# New Orleans Shelters' "Atrocities" - why did we so readily believe? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 26, 2005, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-orleans-shelters-atrocities-why-did-we-so-readily-believe/323516 "2005-09-26T16:58:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Mehitabel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8797f3/32.png) [@Mehitabel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mehitabel)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2005, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-orleans-shelters-atrocities-why-did-we-so-readily-believe/323516/1 "2005-09-26T16:58:09Z")
Well, I for one, didn’t. Not entirely. The more Grand Guignol stories of rampant rape and murder out of the Superdome and Convention Center set my BS meter off a few times, especially with no visual or name confirmation. I grew up in a high-crime time and place and yet the idea of a man raping a 7-year-old girl in a ladies restroom while hundreds of women merely watched helplessly didn’t ring true. The gang fights and the beatings and dozens of corpses sprawled on the floor seemed oddly invisible to the cameras. Turns out I was right to be so skeptical; I’ve been seeing articles like this for a couple of weeks now but this straight-shooting one from the beleagured [Times-Picayune sums it all up.](http://www.nola.com/newslogs/tporleans/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_tporleans/archives/2005_09_26.html#082732) > [@](#): > > That the nation’s front-line emergency management believed the body count would resemble that of a bloody battle in a war is but one of scores of examples of myths about the Dome and the Convention Center treated as fact by evacuees, the media and even some of New Orleans’ top officials, including the mayor and police superintendent. As the fog of warlike conditions in Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath has cleared, the vast majority of reported atrocities committed by evacuees have turned out to be false, or at least unsupported by any evidence, according to key military, law enforcement, medical and civilian officials in positions to know. > [@](#): > > Orleans Parish District Attorney Eddie Jordan said authorities had confirmed only four murders in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina - making it a typical week in a city that anticipated more than 200 homicides this year. Jordan expressed outrage at reports from many national media outlets that suffering flood victims had turned into mobs of unchecked savages. > [@](#): > > In interviews with Oprah Winfrey, Compass reported rapes of “babies,” and Mayor Ray Nagin spoke of “hundreds of armed gang members” killing and raping people inside the Dome. Unidentified evacuees told of children stepping over so many bodies, “we couldn’t count.” > > The picture that emerged was one of the impoverished, masses of flood victims resorting to utter depravity, randomly attacking each other, as well as the police trying to protect them and the rescue workers trying to save them. Nagin told Winfrey the crowd has descended to an “almost animalistic state.” > > Four weeks after the storm, few of the widely reported atrocities have been backed with evidence. The piles of bodies never materialized, and soldiers, police officers and rescue personnel on the front lines say that although anarchy reigned at times and people suffered unimaginable indignities, most of the worst crimes reported at the time never happened. First of all, thank God. There was enough real suffering going on so that the idea of human cruelty added to Mother Nature’s was unbearable. The poor are too often chronically ill and several obviously just collapsed under the conditions without human malice involved. Negligance, yes, but that’s another debate. My main questions, I guess, are: 1. Why was the media so eager to report these atrocities without a single body or primary witness or victim, and why were these stories so disseminated around the world? 2. Almost all of the people reporting atrocities secondhand I saw were black; the real and fake victims were, AFAICT, black also. Why did the black community seem ready to believe the worst about itself so quickly, and what does it say about their view of the world? 3. There was some very real damage done by these fake stories; hospitals made themselves into fortresses, people left the shelters to unsafe homes because of fear of what might happen, some British tourists had the males surround the females so they wouldn’t be taken away and raped by black gangs (and Lord knows what kinds of reputation New Orleans now has in Britain), evacuees were denied escape to other regions or towns because the people feared they were bringing their anarchy and violence with them, etc. What can be done when false rumors run ahead of common sense? 4. Are Mayor Nagin and other officials to blame for spreading the stories on the national media and decreasing (at least initially) the reservoir of goodwill for the evacuees? I find the article a fascinating coda to a national disaster, and would like to hear especially from people outside the US and see if the truth is getting out there. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2005, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-orleans-shelters-atrocities-why-did-we-so-readily-believe/323516/2 "2005-09-26T17:15:33Z")
I dispute the premise of your argument. I was obssessed with what was going on in my former home during Katrina. I followed literally dozens of news outlets for 12 - 16 hours a day in the days leading up to and following Katrina. I heard very few of the stories that you are describing. I did hear plenty about looting and associated looting based violence. I continue to believe the thrust of those stories. Robbery seemed pretty common too as well as general mob indifference. I did not hear much about rape or murder. To be fair, I think I heard that mentioned once or twice in passing with no substantiation but it certainly didn’t dominate any of the many outlets that I followed closely. Can you tell us who reported these stories over and over? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2005, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-orleans-shelters-atrocities-why-did-we-so-readily-believe/323516/3 "2005-09-26T17:26:18Z")
