Appoint Blank
Slate, Sept. 5, 2005.
The New York Times leads with the news that New Orleans is beginning to search for its dead. The Los Angeles Times leads with the related news that the official death toll is mounting. The Washington Post lead wonders who Bush might appoint as chief justice, reporting that he is considering John Roberts for the spot.
Everyone continues to devote most of the front page to covering disaster relief in New Orleans, where operations widened to include a house-by-house search for survivors in an effort to evacuate all residents. The NYT leads with news that mortuary teams began the sickening task of collecting the dead. The National Guard finally has control of the streets, although there was yet another shootout. Contractors working for the Army Corps of Engineers were fired on as they crossed a bridge en route to making some repairs. Police escorts returned fire, killing four people. Why did people open fire on the contractors? The WP quotes a witness who calls it, “Shooting just to be shooting.” The NYT’s summary: “There was no explanation for it, only the numbing facts.”
The LAT leads with the rising death toll, but the papers continue to hold off on a precise estimate of the number of dead. In Baton Rouge, the state’s official death toll is 59, but everyone agrees that the real number is probably in the thousands. One morgue was expecting 1,000 to 2,000. The LAT also reports that Americans donated a record $400 million for disaster relief, and thousands of people offered to house refugees.
The WP leads with a banner headline announcing a “scramble” to fill the vacancy left by William Rehnquist, noting in the subhead that Bush is considering nominating Roberts for chief justice. The NYT gets anonymous wind of the same thing, but saves it for paragraph 14. The LAT notes the possibility (but has no specific source) and points out that given the reception so far to his nomination, Roberts’ confirmation as chief justice would likely be easy. The move could guarantee a chief justice by the Oct. 3 opening day. Another option is for Bush to revisit the short list he chose John Roberts from, although he’s now under more pressure to choose a woman or a Hispanic. The third option is to elevate Scalia or Thomas to chief, which would mean three confirmation battles at once.
All three papers repeat that Bush’s poll ratings are at an all-time low: the NYT in its Katrina coverage and the WP and LAT in their Supreme Court coverage. The WP calls this “a perilous point in his presidency,” and the NYT points out that Bush’s response to Katrina, “widely viewed as slow and ineffectual,” might have the effect of “endangering his Congressional agenda.”
The WP fronts a separate piece of analysis reporting that “Bush has enjoyed none of the rally-round sentiment that followed the Sept. 11 attacks, as Americans confronted not only tragedy and devastation but also a common purpose in retaliating.” In this case, since there is no common enemy, “anger has been focused on Bush and his administration to a degree unprecedented in his presidency.”
The NYT reports that in response to criticism of the federal government’s handling of the emergency, the Bush administration “rolled out a public relations offensive,” sending Chertoff, Rumsfeld, Rice, and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers to tour devastated areas, and putting Chertoff on TV to denounce Katrina as “probably the worst catastrophe or set of catastrophes” in U.S. history.
The NYT fronts a separate story on the “blame game,” reporting that the only consensus between federal, state, and local officials is that “the system had failed.” But everyone, including Chertoff, seems also to be acknowledging that FEMA should have done better. According to the president of one parish who dramatically broke down sobbing on Meet the Press, Wal-Mart trucks loaded with water were turned away by FEMA officials; the Coast Guard was prevented from delivering 1,000 gallons of fuel; armed guards restored the parish’s emergency communications line and posted armed guards to protect it from FEMA workers, who had cut it. Hillary Clinton has a plan to remove FEMA from the DHS and restore it to the Cabinet level.
The LAT fronts a story explaining that FEMA was “MIA” because it has been “hobbled by cutbacks.” Another problem is that most of FEMA’s budget is for terrorism, not natural disasters, even though local officials have long said that what they really need is money to prepare for natural disasters and accidents.
The NYT fronts news that a “significant number” of New Orleans residents have refused to leave, hoping to protect their homes or stay with their pets, which are not allowed on evacuation buses. “We were basically forced out at gunpoint,” said one resident quoted in the WP. But officials warned that without a reliable source of food or drinkable water, and with the threat of cholera, typhoid, malaria, and West Nile virus, staying put is not a reasonable alternative.
Through the looting glass… The New York Times reports on the pair of wire photos that incited the blogosphere last week. In one photo, an African-American man wading through water carrying groceries is described as “looting” in the caption, but the white couple in the other photo is described as “finding bread and soda.” Yahoo posted both photos with unedited captions, and the contrast prompted cries of racial bias. The NYT makes no conclusions, but does note that the parents and grandparents of the photographer who wrote the “finding” caption lost their homes in the disaster, quoting him as saying, “Now is no time to pass judgment on those trying to stay alive.”
Atomic Relief
Slate, Sept. 19, 2005.
