Patterico's Pontifications

3/4/2006

My Letter to the Readers’ Rep Regarding False Factual Assertions in the L.A. Times About the Levee Story

Filed under: Dog Trainer — Patterico @ 5:10 pm



I have sent the following e-mail to L.A. Times Readers’ Representative Jamie Gold:

Dear Jamie,

As you may have heard, the AP has issued a “clarification” of its recent story about the video of President Bush being briefed regarding Hurricane Katrina. The “clarification” states in part:

The Army Corps of Engineers considers a breach a hole developing in a levee rather than an overrun. The story should have made clear that Bush was warned about floodwaters overrunning the levees, rather than the levees breaking.

Yesterday (March 3) your paper ran a letter to the editor, by Barry Greenfield of West Hollywood, which stated:

Now the Associated Press is reporting that the president was warned before Katrina hit New Orleans . . . that the storm could breach levees . . .

This factual statement in the letter to the editor was inaccurate. It should be corrected.

The Associated Press, by its own admission, did not report that Bush was warned before Katrina hit that the storm could breach levees, as claimed in the letter. It reported that Bush had been warned that the storm could overrun levees.

I also note that your letter writer was probably misled by your own paper’s description of the video’s contents. In a March 2 front-page story titled Bush Is Warned on Katrina in Video, your paper stated:

[On the video, National Hurricane Center director Max] Mayfield tells the officials he wants “to make it absolutely clear to everyone that there is potential for large loss of life … in the coastal areas from the storm surge,” and emphasizes that there is a “very, very grave concern” about the ability of the levees that separated Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans to stand up against the storm.

In fact, the concern Mayfield warned of was not regarding whether the levees would “stand up against” the storm (i.e. be breached), but rather regarding “whether the levies [sic] will be topped or not.”

I suggest that a correction (or at least a clarification) of the news story is in order.

A correction of the flatly false statement in the letter to the editor is clearly warranted.

Please let me know whether The Times intends to correct these errors. I expect my readers will be interested in your response.

Yours truly,

Patrick Frey
Patterico’s Pontifications
https://patterico.com

I’ll let you know what the response is.

17 Responses to “My Letter to the Readers’ Rep Regarding False Factual Assertions in the L.A. Times About the Levee Story”

  1. The AP clarification is also serious misleading, just less misleading than before. They are replacing the verb “breach” with the verb “overrun” which means:

    1 a (1) : to defeat utterly and occupy the positions of : OVERWHELM, OVERPOWER, CRUSH (2) : to invade and occupy or ravage b obsolete : to run over destructively or harmfully : run down c : to spread or swarm over

    The word used in all of the briefings was “overtop” or “top” as a diminutive form thereof. Overtop means.

    1 : to rise above the top of : exceed in height : tower above

    Definitions are Merriam Webster Unabridged. They are still using misleading language and really should be renamed, Agitprop Pravda.

    RiverRat (54c18d)

  2. I’ve gone back and forth so many times with Jamie. Last time it involved the Plame thing. Does anyone know if Jamie is a guy or girl? Sort of like Pat from SNL.

    PC14 (98b75e)

  3. I only get answers from Kent Zelas. Always polite and generally the same day.

    steve (870ad3)

  4. What? Not “Patrick Frey, Esq.”

    Dana (71415b)

  5. The AP needs reminding that their substituation of ‘overrun’ to describe the event correctly called ‘overtopping’ in the videos is more abuse of language to spin against the President.

    The amount of water released by overtopping is orders of magnitude less than the amount pouring through a breach. In overtopping, only the limited volume of water rising above the levee tops need be considered. It might be a few inches, or at worst a few feet, and after a few hours the conditions causing the surface rise have abated.

    In a breach, the ENTIRE CONTENTS of the water body contained by the levee are released into the city, and the flow doesn’t stop until it’s completely drained.

    ‘Overrun’ appears to have the intent of projecting on the reader the picture of the levee rendered useless. Shame on AP.

    Insufficiently Sensitive (8e7155)

  6. A newly released transcript of a government videoconference shows that hours after Hurricane Katrina made landfall, federal and state officials did not know that the levees in New Orleans were failing and were cautiously congratulating one another on the government response.

    In the videoconference held at noon on Monday, Aug. 29, Michael D. Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, reported that he had spoken with President Bush twice in the morning and that the president was asking about reports that the levees had been breached.

    In the videoconference held at noon on Monday, Aug. 29, Michael D. Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, reported that he had spoken with President Bush twice in the morning and that the president was asking about reports that the levees had been breached.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/02/national/nationalspecial/02katrina.html?ex=1298955600&en=0201f0653564ac8b&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

    So Bush was asking whether the levees had been breached, but they’re being breached never really occurred to him. Ha! You guys have fallen for the Pres. Spin machine once again.

    Psyberian (9eb2a7)

  7. I don’t think that proves what you think that proves.

    Michael D. Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, reported that he had spoken with President Bush twice in the morning and that the president was asking about reports that the levees had been breached.