You had local officials, like that guy who broke down in tears on Meet The Press because his friend’s mother kept crying for help day after day until she finally died almost a week after the hurricane hit. Yesterday, on Meet the Press, Russert called bullshit on his performance and the guy still wouldn’t back down. The woman did die, but she died on the first day of the hurricane because the nursing home onwers were negligent in evacuating the home, not because no help came after 5 days of constant calling. We’ve got an instant-news mentality in this country now, and few people are patient enough to wait for the facts. ---
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2005, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-orleans-shelters-atrocities-why-did-we-so-readily-believe/323516/4 "2005-09-26T17:34:08Z")
More than one “news outlet” was running these stories. When people see several of them running the same, or similar stories, they tend to think the stories are accurate. After all, these were not the Marxist Gazette or the National Socialist Workers Daily, these were well known and somewhat respected (?) newspapers and news shows. Likewise, if only one source had reported these stories, many people might look for other reports to either confirm or refute. Everything **seemed** to confirm. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2005, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-orleans-shelters-atrocities-why-did-we-so-readily-believe/323516/5 "2005-09-26T17:36:38Z")
This argument is dishonest: > [@](#): > > Orleans Parish District Attorney Eddie Jordan said authorities had confirmed only four murders in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina - making it a typical week in a city that anticipated more than 200 homicides this year. Jordan expressed outrage at reports from many national media outlets that suffering flood victims had turned into mobs of unchecked savages. Those four murders occurred after _90% of the population had been evacuated_, so in reality, the murder rate shot up to nearly\*\* ten times the normal rate\*\* for comparable populations. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2005, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-orleans-shelters-atrocities-why-did-we-so-readily-believe/323516/6 "2005-09-26T17:52:13Z")
I was vacationing in Europe for a couple weeks at the time of the storm. The BBC was horrible in it’s coverage of NO. They were reporting tens of thousands dead, rapes, you name it. I had nothing else to go on. (Oh, how I missed Fox News!) But, I suspected that it was largely bullshit. One particular scene sticks in my memory. They did a street interview where the responses were Bush bashing, America bashing and simply hateful. An enderly couple stated something like “they were quick to go into Iraq in violation of international law, but not so quick to help thier own citizens” with a smug look on thier faces. Every person I talked to while I was in London was genuinely concerned and caring about the situation. I wondered how many people the BBC must have spoken with to get the negative reactions they wanted. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2005, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-orleans-shelters-atrocities-why-did-we-so-readily-believe/323516/7 "2005-09-26T17:54:20Z")
> [@Fear Itself](#): > > This argument is dishonest:Those four murders occurred after _90% of the population had been evacuated_, so in reality, the murder rate shot up to nearly\*\* ten times the normal rate\*\* for comparable populations. :rolleyes: The argument isn’t that the _murder rate_ was normal. It was that the _number of murders_ was normal. There’s nothing dishonest about it. It just puts things into perspective. ---
**Author:** ![Gangster\_Octopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a8b319/32.png) [@Gangster\_Octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gangster_Octopus)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2005, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-orleans-shelters-atrocities-why-did-we-so-readily-believe/323516/8 "2005-09-26T17:56:48Z")
Fog of war applied to the hurricane is all it was. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2005, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-orleans-shelters-atrocities-why-did-we-so-readily-believe/323516/9 "2005-09-26T18:02:24Z")
> [@Debaser](#): > > :rolleyes: > > The argument isn’t that the _murder rate_ was normal. It was that the _number of murders_ was normal. There’s nothing dishonest about it. It just puts things into perspective. The number of murders is normal for a city of 500,000, not a city reduced to 50,000 by evacuation. It is dishonest to say 4 murders is normal under those circumstances. ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2005, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-orleans-shelters-atrocities-why-did-we-so-readily-believe/323516/10 "2005-09-26T18:03:38Z")
> [@Debaser](#): > > I was vacationing in Europe for a couple weeks at the time of the storm. The BBC was horrible in it’s coverage of NO. They were reporting tens of thousands dead, rapes, you name it. I had nothing else to go on. (Oh, how I missed Fox News!) But, I suspected that it was largely bullshit. The U.S. media, including Fox, was reporting basically the same. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2005, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-orleans-shelters-atrocities-why-did-we-so-readily-believe/323516/11 "2005-09-26T18:55:30Z")
> [@This Year's Model](#): > > The U.S. media, including Fox, was reporting basically the same. Minus the America bashing though, I bet. It seems that [Tony Blair](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4280122.stm) agrees with me at least in part on the BBC coverage of the hurricane. > [@](#): > > Tony Blair says he “didn’t much care for” some BBC reports about Hurricane Katrina, after claims he was angry at the corporation’s “anti-Americanism”. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2005, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-orleans-shelters-atrocities-why-did-we-so-readily-believe/323516/12 "2005-09-26T19:01:49Z")