The Los Angeles Times leads, in a banner headline, with the late-breaking news that North Korea will abandon its nuclear weapons program: The final editions of the Washington Post (at least online) and the New York Times lead similarly. The early editions both led with the news that the German election failed to produce a clear winner, news that also tops the Wall Street Journal world-wide news box. USA Today leads with word that the prospect of a safe return to New Orleans remains uncertain.
North Korea pledged to abandon its nuclear weapons program. Six-nation negotiations, led by China, yielded a draft agreement in which North Korea agreed to scrap its existing nuclear weapons, rejoin the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and submit to nuclear inspections. In return, the U.S. and other countries will provide aid and security guarantees. The U.S. and North Korea agreed to respect each other’s sovereignty and will seek to normalize relations. The negotiations had stumbled over a North Korean demand for a light-water nuclear reactor. The U.S. still rejects that demand but is allowing for the possibility of a peaceful nuclear energy program down the line.
It’s still unclear who will be the next chancellor of Germany, although both main candidates are claiming victory. Voters spurned the Social-Democratic incumbent, who lost the majority his party previously enjoyed. But the Christian-Democratic challenger, who won the greatest number of votes, also failed to win a majority. The NYT calls the development “highly surprising.” In the next few days, the parties will try to form a governing coalition.
USAT leads with, and the LAT and NYT front, the news that the mayor of New Orleans disagrees with a Coast Guard official on whether it’s safe to return to the ravaged city. The mayor plans to return a third of the population to New Orleans over the next week. But the Coast Guard official, who’s heading the federal response to Katrina, says he’ll warn the mayor that the city is not yet safe. Among the problems he cites: The city’s water is mostly undrinkable; the floodwaters may turn toxic; hospitals aren’t yet working; there’s no emergency warning system; and the levees are weakened and might break.
Meanwhile, the NYT notes that President Clinton criticized the Bush administration’s response to the hurricane, saying, “You can’t have an emergency plan that works if it only affects middle-class people up.”
While officials argued over safety, hundreds of residents returned to New Orleans, reports the WP. Meanwhile, reports the LAT, “the federal government’s chief argument for slowing down—the possibility of another storm—was bolstered” by the news that tropical storm Rita may pass over the Gulf Coast, a frightening scenario given that “the levees in New Orleans are in a severely degraded state.”
The NYT fronts, the WP teases, and the LAT and USAT stuff news that Afghans voted, by the millions, despite militant attacks, threats from the Taliban, and confusing ballots. Results will be available next month. USAT and the WP emphasize the peacefulness of the proceedings. Violence before the voting killed 15 people, but the spectacular attack the Taliban threatened failed to materialize, and most voting went smoothly. The WSJ headline emphasizes low turnout, citing an estimate that puts it at 30 to 35 percent of those registered, and arguing that voters were probably deterred by surging Taliban violence, which has killed 1,200 people in the last six months. The others papers are more sanguine, like the NYT, which estimates 50 percent turnout and cites officials who say that “the turnout reflected voter confusion over the 5,800 candidates, not intimidation.” Either way, the elections marked a historic moment. “After 30 years of wars, interventions, occupations, and misery, today Afghanistan is moving forward,” said President Hamid Karzai.
The WP fronts word that the U.S. military, counting the number of enemy dead, is declaring “great successes” in Iraq, claiming that U.S. forces are gaining on Abu Musab al Zarqawi and his fighters. But since recent insurgent suicide bombings and car bombings have been increasingly deadly, the WP points out, Zarqawi’s group “could claim to be the side that’s gaining.” The military made the claim, the WP notices, after the bloodiest two days in Baghdad since the invasion.
The WSJ teases news that months before Katrina hit, local, state, and federal officials received a partially completed strategic plan “to respond to a Katrina-like hurricane,” based on a mock disaster exercise funded by FEMA. Two hundred pages of preliminary recommendations were delivered to FEMA and other agencies, including the warning that tens of thousands of people would require bus and air evacuation. The report also advised that since available transportation would limit the number who could evacuate, “delivery of water and possibly food to victims … will be crucial to minimize deaths” among those remaining. While the plan was incomplete and imperfect when the storm hit, it could have been used as “Version 1.0 of an action plan.”
Following the revelation that Iran will not rein in its nuclear program, the WP stuffs a piece of news analysis arguing that the likely effect will be “a toughening of the international response to Iran.” Iran will probably be given a few weeks to reverse course “or face the consequences of Security Council action.”
Lowering the bar … Alcohol-industry watchdog groups are up in arms over “Kidsbeer,” a “lager-colored” soft drink from Japan that “foams like beer” but “tastes like cola.” But the manufacturer believes there’s a Western market for it and plans to bring it to Europe. After all, warns the cheerful slogan, “Even kids cannot stand life unless they have a drink.”
Correction
In an Oct. 4 “Today’s Papers,” Jay Dixit incorrectly stated that the Iraqi Constitution will fail only if two-thirds of all registered voters reject it.