Katrina: Reaction and Reporting

Still having a hard time getting back to doing what we normally do here, and building up a bit of a backlog on Federal Reserve commentary after last week's "vertical obituary" at Jackson Hole, we find ourselves again today thinking about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina - how affected people are coping with it, how the rest of us are reacting to it, and how the media is covering it.

The news keeps getting worse - loss of life and grim predictions of more to come from the mayor of New Orleans, lawlessness, reports of uniformed police officers taking part in the looting, suspended evacuation plans for hospitals and the Superdome due to gunshots, gas price shocks, oil rigs missing - it all seems pretty overwhelming.

All this doesn't seem to stop a lot of people, far removed from the Gulf Coast, from treating these events as just more information to be included in another economic analysis or prediction.

Is it just me or shouldn't others be having at least some difficulty going on with their daily routine of commenting on the economy? After Katrina, will the Fed pause? How high will oil go? In particular, it seems that the analysis of the potential impact of Katrina on the general health of the American economy could at least wait until the "Thousands Feared Dead" headline has been removed from the Yahoo! main page. It doesn't seem sufficient to provide a disclaimer, "Our thoughts are with those who have been affected by Hurricane Katrina ...", and then go on to expound on why the 2006 recession will draw nearer as a result.

While Ben Bernanke unconvincingly tried to assure the nation that the wider impact of Katrina will be "modest", the dollar swooned and then rumors swirled of some late day buying in S&P futures pits by buyer 990N. Confidence is key. Later in the day, stories about gasoline prices and gasoline shortages started popping up all over, and government officials quickly attacked the problem by making pronouncements to the contrary.

Parts of the cable and broadcast news media seem to be dumbstruck by the unfolding events.

A number of times now we've heard the on-air discussion, "Have you ever seen anything like this in this country?". Veteran reporters and in-studio hosts seem to be equally shocked that this is happening here. Why is that? Is it so hard to accept that the images from the Gulf Coast are not from some far away place? Are images of Americans as victims in America a reminder that in many ways we are not so different than others in far away places.

At times like this, when quickly changing channels to get the latest news, the difference in the quality of the news reporting becomes painfully clear. Frankly, we are not sure what to make of what we have heard and seen on some of the cable news channels. Not having spent much time watching this sort of news lately, some of it appears very strange - as if you can feel the desperation in the studio. Desperation not about the events they are covering, but about their own inability to make sense of it all while maintaining their composure.

When thinking back about how crises like this were reported in the past, the contrast is also clear. In simpler times when global threats were fewer and with less foreboding about what lies beneath an otherwise calm surface, there were different news personalities to guide us.

We long for the comforting voice of Peter Jennings and wish he was still with us to make sense of this all.