"Europeans getting tainted hurricane news"
Tags: europeansTwo narratives of Hurricane Katrina dominated the news media of Europe over the last weeks. One was the story of the hurricane tearing its way through the Gulf shores of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, especially New Orleans…
In Europe these human stories stimulated sympathy for Katrina's victims. Governments there have now sent considerable aid. But the sympathy was oddly skewed. It was directed less toward American victims than toward victims of America…
…the second European narrative was a simple morality play in which all the blame for Katrina fell on Bush, either for his actual policies or for what he allegedly symbolizes — i.e., an uncaring social philosophy that neglects the poor and minorities. Almost every aspect of the hurricane and its aftermath were attributed to these two aspects of Bush at such an early stage that, even if the media allegations, hints and inferences had been accidentally true, the evidence for them would simply not have been available…
