For the last two days, I’ve been relying more and more on the BBC for my coverage of the Gulf Coast disaster because it has a bit of distance in its reportage, feels no need to pad its stories with emotionally manipulative themes, and (thus?) seems less likely to induge in rumor-mongering. Not that British journalists shy away from making a point.
I just read an editorial from a BBC reporter out of Los Angeles, Matt Wells (no relation), that just about sums it up for me. It opens:
The only difference between the chaos of New Orleans and a Third World disaster operation, he said, was that a foreign dictator would have responded better.