"A J-School question."

From Mickey Kaus:

Has the network TV coverage of the N.O. Superdome fiasco a) made the situation seem to be worse than it really was (because TV always focuses on the negative things--the crime, the snafus, the corpses and complaints, etc.) or b) made the situation seem better than it really was (because network TV didn't want to make it look as if a heavily African-American crowd of refugees couldn't behave itself)? ... I was going to guess a) until I read this.

His link is to that BBC story about the 50 British tourists escorted out of the Superdome, which we discussed here yesterday. My concern was with whether the National Guard were taking the problems of white people more seriously than those of black people, which is quite different from what Kaus is asking. He's wondering about which way the journalists are bending things.