Dig a little deeper, Ashton Phelps….
This appeared in the Times-Pic last Sunday:
Four pumps ran without vibration or pulsation during tests Saturday at the 17th Street Canal, leading an Army Corps of Engineers official to declare enough pumps will be functioning on all three New Orleans outfall canals when the 2007 hurricane season begins June 1….
Great story, right? Happy, happy. Joy, and, quite possibly, joy.
But if only Ms. Grissett had sleuthed a bit more. Yo, check it:
The Army Corps of Engineers, rushing to meet President Bush’s promise to protect New Orleans by the start of the 2006 hurricane season, installed defective flood-control pumps last year despite warnings from its own expert that the equipment would fail during a storm, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.
The 2006 hurricane season turned out to be mild, and the new pumps were never pressed into action. But the Corps and the politically connected manufacturer of the equipment are still struggling to get the 34 heavy-duty pumps working properly….
Of course, both stories reach similar conclusions: the pumps are being fixed, and everything should be fine by June 1. And of course, I’m not a journalist, so I don’t know everything that the Times-Pic reporter went through to get her story. But still, given everything that the AP dug up, it seems like Ms. Grissett–who’s presumably a local and presumably has an interest in the city’s well-being–overlooked an awwwwwful lotta junk, n’est-ce pas?
Now, I understand not wanting to scare people. I understand wanting to focus on the positive and to put folks at ease (especially when said folks are your subscription base). But I tend to draw the line at willful blindness. What happened to those ginormous nads Mr. Phelps & Co. grew in Katrina’s wake?
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Yeah, I guffawed when I read the AP story. Of *course* Cheney Inc. pushed through bad plumbing to make good on a promise (”We said you’d get them, not that they’d work.”). Katrina fatigue in the Times-Pic reporters, so now they buy whatever press release Dear Leader’s people put out?
Does anyone in the New Orleans actually trust the Army Corp of Engineers anymore? If so, why?
Why does anyone in New Orleans trust the New York Times? I quite reading all the crap stories people forwarded me from that rag due to the repeated lazy factual inaccuarcies.
a version of this same article was published in the austin paper today and included the nice little tidbit about the company and how its owner is a former business partner of jeb bush…such a small world…
Jim:
(a) The story isn’t from the NYT. It appears in the Times, but it’s from the Associated Press.
(b) Even if the story were from the NYT, it’s pretty freakin’ factual, and unless someone in their fact-checking department REALLY fell asleep at the wheel, I can’t imagine there’s much wrong with it.
I admit the Times isn’t perfect, and more than a little misinformation has appeared on its pages since Katrina. But what’s truly of concern to me is the way that the Times-Picayune seems to be slipping back into its old, pre-K habits–namely, half-assed reportage. For a while there, I thought we were getting a real paper in New Orleans….
Richard, the T-P is still light-years better than the Atlanta Constitution & the St. Pete Times IMHO. If the T-P offers “half-assed” reporting in your opinion, the AC and SPT offer “quarter-ass” reporting.
I read three papers every morning: the NYT, The AJC, and the Times-Pic.
The Times-Pic at its best is terrific (such as the interactive report/map of LA’s coastline and the problems/politics involved). At its worst, the Times-Pic is, in a word, illiterate.
The AJC isn’t uniformly great, but it is never *that* bad. And whatever problems the NYT has, basic grammar and reporting skills are not among them.