Discussion: Photos Show Katrina Flooding Around Hotel Where Brian Williams Stayed

Perhaps you should look up the definition of “adjacent to.” Means quite the same thing as “steps from.”

Adjacent to = “a few steps from.”

Rampart is the boundary street for the Quarter. while flooding might have lapped at the boundaries, the Quarter didn’t flood.

Brian Williams on Obama care did more harm it was always negative. he once said on the Letterman show he doesn’t take sides. i don’t remember him ever being positive on it when it was first passed. i stop watching him after Lisa Myers did that report for him on keeping your insurance. i stopped watching him since then, alkways said he was a lier i watch David Muir on ABC . Williams is a celebrity wanna and a total PRICK.

Hurricane coverage us supposed to be about the victims not the reporter. So where is the photo of the body floating by? NBC did have cameras? You don’t need embellishment when the photo speaks for itself.

Did Williams have to hype and over dramatize the obvious in any situation? Yellow journalism is not professional behavior by any reporter much less a network anchor. Can’t believe he wasn’t called on this years ago. He has only himself to blame for the scrutiny now being placed on his conduct.

He does love his celebrity. Loves to be a guest on other programs and be treated like he’s as important as any of the stories he’s ever covered.

Now the issue is Hurricane Katrina? The truth is that most of the networks, including FOX did a poor job. CNN showed the same 5 second segment of a looter taking a TV set hundreds of times. To a considerable extent, each network copied the errors of the other networks.

If Brian Williams is guilty of not always being accurate, then where does that put people who work for Fox News? I’m not defending NBC or Brian Williams but it’s as pretentious as hell to believe the other well-heeled players in the news business have been more accurate.

I still go back to the Knight Ridder Washington bureau as one of the few sources of news that repeatedly got things right while most of the networks, and particularly FOX, got things wrong on the case for war against Iraq. If NBC and Brian Williams have been guilty of anything, it’s taking seriously over the last fifteen years the false memes of Fox News.

Because of budget cuts and profound flaws in the way news is covered these days, it takes work to find out the essential news of the day.

I’ll let the pictures of Katrina flooding speak to that issue. I just find it hard to understand why at least a few people can’t imagine how Williams’ relating of his experience in the helicopter incident is at least understandable.

I put myself (in my imagination) in his shoes: I’m in a group of helicopters in a war zone. I’m not only not serving as a trained soldier on this flight, I have never been trained for this. I’m scared shitless when bullets (or missiles, or whatever) are flying, and try to hold it together and trust the real soldiers I’m dependent on to get out of this. A copter is hit, and all of us set down. I don’t know what the hell is going on, but I’m lucky I didn’t piss myself and I’m just trying to follow their orders and still do my job. Now a fucking legendary dust storm is upon us – I can’t see much beyond my face and I’m trying to look at the damage to a 'copter and still listen for instructions from the soldiers I’m with, because we know the bad guys are out there, somewhere, trying to get us and hurt us. In the aftermath I’m able to decipher my notes and report what happened. But the incident looms so large in my mind that all I remember correctly months or years later is that it is the scariest damned thing and I’m so grateful to the brave souls who do this every day and got me (and themselves) out of it. The fear is what I remember the most. Years later, I’m still grateful to those who serve and admire them. The details of my experience keep getting muddled in that basic feeling I have every time I think of that time – I was so scared, that’s the thing that sticks with me. That feeling.

I’ve always found him to be a decent guy, and not on a level with a lot of blowhards who make stuff up. So I can personally cut him some slack in this instance. He didn’t try to paint himself as a hero, and said many times, “those who served, as I did not…” to indicate that he doesn’t put himself on a par with the people who go into battle daily.

The front of the hotel faces Canal steet 90% of the hotel is in the French Quarter…please use common sense…

Until Dessert Storm, war correspondents were there because someone needed to document what was really going on not be guests taken out into the field to do commentary. War is not entertainment or punditry. It’s the last resort after everything else has failed.

I really don’t care how Williams felt. He was there to do the job not romanticize what was happening or make himself the center of attention. He forgot that the facts are the only thing important in a news story. Once you let that slip, you lose all concept of reality. The anchor of a major network cannot set that sort of example for the rest of the news organization.

We need to get back to basics, people. Our armed services sacrifice way too much to let this sort of hookey reporting trivialize the difficult (if not almost impossible) job they do every damned day.

Only about 10% of the French Quarter flooded