    Bush was watching TV and reporter were saying the levees had been breached. Bush asked about the veracity of those reports.

    That New York Times article, at least the part you quoted, does nothing to change those facts. The question of whether or not the levee breach was anticipated before it had actually occurred still appears to be that it was not anticipated.

    You’re welcome to try Reading Comprehension 101 again in summer school.

    Hoystory (449133)

  8. Hoystory, this was before the levees were breached, so maybe it is you who needs the grammer lesson. If the president was asking whether they had been breached, then he had considered it, hadn’t he?

    Psyberian (9eb2a7)

  9. Psyberian, you make it so easy. Grammar. Not grammer.

    Again, President Bush was asking because the media was reporting breaches. He was asking if the reports were accurate. That’s not him coming up with it on his own.

    Don’t bring a spoon to a gunfight.

    Hoystory (449133)

  10. Psy, If the president was asking whether they had been breached, then he had considered it, hadn’t he? Perhaps he had, but I would submit that is not the point of the argument, nor was it what Bush said. Bush clearly made the simple observation that no one anticipated the failure of the levees, i.e., their failure was not expected, even given that it might have been possible. Although it is also true that Brown broached the subject in at least one briefing. Even he admits, however, that the preponderance of the available information did not suggest that failure of the levees was inevitable, just that given a “perfect storm” it was possible.

    As I have argued elsewhere, had there been a general expectation that the failure of the levees was a real probability, why was there not a mandatory evacuation of every single person in NO? I would again argue that, based on their actions prior to the hurricane, certainly the local and state governments had no real expectation of levee failure. If they had, their actions should have been significantly different, even accounting for their admitted failures.

    It was particularly not expected when Bush made his comment subsequent to the passage of Katrina when virtually everyone thought NO had dodged another bullet as they had so many times with past hurricanes. When the levee/seawall systems subsequently failed, largely due to undermining as opposed to overtopping, it was unexpected. This was, after all, largely a design failure that had gone unnoticed for years if not decades.

    The real problem here is that this will just happen again unless some serious attention is given to the restoration of the natural barrier islands, marshes and wetlands as well as where and how the city and port of NO are sited.

    Harry Arthur (b318a5)

  11. And, Patterico, with all your bluster and fury, you are reduced to correcting a correction?

    jmaharry (74c3ec)

  12. Hoystory, you don’t even get the point of all this, dim bulb.

    Bush claimed that no one “anticipated” the levees being breached, and yet Bush was apparently asking about that very possibility himself – before they were breached. Got it now?

    Psyberian (9eb2a7)

  13. Harry, I’d rather not get into splitting hairs over the meaning of the word “anticipated.” The fact remains that Bush should have known to keep an eye on the situation, but he dropped the ball. He was MIA in a national tragedy.

    Psyberian (9eb2a7)

  14. You know, this whole thing is ridiculous. The levees failed to protect New Orleans, regardless of whether the failure was a breach or simply being overtopped, and whatever words President Bush used, whether two days before or one day after, are meaningless. After decades of neglect and levee-strengthening funds being diverted for other purposes in Louisiana, the Corps of Engineers was still studying what would be necessary to fortify the levee system to resist a cat 5 hurricane.

    Whether two days or seven days or however many days prior to Katrina, there was nothing that President Bush could have done to stop the disaster; by that time, it was up to God.

    The whole episode is nothing but political demagoguery now.

    Psy wrote:

    Harry, I’d rather not get into splitting hairs over the meaning of the word “anticipated.” The fact remains that Bush should have known to keep an eye on the situation, but he dropped the ball. He was MIA in a national tragedy.

    And what could he have done, Psy? The hurricane was coming, and it was decades too late to do anything about it. The only damage President Bush could have prevented was political damage; in that, he didn’t do a very good job.

    Dana (3e4784)

  15. Dana, of course Bush was not able to prevent the disaster. But he could have helped in the aftermath of it (or as I said before – used his power to get on TV and at least voice concern about it).

    Psyberian (9eb2a7)

  16. psy,

    Pick up the latest version of Popular Mechanics and find out about the seven myths of Katrina. You might be surprised by some facts instead of overzealous news anchors statements. You can get a feel for the article here.

    Specter (466680)

  17. […] The right-wing blogger Patterico has apparently worked himself into a four-star ragegasm (Tbogg’s inimitable coinage) at the notion of anonymous or pseudonymous postings on his website by me. This is amusing, because most of the comments posted on his website are anonymous or pseudonymous. “Patterico” is itself a pseudonym for an Assistant Los Angeles District Attorney named Patrick Frey. Anonymity for commenters is a feature of his blog, as it is of mine. It’s a feature that he can withdraw from his public any time he wishes. He has chosen to do that in one case only, and we might properly ask why. The answer is that he’s ticked off that someone would disagree with him. […]

    FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » Patterico “OUTS” Los Angeles Times Blogger Michael Hiltzik (baa0b4)


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