New Orleans resident asks for caution in reporting on oil spill Special

New Orleans - The people of New Orleans understand suffering. That was and is seen in words and pictures. They suffer now, and they worry also not just with the problems occurring on the oil crisis in the Gulf but also how they are reported.

According to Sandy Rosenthal of Levees.org newspapers who may have never visited the region had opinions or cited news, some of which was inaccurate. She spent many hours tracing these stories in order to correct them, as did other members of her organization she founded after the hurricane. She explains why as this, "It was bad enough when the newspapers in Louisiana would get the information wrong. It was worse when people would come for a few days, or not at all, then write their views. Often they would get information from another newspaper, also outside the state. Then both were wrong, and the problems multiplied. Even today I see articles discussing how people knew New Orleans could be flooded and yet remained nevertheless. It perpetuates the guilt we have had to live with for years. What was often said about us, or inferred, was we somehow brought the mess on ourselves. Or they blamed the President, the Governor or the Mayor of the City of New Orleans, Ray Nagin. What folks didn't point their fingers to was the Army Corps of Engineers, an issue the Times Picayune did note both during and after the hurricane. They were here; their reporters were on the streets. It made a difference, even though it was difficult, and they didn't always get all the facts." Right now Ivor van Heerden is the central figure in a lawsuit against the University where he was employed at the time of the hurricane. He was the whistleblower in charge of the Hurricane Center at Louisiana State University then and has since been vindicated, even though he was fired for speaking out, because an independent judge determined the Army Corps of Engineers were central to the problems that created the flooding of New Orleans. It wasn't the hurricane; it was the lack of adequate building and construction as well as oversight the judge was later to say. The oil spill in the Gulf frightens New Orleans residents. Rosenthal's email note beside her name declares it every day. What she has said regularly to this reporter is how it is important for those to write the news do it as objectively and sensitively as well, knowing that the direction of where fingers may point may not be where they belong. That's the ongoing message from those who went through the hurricane. It is the message now. The issues on the coast, Rosenthal underlines, are critical to everyone. What happened to a man who had the courage to speak what an independent judge four years later said was the truth, took the attention away from repair of the levees to the blame game instead, Rosenthal has said many times. " People were blamed who shouldn't have been perhaps, while others were left unscathed.' How that is translated by government, the press and ordinary citizens can impact the issues themselves and how people must live with them later, according to those in the coast like Sandy Rosenthal and others. How it can hurt people like a University professor is relayed by a video the citizens of New Orleans ask people to watch, to help folks remember that some people can get hurt in a crisis for perhaps doing the right thing all along, because the wrong things were cited then as may happen now, or any time. Those are the parallels seen between Hurricane Katrina and the oil crisis in the Gulf, the issues of sensitivity on the side of caution and care for the people who live in the region.