Sandy Rosenthal of levees.org at "little wet spot"-Sunday, June 22
Kevin Gosztola of OEN News contributed extensively to this report
A calculated form of disinformation played out in mainstream newspapers, radio networks, and internet sites this weekend as spin doctors acted as apologists for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). This planned distraction was perpetuated while massive levee failures continued up and down the great Mississippi River Basin. God, Nature, and rice farmers in the Midwest were blamed for the catastrophe with little or no challenge to what has turned out to be a behemoth public relations campaign bought and paid for by the U.S. taxpayer. Government agencies are forbidden by law to lobby the government, but there is no restriction on hiring public relations firms.
USACE has known for some time that the levee systems in America need restructuring. It appears that, rather than improving the levee system to prevent worse case scenarios from happening, or sounding an alarm, the USACE has chosen to hire public relations firms to help them with crisis communications.
"How these [public relations] professionals can transform masters of techno-babble into credible spokespersons so quickly and smoothly is an amazing thing to behold," says Kevin Quinn, Chief Public Affairs Office, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers-Omaha District.
Corps press officer Quinn was offering a testimonial for S&C Advertising & Public Relations. His testimonial is freely available in the Internet and describes how S&C Advertising teaches the Army Corps' so-called "masters of techno babble" how to handle hardball questions. One segment of the course involves a mock television "ambush interview" in which clients such as the Corps are taught "three key messages that the interviewee can always fall back on in touchy situations." Another term for this type of spin "messaging" might be "red herrings."
Amazing Failures to Behold
Some of S&C's other clients include the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the state transportation departments in California, Connecticut and Minnesota. Massive failures of federal infrastructure such as the Minnesota I-35 bridge collapse in August 2007 and the continuing failures of the levee system up and down the Mississippi River drainage basin are certainly "touchy situations."
The USACE message was delivered flawlessly with no challenge.
The Crystal Ball Defense
On June 16, CNN conducted an interview with Lt. General Robert Van Antwerp, commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. "For a lot of these levees, you could not prevent this," Van Antwerp said.
On the same day on FOX News, USACE spokesman Ronald F. Fournier offered the "crystal ball defense," which sounded a lot like Van Antwerp's explanation. "There is no way to predict whether these levees will break. That's a crystal ball that nobody has," Fournier said.
"The operation of that reservoir was going just as planned and just as expected. We were preventing flooding but as you know and I know, that rain came and never stopped."
Brigadier Gen. Michael J. Walsh, commander of the Mississippi River Commission, a commission that prides itself on "listening, inspecting, partnering, and engineering since 1879", went on NBC to practice his crisis communications skills:
MEREDITH VIEIRA, NBC co-host: We just heard about another levee this morning failing, this one in Meyer, Illinois. Your agency has identified 26 levees that are either--they've either failed already or they are at risk of doing so. Why? Why is this happening?
Brig. Gen. WALSH: Well, certainly those levees were designed for a--for a storm, not the size that has hit so far. Certainly in the Cedar Rapids area, that was--we're looking at probably a 500-year storm, and lower down into the Mississippi, perhaps a 50-year storm or a little bit--little bit larger than that.
Georgianne Nienaber is a writer, author, and investigative journalist. She lives in the world. Her articles have appeared in The Huffington Post, SCOOP New Zealand, Glide Magazine, Rwanda's New Times, India's TerraGreen, COA News, ZNET, OpEdNews, The Journal of the International Primate Protection League, Friends of the Congo, Africa Front, The United Nations Publication, A Civil Society Observer, and Zimbabwe's The Daily Mirror. Her fiction exposé of insurance fraud in the horse industry, Horse Sense, was re-released in early 2006. Gorilla Dreams: The Legacy of Dian Fossey was also released in 2006. Nienaber spent much of 2007 doing research in South Africa, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. She was in DRC as a MONUC-accredited journalist, and recently spent six weeks in Southern Louisiana investigating hurricane reconstruction. She is currently developing a documentary on the Gulf of Mexico DEAD ZONE.
I must make certain that OEN's Kevin Gosztola gets significant credit for the writing and research he did on this article. It could not have been completed in a24 hour time frame without him.
