Speaking of Looting: an Analysis of Racial Propaganda in National Television Coverage of Hurricane Katrina

The Howard Journal of Communications, 22:302–318, 2011 Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1064-6175 print=1096-4649 online DOI: 10.1080/10646175.2011.590404 Speaking of Looting: An Analysis of Racial Propaganda in National Television Coverage of Hurricane Katrina KIRK A. JOHNSON Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Mississippi, University, Mississippi, USA MARK K. DOLAN Meek School of Journalism and New Media, University of Mississippi, University, Mississippi, USA JOHN SONNETT Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Mississippi, University, Mississippi, USA Few analyses offer statistical support for claims that news broadcasts during Hurricane Katrina propagated racist ideologies. The authors conducted a content analysis of the first week of network and cable television broadcasts from New Orleans after the hurricane made landfall. Although many hurricane victims were low-income African Americans, news of looting and other activi- ties featured disproportionate numbers of Whites, particularly in speaking roles. In general, White journalists and sources were sympathetic toward African American victims but critical of their behavior when it did not conform to White middle-class norms. The authors believe such coverage reflects aversive racism, a subtle and conflicted form of contemporary racial animosity. Accordingly, their work revises Herman and Chomsky’s model of This project was supported by a grant from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation and two fellowships from the University of Mississippi Office of Research and Sponsored Programs. We are grateful to undergraduate student research assistants Carlos Maury, Crystal Parker, and Shannon Shepherd; to graduate assistants Gregory Sims and Veronica Mitchell; and to LBJ Library archivist Allen Fisher. We also thank Kirsten Dellinger, Jeff Jackson, David L. Altheide, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on versions of this article. Address correspondence to Kirk A. Johnson, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Mississippi, P.O. Box 1854, University, MS 38677-1848. E-mail: kirkjohnson55@ gmail.com 302 Racial Propaganda and TV Coverage of Katrina 303 news production by considering the racial dimensions of propaganda. KEYTERMS African Americans, Hurricane Katrina, Kerner commission, news, propaganda, television In 1967, unprecedented civil disturbances rocked 23 American cities, causing 83 deaths and over $55 million in property damage (National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, 1968, p. 6). Thirty-eight years later, the most costly natural disaster in U.S. history decimated the Gulf coast, causing 1,800 deaths and $125 billion in damages (Graumann et al., 2005, p. 1). While com- parisons between the two events are inexact, both crises resulted in protrac- ted news coverage of low-income African Americans in desperate and life-altering circumstances. As analyses of news about Hurricane Katrina (e.g., M. J. Davis & French, 2008; Fry, 2006; Kellner, 2007; Scott, 2007; Shah, 2009; Stock, 2007; Thevenot, 2005–2006; Voorhees, Vick, & Perkins, 2007) began to appear, it became clear that elements of the 1967 coverage had persisted in 2005. To cite but one example, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (1968, p. 363), popularly known as the Kerner Commission, found that news of the 1967 unrest was racially inflammatory, such that the actual disorders were ‘‘less destructive’’ and ‘‘less widespread’’ than they were reported to be. Similarly, Tierney, Bevc, and Kuligowski (2006, p. 58) found that the media ‘‘greatly exaggerated’’ the incidence and severity of looting and other lawlessness after Katrina. Such flawed reporting was not supposed to recur. The Kerner Commission surmised that the mainstream (i.e., White-owned) media had done a poor job of reporting on the racial unrest of 1967 because journalists reported from a White middle-class perspective: ‘‘The media report and write from the standpoint of a white man’s world. The ills of the ghetto, the diffi- culties of life there, the Negro’s burning sense of grievance, are seldom con- veyed,’’ the Commission (1968, p. 203) concluded. Because this virtually all-White cohort of reporters and editors had little meaningful contact with urban Blacks, they had little appreciation for African Americans’ perspectives on the causes, consequences, context, and meaning of civil unrest. Today, despite movement toward employment parity, the news industry’s overall progress toward achieving racial and ethnic diversity remains limited. Minorities make up just 21.5% of the television news workforce in a nation where African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans, and Native