carnival mentality: everyone makes a mess and sweeps it up later, or sometimes never. These perceptions are the roots of victimization—the feeling that victims are not worthy of help because they live in an undisciplined manner. The image is what Mann calls looser politics that are less upright and where rules don’t apply. One nationally syndicated columnist, after the oil disaster, suggested in her column that the federal government take over the state of Louisiana, because the politicians were incapable of taking care of local affairs.⁸ And she was not alone; national public opinion was divided over rebuilding New Orleans.⁹ Yet what was not pointed out is that the region, without New Orleans, would not be the same, not just culturally, but economically. For much of the nation and perhaps the world, the perceptions of the South are guided by popular culture and our unfortunate affinity for disaster, of all sorts. Louisiana is the black sheep of the Gulf Coast family who always gets into trouble and other family members have to keep bailing out. Not only is this feeling held on a national level, but within the Gulf Coast, as we found. Mississippi set its own recovery path as the anti-Louisiana model, with a do-it-ourselves approach.

While Katrina put Gulf states into competition with each other for federal relief, the oil spill was a unifying denominator. When the underwater gusher was finally capped on July 15, 2010, between 170 and 200 million gallons of oil had leaked. Sixteen thousand miles of Gulf Coast had been affected—Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. Two million gallons of chemical dispersants that were released into the waters added another layer of uncertainty to the long-term consequences. As the oil seeped out across the waters that these states shared in common, so too the region banded together for the first time since those first few days after Katrina in a strong force of humanity and solidarity. However, the BP oil spill reinforced the notion of a region in disaster perpetuity with victims so neglected, why should the rest of the nation care? The greatest negative reaction, according to Bob Mann, may have been that we tested the public’s capacity for sympathy for our state and region and may have inadvertently cemented in the public’s mind that we are a hapless state in a perpetual state of disaster and crisis brought on by a history of incompetence and ignoring existing problems. Hurricane Katrina picked the scab off a long-neglected injury, and the region bled out.

While Americans may feel taxed on sympathy for the Gulf, the region’s residents remained shell-shocked, many still coming to grips with the new realities of the people and places they called home. More than seven years later as this book goes to press, many around the nation and the world may not realize that residents of this region still have not returned to family homes, and many more still have not recouped the livelihood they once had before 2005. Rob Dowie spent much of his time in the Baton Rouge River Center shelter helping evacuees get reunited with their families after Katrina. As director and founder of Southeast Louisiana Aquatics (SELA), Dowie was on the board of the New Orleans chapter of the American Red Cross and a volunteer for the Orleans Parish learn-to-swim program prior to Hurricane Katrina. The Red Cross partnered with the New Orleans public school system and received a grant from the Save the Lake (Ponchatrain) Foundation to teach second graders as part of their P.E. curriculum how to swim. Every second grader in New Orleans was bused to the nearest pool to learn how to swim.

After Katrina, as a Red Cross board member, he was stunned to discover that the Save the Lake program in effect saved a life. At the center, a young boy, not much older than second grade, came running up to him and said, Mr. Rob, Mr. Rob, do you remember me? You taught me how to swim, and I swam. Dowie recounts the rest of the story.

I didn’t automatically connect what he was talking about because in the shelter, as you can imagine, it is overwhelming. But come to find out he was in the learn-to-swim program. And I asked him in our brief conversation, Who are you here with? Did you ride a bus? Where are your parents? And his response was, Well, Mr. Rob, you didn’t teach my parents how to swim.¹⁰

The Gulf Coast experienced two epic tragedies, very different, yet very similar. We often think of a crisis as a unique one-time event—this has not been the fate of the Gulf Coast. The Gulf Coast has been in a perpetual crisis mode ever since August 29, 2005. The perception is that the Gulf Coast must be jinxed, chock-full of victims who cost the