We will be certain to post comments from New Orleans Corps when they come in.
by
Georgianne Nienaber (145 articles, 46 quicklinks, 13 diaries, 338 comments)
on Monday, June 23, 2008 at 2:54:00 PM
As a native New Orleanian, naturally I love this city and the people here. I went through Katrina like many did but I was not as unfortunate as the people on roof tops. Actually, I live in Metairie which is a suburb of New Orleans, just about 6 blocks from the now world famous 17th Street Canal. By the way, it is not the "Industrial canal" as the author above mentioned but a drainage canal which runs from lake Pontcahrtrain to the Mississippi River. The Industrial Canal is runs along the 9th Ward.
I am so tired of the SPIN that our so-called leaders give the media when they are in an awkward position and do not know enough themselves to give an "informed opinion". Instead, they lie or spin it so the public becomes confused. I saw the 17th Street Canal oveflow just a few hours after it breached (I have photos). Orignally, they said that the water overflowed and washed out the mud at the base causing the rest of the foundation to erode away. Then they changed it later to another theory. I can tell you from personal experience, the water never made it to the top of the wall, when it gave way to the force. Oh, I believe the base gave out, but it gave out because of a tired infrastructure. I marvel when I go to Holland to visit my in-laws and see the wonderous projects that they have made.
They say that necessity is the "Mother of Invention" , however, unless engineers and the USACE come clean and admit their fault, the American people will never know the necessity or I should say the "urgency" of this situation. At least not until, God forbid, others lose their lives and more levees are breached besides the 20 or so that are now damaged. Unless people become personally involved and contact their Senators and Congressmen to let them know that this WILL NOT be tolerated, it will just be business as usual. If they can get a PR company to spin the truth, they will do just that. This government is SO big people that Washington has becomeone huge maze. Lets cut it down to size and get our infrastructure back together. If not for our generation, then for the next. It is time to hold our government (and its agencies) accountable for their neglect. When I look at the marvelous projects the the Dutch have designed..., I get angry because I KNOW that we can do as good or better but we have to have an administration that cares about us and our children. Not just globalist corporations.
by
David Spence (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments)
on Monday, June 23, 2008 at 6:30:08 PM
Yean, considering that the Industrial Canal is where the Corps has been judged liable for damages, as a Navigation Channel, by the same judge who reluctanly had to let them off the hook for the 17th Street Canal Levee failure, as a Flood Control Structure.
That makes it a salient distinction worth inclusion in the article--but accurately.
Furthermore, the ongoing litigation involving the Industrial Canal relies heavily on the testimony of engineers like Robert Bea, who had quite a lot to say about the Leak In Question at the 17th Street Canal levee, thus making him a double threat to the Corps seemingly invulnerable PR Armor. It would have been vital to have included his statements to that effect in this article. Indeed would that he could have had the last word rather than the Corps of Engineers, eh?
I don't think I have ever felt such a sense of pride for OEN as I do at this moment. Everyone in MSM as well as alternative media needs to take a lesson in reporting the truth from you. Nothing short of amazing. Thank you.
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Jan Baumgartner (49 articles, 136 quicklinks, 10 diaries, 243 comments)
on Monday, June 23, 2008 at 6:53:32 PM
Having had experience with NPR through a campaign, music insider information and now the floods, I will categorically declare that NPR is now mainstream and is, like every other outlet, trying to ram their bias down our collective throats. Listen to our music and only our music, hear the candidates the way we want to present them, ignore solid press releases, get lazy and don't vet the experts..
what NPR is doing to the image of southern women in music (my latest peeve) is reprehensible
I think I am taking a great leap here and can understand what Spiro Agnew meant about "effete snobs"
The Art in Song should be boycotted
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Georgianne Nienaber (145 articles, 46 quicklinks, 13 diaries, 338 comments)
on Tuesday, June 24, 2008 at 10:57:10 AM
We are in deep trouble with this kind of game going on, everyone. No other way to put it. Our country is crumbling around us and there is, magically, no one real to blame, only scapegoats, no accountability at all, and the ones who really should be taken to task have insulated themselves completely from reproach, and consequently, continue to steer the ship of state toward the rocks. It as if the Captain of the Titanic, after hitting the iceberg, hires a PR team and gets both a promotion and another ship to wreck. But we are the ship!
So what do you do against this monumental bullshit, to borrow a term from the just deceased George Carlin? The only thoughts I have are those of Nikos Kazantzakis, for see, who am I talking to when I talk to you? I am talking to the God or Goddess within you. There is only the ONE. Am I not just reminding you, comrades, of the need to carry on the superhuman struggle against the descending current? Or as Kazantzakis put it much more eloquently, excusing his early 20th Century preference for the masculine-only pronoun for Deity, it is time again to issue the Cry to mobilize. Some of you have been answering the Cry, others have not. Heed the call or fall behind in the struggle:
My God is not Almighty. He struggles, for he is in peril every moment; he trembles and stumbles in every living thing, and he cries out. He is defeated incessantly, but rises again, full of blood and earth, to throw himself into battle once more.
