60 Minutes: "New Orleans is Sinking"
Tags: environmental damage, kathleen blanco, cbsOn tonight's 60 Minutes, "natural disaster expert" Prof. Tim Kusky of the Earth Sciences Department at St. Louis University will advocate a "gradual pull-out from the city". He says that in 90 years:
“New Orleans is going to be 15 to 18 feet below sea level, sitting off the coast of North America surrounded by a 50 to 100-foot-tall levee system to protect the city… That’s the projection, because we are losing land on the Mississippi Delta at a rate of 25 to 30 square miles per year. That’s two acres per hour that are sinking below sea level…"
Kathleen Blanco's office wants CBS to hold off on the report:
Andy Kopplin, Blanco's chief for the governor's main panel dealing with the rebuilding effort, the Louisiana Recovery Authority, wrote CBS producers asking the network to reconsider.
"We are very concerned about the preview of your story on New Orleans' future posted on the '60 Minutes' Web site and hope it is not an accurate reflection of your work," Kopplin's letter said…
"We know of many scientists and engineers who have spent considerable parts of their careers becoming experts in addressing coastal land loss in Louisiana and who disagree fundamentally with Prof. Kusky's purported comments," Kopplin wrote.
The letter says, "I cannot request strongly enough that you delay the airing of your story and immediately get in contact with some of these scientists in order to provide your viewers with scientific objectivity as well as balance in your report."
A battle of the academics ensues:
… Kopplin's letter was attached to a letter from Donald Boesch, president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, strongly disputing Kusky's conclusions and raising questions about Kusky's credentials.
"Quick research reveals that Prof. Kusky's expertise is in ophiolites, rock sequences that formed on the oceanic edge of tectonic plates, in the Archean eon about 3 billion years ago," Boesch's letter states.
He criticized some of Kusky's writing as being no better than "an undergraduate paper" that he would give a low grade.
November 21st, 2005 at 8:41 am
Dear 60 Minutes,
I have to admit my respect and interest in your program is deteriorating. This evening I was excited to see the piece on New Orleans. I like many others who are back here trying to put our lives back together are in need of Media attention to help the rest of the Nation and world understand what has happened to this city and why it needs to be rebuilt. In the National media there has been so much footage of the 9th ward and East New Orleans. There has been so much footage of the areas that were totally destroyed. Yet there has been no footage of the areas of town that went without flooding and are up and running. There has been no media attention on why the levees and the 17th Street Canal broke.
In these next few weeks New Orleans will see if its population will remain away or return and if the Federal government will help us rebuild and protect this important city or renege on its promise for funding and protection. So now, more than ever, we need people to understand that the city is coming back. We need people to see that businesses are open (and I am not talking about Bourbon Street). Our neighborhoods are coming back, people are cleaning up. Our politicians and business leaders are trying to put together plans for the city's future.
What did I watch tonight? I saw you interview a scientist who specializes in Natural Disasters, but not a scientist who specializes in this area. You allowed him to share his dooms day opinion, but spoke to no one else to verify his claims. I watched as you went into the 9th Ward like everyone else has done and film the same footage. Nothing new was provided. You took what has been online and on network news and repeated it. No new ideas. No journalistic attempt to seek new angles. Tonight there was no attempt at educating your audience, only drama and hopelessness.
What did I want to watch? I wanted you to show the areas hardest hit and the areas that were relatively unscathed. I wanted you to talk to individuals who are experts on this area. I wanted you to ask not just "should New Orleans be rebuilt" but examine "why New Orleans should be rebuilt." I wanted you to ask why this happened. Why did the Levees and the 17th Street Canal fail? There is a story there. I wanted you to explain to people why we live here and why New Orleans matters to this country. But you didn't do any of these things. I wanted you to do your job and be journalists.
Ed Bradley has been to New Orleans so I bet he could have been able to have told the story better. Instead you had Scott Pelley take the easy way out and offer your National audience nothing more than justification for the opinion not to rebuild this essential city. You offered nothing new tonight and did the city of New Orleans a great disservice.
60 Minutes is sinking.