Media ritual in catastrophic time

Abstract

Television news coverage of Hurricane Katrina's impact on Mississippi and New Orleans presented viewers with broadcast journalists who were on the scene but were largely left without access to traditional government sources. Through a textual analysis of transcripts of cable and network news reports, this study compares the media's performance during the six days following 29 August, 2005 to news coverage following 11 September, 2001. In this way, it interprets how and why the 11 September attacks produced a `sphere of consensus' unifying the media and the state, while Katrina produced the opposite dynamic. Central to this analysis is the normative concept of `media ritual', especially where the media's ritual consensus with government was `de-centered' by the federal government's de facto absence from the storm scene for that crucial week.