He is full of wounds, his eyes are filled with fear and stubbornness, his jawbones and temples are splintered. But he does not surrender, he ascends; he ascends with his feet, with his hands, biting his lips, undaunted.....
He clings to warm bodies; he has no other bulwark. He shouts for help; he proclaims a mobilization throughout the Universe.
It is our duty, on hearing his Cry, to run under his flag, to fight by his side, to be lost or to be saved with him.
God is imperiled. He is not almighty, that we may cross our hands, waiting for certain victory. He is not all-holy, that we may wait trustingly for him to pity and save us.
Within the province of our own ephemeral flesh all of God is imperiled. He cannot be saved unless we save him with our own struggles, nor can we be saved unless he is saved.
We are one. From the blind worm in the depths of the ocean to the endless arena of the Galaxy, only one person struggles and is imperiled: You. And within your small and earthen breast only one thing struggles and is imperiled: the Universe.
- excerpts from The Saviors of God
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Mac McKinney (42 articles, 62 quicklinks, 147 diaries, 985 comments)
on Monday, June 23, 2008 at 10:40:11 PM
has probably done more boondoggling on behalf of private industry than any other branch of government and their river work has been the most egregious. Rivers meander. They were designed that way by nature, accompanied by contiguous wetlands, so that in times of flood they were able to absorb their own shock.
In the interest of shippers, now pushing mile-long barges filled with salt on the up-run and corn on the down-run, the Corps has straightened, leveed, dammed, dredged and otherwise tortured the natural river systems until they strike back the only way they can--with devastating floods.
American rivers are no longer the transport systems they once were, but the Corps goes on forever--wrecking whatever is in their mis-guided way.
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Jim Freeman (108 articles, 42 quicklinks, 193 diaries, 364 comments)
on Tuesday, June 24, 2008 at 9:40:49 AM
thank you for your attempt to cast some light on this complex issue.
However given the subject matter of media/journalist manipulation, I must ask you: why did you allow the the Corps the absolute last word in the article--and in that last word allowed them to bald faced lie and contracict themselves without any follow question from you. I have posted this, and my feelings on such public relations niavete, in yesterda's Ladder, with your piece, and wish not to do so on your own space and amongst all these fine supportive people. This is painful as I do not want to shoot the messenger either, but please answer for you readers why you let the Corps slide? Why were they allowed to outright contradict themselves in their final statement without being called on it? Why were they allowed to simply issue another press release rather than answer the forking question? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
Why were they allowed to lie in the face of (albiet lacking) photographic evidence. Do journalist not get up in perps' faces anymore? Do you folks never ask "But?" anymore, like they used to when Nixon was presidente? Were these questions on little note cards or something like a take-home exam?
Were those questions take home questions so the Corps could let your article get printed so they could end up in an Up Date with their standard PR? Such a tactic by the way is just that: a specifice PR tactic taught in freshman marketing, to wit: above all--ALWAYS GET THE LAST WORD. That is why they waited all day to give you their response to your questions. Their latent response was no accident, no lack of control on their part. It was a standard PR tactic and you bought it. Were these questions done with the Corps live in person or were they allowed to avoid answering at their leisure.
Why could you not at least have added a retort from Engineer H.J. Bosworth Jr. P.E. He was an excellent voice. Can you do that now? We need engineers speaking in their own voice these days, not more savvy Corps of Engineers Spin'filtration.
After standing in the turgid death'waters in New Orleans that first week of the flood, I do not apologize for my stance here on this issue, nor care at all if such a view of the Corps of Engineers as Lying Murderers offends anyone--particularly journalists who should know better. I no longer allow anyone to stand between us and those levees with a Corps press release in their hand--especially when those allegedly repaired levees are LEAKING RIGHT NOW!
We do not have the audience that you have Mz Nienaber. I believe, especially given the subject of your piece, that the Corps of Engineers should not be allowed such a pass without retort EVER. They should not be allowed to have the last word on their engieering failures. Alas here you have done just that.
I find it dispiriting to have worked so hard with you for this aricle to find that they have won again wit'da spin in'da end.