> [@Fear Itself](#): > > The number of murders is normal for a city of 500,000, not a city reduced to 50,000 by evacuation. It is dishonest to say 4 murders is normal under those circumstances. During a normal time period when New Orleans has 500,000 people, it’s likely that the bulk of the murders in the city occur among the poorest ten percent of the population. (That is to say that both the murderer and the victim are among the poorest ten percent.) The poorest ten percent were also, generally, those left in the city after the evacuation. Hence the murder rate for that segment of the population wasn’t really different. In any case, four murders is a very small sample to judge by, and also murders may have been committed during the anarchic conditions without ever being brought to the attention of the authorities. ---
**Author:** ![Mehitabel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8797f3/32.png) [@Mehitabel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mehitabel)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2005, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-orleans-shelters-atrocities-why-did-we-so-readily-believe/323516/13 "2005-09-27T16:34:44Z")
I’ve been looking for articles similar to the one from NOLA I cited in the foreign press, but haven’t found any. If these stories follow people from NO for years, whose responsibility would it be? The originators for spreading the rumors, the politicians for reinforcing them, the press for reporting them as gospel, or the readers who believed them? ---
**Author:** ![Mehitabel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8797f3/32.png) [@Mehitabel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mehitabel)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2005, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-orleans-shelters-atrocities-why-did-we-so-readily-believe/323516/14 "2005-09-27T16:51:11Z")
Sorry about the double-post, but just saw an article on the same theme in the [Los Angeles Times.](http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-rumors27sep27,0,5492806,full.story?coll=la-home-headlines) Maybe this will be a week of reflection for the worldwide media? Shyeah right. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2005, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-orleans-shelters-atrocities-why-did-we-so-readily-believe/323516/15 "2005-09-27T17:22:05Z")
From today’s [San Jose Merc News](http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/special_packages/interactive/12745169.htm): > [@](#): > > At the same time, a spokesman for the National Guard confirmed a report in Monday’s New Orleans Times Picayune that cast doubt on some of the more harrowing accounts of conditions in the city’s Superdome in the aftermath of Katrina. > > Despite assertions that 200 people died there, the actual number was six and four of those people died of natural causes, according to Major Ed Bush of the Louisiana National Guard. One of the others died of a drug overdose, he said. The other committed suicide. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2005, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-orleans-shelters-atrocities-why-did-we-so-readily-believe/323516/16 "2005-09-27T17:22:52Z")
Well, on the SDMB, itself, we had [Sociologists Say Experiments Show that Looting, Crime Couldn’t Have Been Bad at All](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=334506) (which went from mouth-foaming to an almost considered discussion fairly quickly, but which did make several references to massive amounts of violence). and [New Orleans and future race relations](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=333372) and [this post](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=6535121&postcount=8) and [this post](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=6535295&postcount=32) and [this post](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=6541115&postcount=59) and [this post](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=6535355&postcount=54) (and while they show the mindset of one of our more willingly credulous posters, his beliefs had to come from _somewhere_) And he was not the only one taken in by the hype as [this post](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=6537389&postcount=8) and [this post](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=6535537&postcount=64) demonstrate. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2005, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-orleans-shelters-atrocities-why-did-we-so-readily-believe/323516/17 "2005-09-27T17:54:34Z")
On NPR I heard repeated reports that a 12-year-old girl was raped in the Convention Center, that there was fighting (but no killings, though several people died of natural causes, apparently) and frequent reports of gunfire heard in the city. I also heard an account of an evacuee who said he had to physically prevent looters from breaking into his house, and who later discovered the dead bodies of two neighbors and overheard another neighbor saying he’d killed them while looting. That was all I heard, but it was fairly horrible all by its lonesome. ---
**Author:** ![Mehitabel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8797f3/32.png) [@Mehitabel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mehitabel)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2005, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-orleans-shelters-atrocities-why-did-we-so-readily-believe/323516/18 "2005-09-28T00:20:16Z")
Thanks for all the links, **Tom**. There were so many Katrina threads it was tough to find one on an exact topic. And I have no doubt that SOME terrible things happened; what I wondered was what effect the stories had on how people behaved. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2005, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-orleans-shelters-atrocities-why-did-we-so-readily-believe/323516/19 "2005-09-28T01:31:55Z")
I’m not surprised at all. There were all kinds of calls on the board to wait and see what would come out facts wise…which were generally shouted down as being pro-Bush, blah blah blah. [Factcheck](http://www.factcheck.org/article348.html) finally came out with a blow by blow of what happened when as far as Katrina goes if anyone is interested. Thought I’d toss that here since all the other Katrina threads are pretty much dead in case anyone wanted to look it over. Its an interesting read in what went wrong…and what didn’t. -XT ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2005, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-orleans-shelters-atrocities-why-did-we-so-readily-believe/323516/20 "2005-09-28T02:21:49Z")
Was there some reason we shouldn’t have? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-orleans-shelters-atrocities-why-did-we-so-readily-believe/323516.md?page=2)