Americans comprise 34.5% of the population (Papper, 2007, p. 20). We reasoned that coverage of a national crisis involving low-income African Americans might reflect any problematic racial and social-class ideologies that persist in mainstream news. Accordingly, we studied the 304 K. A. Johnson et al. content of national television broadcasts of Katrina to identify aversive racism, a subtle form of contemporary racial animosity (Dovidio & Gaertner, 2004, 2005). Our inspiration derived from the notion that, to the extent that aversive racism persists in the news, Katrina broadcasts represent what Herman and Chomsky (2001) might have termed racial propaganda. BACKGROUND In Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Herman and Chomsky (2001) present a model of news production premised on the idea that power inequities influence story selection and marginalize dissenting voices. This so-called propaganda model contains several inter- locking elements, including journalists’ reliance on prominent sources and the shared ideology of anticommunism, that ‘‘fix the premises of discourse and interpretation’’ (E. Herman & Chomsky, 2001, pp. xi, 2). While Herman and Chomsky recognized that powerful interests deter- mine news content, they do not explore the impact of race on news production, despite the many ways in which power in American society is racialized. Inasmuch as whiteness represents ‘‘conferred dominance’’ (McIntosh, 1988), we suggest that any model of the social forces that influence news production is incomplete if it fails to consider race. Thus, just as whiteness remains an important if unacknowledged element of most White Americans’ identity (Dyer, 2005), racial ideologies—beliefs that perpetuate racial dominance (Rowley & Chavous, 2003)—may constitute a relevant if unrecognized aspect of the propaganda model. One such racial ideology is aversive racism (Dovidio & Gaertner, 2004, 2005). Like most forms of racial animus, aversive racism manifests as per- sonal or institutional practices that privilege Whites over persons of color. But unlike blatant racial animosity, aversive racism is marked by subtlety and ambivalence. Aversive racists believe that many minority-group members are unable to conform to White middle-class norms, and they sympathize with minorities for their history of unfair treatment. Yet, aversive racists also suspect that minorities are unwilling to embrace conven- tional norms. Thus, these Whites feel fearful or even loathsome toward non-Whites, often unintentionally. Finally, despite their actions, which tend to perpetuate inequality, aversive racists claim to endorse egalitarianism, which allows them to maintain a nonracist self-image (Dovidio & Gaertner, 2004, 2005). Given this description of aversive racism, we would have several expectations if the news reflected this racial ideology: (a) aversive racism would be present at the level of individuals (i.e., newsworkers) or institutions (e.g., in news routines), or both; (b) news organizations would engage in Racial Propaganda and TV Coverage of Katrina 305 discrimination yet claim to be nonracist; and (c) news broadcasts would show sympathy for persons of color while still privileging Whites. We examine these expectations below. Absent information about the specific news organizations involved in Katrina coverage, we suggest that the first condition—the presence of aversive racism individually or institutionally or both—applies to mainstream news generally. At the individual level, most journalists identify as liberals (Weaver, Beam, Brownlee, Voakes, & Wilhoit, 2007)—a group typically associated with aversive racism (Waller, 2001). At the institutional level, Shoemaker and Reese (1996, pp. 213–214) argued that ideology is a ‘‘total structure’’ that subsumes an array of influences on content from both within and outside of media organizations. The precise linkages between individual intent and institutional product are unclear but argu- ably immaterial. As Herman (2000, p. 105) noted, ‘‘All we know is that the media and journalists often mislead in tandem.’’ Thus, it seems reason- able to assume that news broadcasts that reflect aversive racism may pro- liferate as institutional products regardless of the attitudes of individual journalists. The second condition—discrimination despite claims of being nonracist—is probably universal as well. Van Dijk (2009, pp, 199–200) noted an extensive literature on the impact of racism on a dozen aspects of news production, from hiring and news values to story selection and sentence syntax. He concluded that despite ‘‘considerable variation,’’ news organizations remain ‘‘part of the problem of racism, rather than its solution.’’ At the same time, newsworkers, adhering to practices said to ensure objectivity (Schudson, 2003), have

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