Please address and rectify this glaring contradiction in the Corps final statement. We really do not have time for this sort of misdirection today with so much feces already flowing towards our city. We need truthful answers about our levees and we need them now.
In the “Olden days” of print journalism, we were able to actually count “column inches” on a topic. It was a pretty good way to determine whether coverage was balanced. The Internet has opened a whole new genre, I cal it a hybrid, of blogging and old fashioned journalism
To look at the piece you are so passionately critiquing, one would have to say that nine tenths of the article is spent questioning the veracity of the USACE in the national media. I have no personal beef with any of them and certainly not with the local USACE here in New Orleans. If I did, I should turn in my laptop. They deserved the opportunity to respond on the wet spot. They did. Not everyone who works within an organization is evil or duplicitous. As far as I am concerned, they answered the questions put to them. I do not practice ambush or “gotcha” journalism
For example, I have been dogged in my investigations of NGOs in Africa. But, I know good people in those organizations who are trying their best to get an honest job done under surreal conditions. The analogy works here also.
This is an important discussion to have. I have always felt that if people on both sides of an issue are angry with me it means that I am doing my job as a journalist.
As to your hurt feelings about “working so hard” on this—you were not the only source we used, and many of the sources, including you, duplicated what we had already discovered on our own. You contribution to the wet spot, since you had visited it, was invaluable and I gave you a nod about that.
I cannot exist to please you or any source, however sympathetic I am to your concerns. It would paralyze me as a human being.
I have said before, and I will say it here, you do a tremendous job for NOLA.
Now that you are registered at OEN, I invite you, as an editor here, to write for OEN about the issues that you are concerned about.
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Georgianne Nienaber (145 articles, 46 quicklinks, 13 diaries, 338 comments)
on Tuesday, June 24, 2008 at 12:14:38 PM
Georgianne, I have read dozens of your articles, not only about the Midwest flooding, NOLA, Katrina, but your reporting about the ongoing and dismissed crises in Eastern Africa, among others. I have found that you are one of the few credible journalists in the investigative field today - giving opportunity to all sources, voices, venues, in order to expose the truth, the lies, and with great integrity, report a balanced and clear account of the situation. A journalist will always be accused of being something, whether biased, dishonest, or misinformed, however, the truth shall prevail and yours is one voice that must not be silenced.
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Jan Baumgartner (49 articles, 136 quicklinks, 10 diaries, 243 comments)
on Tuesday, June 24, 2008 at 3:02:49 PM
Mz Bumgartner, no one is speaking here of silencing Mz Nienaber. There is no need to defend your sister journalist here at OpEd News.
I challenge any of you other journalist at OpEd to examine the Corps Last Word at the end of this article and tell me they do not grade'school contradict themselves in thier responses. Also, notice that the inadequate photographic evidence offered belies their pat statement of constant vigilence. This is not a game of journalistic sticks and stones, Mz Bumgartner, but one of life and death and the continued struggle to live, not just in the city of New Orleans, but everywhere the Corps has built a flood control structure--which is everywhere you wanna'be. It is that serious to the citzens of New Orleans, many of whom have risked their very souls to survive this Corps of Engineers Malfeseance during the Crucifixion of August 29th, 2005, and continue to devote themselves to bringing these criminals to justice--after we repair their failed levees WHICH ARE LEAKING THIS VERY MINUTE and bound to fail again.
What part of this picture is most of America missing? The Corps of Engineers forfieted the fairness of having The Last Word in this story. We, the survivors deserve the Last Word here in this story of levee failures and journalistic manipulation. Because we, all of us, are bound to survive again this storm of spin.
Watching this Corps Spin Machine in action throughout the country, I grudgingly gotta hand it to them. They are that good. We are still seeking Fairness with a capital "F" as they Lie Through Their Smiling Teeth with a capital "FY".
So no one is asking to silence Mz Nienaber here, but for all of you to come off it and stop chattering amongst yourselves about your creds and get out there and get the story.
We are in danger in America and, as everyone knows, not just from failing levees and out of control water policy. We need answers. Accuracy. Contfrontation of Contradictions in Authority. Truth.
We do not need Corps of Engineers Press Releases as the Last Word of an article in a progressive media outlet, a far sicker fate to be led astray than to be silenced.
Fairness may be just fine when one is reporting Reality. However, right now what I see is Irreality, the bent, warped, craven cousin to Reality. With the Irreality we see leaking beneath our repaired levees and flooding the heart of our country, I would say the rules on Fairness have changed.
