More about "facts"

There really isn’t much disagreement about the facts surrrounding the Katrina response, though some in the media would like us to believe that there is. By creating the myth that we can’t agree on the facts, the media is able to allow whatever side that they support to hide from the facts.

On this Katrina discussion, the issue (I believe) that many people are raising can be boiled down to a couple of key points. These, by the way, are perspectives not facts.

1. The response of the federal government to the disaster was not adequate – perhaps even shameful – especially in light of the fact that we have been spending billions on “homeland security” since 9/11, and one would hope that this would have allowed us to be better prepared for disasters.
2. The response of the President, in particular, is shameful. He continued to vacation and politic for days after the hurricane hit, rather than show a sense of urgency to provide aid to the region.
3. Especially in light of the response of the President and the federal government to the hurricane in Florida that resulted in much less damage and loss of life, this appears to be a case of doling out the federal help to those who the President likes.
4. The political appointees that the President has put in charge of important entities like FEMA show him to be far more concerned with rewarding political friends than with serving the people of this nation – especially when compared to previous administrations.

The timeline that MoveOn.org sent out seems to be pretty factual, according to the research that I am able to do. Nothing that I see in this timetable conflicts with anything that Betty also reported that she had heard on cable news.

Regarding the Red Cross reference that Betty saw on the news, it appears that the Red Cross is working directly with local authorities and the National Guard to set up in the most effective place and manner. The Red Cross “applauds” and is full agreement with the decisions that have been made. For the facts, here is the link to the Red Cross site:

http://www.redcross.org/faq/0,1096,0_682_4524,00.html#4524

Regarding the “refused to let FEMA in” report that Betty sited, I can find only opinion and conjecture, no fact on this issue. But I do have what I think is a good “theory” based on what I have read. That is, when the Bush administration took over from the Clinton administration, they set about to change everything that they could. One of the changes that they made at FEMA was that rather than a collaborative response to disasters with state and local authorities, they created clear separation between state response and federal response. Whether this is good or bad, in this case it may have created a communication void that both sides are now trying to use to their political advantage. In any case, this appears to be exactly the sort of red herring that the administration has become so adept and providing the media as a way of diverting attention – exactly what got me fuming in the first place.

So here we sit, really in agreement on the facts, yet the media has us convinced that “we don’t know enough”, or that there are “conflicting facts”. There are a great many places where the facts as pretty clear, and I have seen little disagreement:

• It was known as Katrina was coming to land that this would be catastrophic.
• Bush took a few days to personally react. Good or bad?
• His FEMA director had virtually no EM experience, seems to have been politely fired from his last job of 12 years or so as a commissioner of some Arabian horse foundation or some such thing, and his 2 top deputies were PR people from the Bush campaign with no EM experience. Good or bad?
• The Louisiana National Guard is largely not at home, they are in Iraq, along with the specialized amphibious equipment that apparently only they have. This equipment is designed and built to help with exactly this sort of flooding catastrophe. What are they doing in Iraq? Should they be there? How much more effective and immediate would our response have been if they were home with their equipment where they belong?

Again, the play by the administration through the media to shift focus away from the response of the federal government is exactly what has me so upset.

So, how do I react to the media? Depending on where I fall on the perspective line, do I simply look to sources who will give me support for my perspective, or do I evaluate the information that I receive from conflicting sources, and see how it changes my perspective? If the media that I listen to sees that “their guy” is in trouble on this issue, they have repeatedly created confusion and the myth that there are conflicting “facts”.

Clearly, MoveOn.org leans far to the left, as Betty says. When I receive information from them, I must take into consideration the high likelihood that they are giving me only the facts that support their position. I have found that while they support one side clearly, they provide very well-vetted and well supported information, or facts. By the same token, if I receive information from the Heritage Foundation, or Focus on the Family, it has the same clear lean far to the right, and they will only provide information that will support their position. I could use the term “hysterical” with any of these organizations, provided the position that they support is different from the position that I support, and if they support the same position that I support, then I will probably call them “justifiably passionate” or something like that.

There is a difference between presenting one side of a story – which is what I expect from partisan organizations – and presenting information that is meant to mislead. I have to be smart enough to see the difference – to divorce myself from my position long enough to discern the nature of the information that I am looking at.

Rather than allow ourselves to be manipulated by the media, (which appears to run the state), what if we were willing to truly look at the facts, and debate our perspectives with one another. We can agree to disagree over perspectives, but this should not be the case with facts. Rather than dismiss the issue as “confused”, what if we honestly reviewed the facts together, then debated our perspectives on those facts?