1. Josh Nathan, MA
Broadcast Meteorologist
How Broadcast News Shapes Memories of Severe Weather:
Hurricane Katrina as a Defining Event
Presented at the National Weather Association
Annual Conference
Cleveland, Ohio
October, 2006

2. Abstract
Applying Maurice Halbwachs’ theory of collective memory to
CNN and FOX broadcasts and replicating an historical-based
methodology (Winfield et al., 2001), this study suggests news
alters the American perception of severe weather. During
essentially a communications blackout along the Gulf Coast after
Hurricane Katrina, broadcast television is still able to stay on the
air and provide information to the bulk of the nation, including
President Bush. With such widespread damage, Hurricane
Katrina is the only meteorological event in U.S. history when one
news medium essentially controls the story, including subjective
reporting, increased scrutiny of government, and reported, but
not thoroughly investigated, rumors. The research indicates this
unique combination of elements forged a common memory of the
storm, which was later discovered to be somewhat skewed and
historically inaccurate. Yet this memory will persist for decades to
come and may be how history records the event.

3. • Television’s largest advantage when compared with its
counterparts has always been its ability to inform through moving
and vivid images in conjunction with verbal narration.
• Hurricane Katrina destroys even emergency communication
networks across the area with one main exception:
This medium dominates as THE VENUE providing the most information
to and from the region.
– Despite a variety of other sources for news, about one out of every
three people in the US turned to CNN or Fox for information on
Katrina.
A Unique Communication Event
Broadcast News

4. Broadcast News Viewers
SOURCE: Nielsen Media Research
Calculated from Median Averages to Minimize Natural Spike in Viewers during Katrina
The spike in viewers related to Hurricane Katrina
• 100 million viewers turn to CNN
• 87 million turn to FOX

5. A Disaster Made for TV
• Meteorological predictions are accurate.
– Americans, journalists, and politicians caught by
surprise.
National Hurricane
Center Director Max
Mayfield checks his
watch as hurricane
specialist Stacy
Stewart makes the
landfall call of
Hurricane Katrina at
Plaquemines Parrish,
Louisiana, on August
29, 2005, at 7:10am
EDT.
“Bush is in Texas, [Chief of Staff Andrew]
Card is in Maine, and the Vice President is
fly-fishing. I mean who’s in charge here?”
• Bush Administration,
FEMA, and DHS
among the missing.
Bush Ally Congressman Thomas M. Davis (R-VA) – 2/14/06, The Boston Globe
AP Photo: Andy Newman

6. • Potential for the calamity widely discussed for decades.
– The New York Times and The Washington Post among many newspapers that ran
special reports on the issue in 2004; one article warned, “50,000 people could
drown, and this city of [New Orleans] and Mardi Gras and jazz could cease to
exist.”
• Funding to better protect the Gulf Coast from future hurricanes choked by the
federal government in 2004.
• National attention in 2005 was on terrorism and war in Iraq.
• Significantly higher reliance on newly-developed communication devices.
– A communication blackout in the 21st century largely unimaginable.
• Laizze-fair approach to Emergency Operations Plans (EOP) for use during
disasters: Drills rarely ran; Language difficult to follow.
– Post-9/11 multibillion-dollar National Emergency System a complete failure in its
first test, which took place in the aftermath of Katrina.
• In TV News: Every story considered a crisis.
– So which story is actually important?
• Meteorologists seen as over-emphasizing the impact of tropical storms and
hurricanes.
– Did this lead to a sense of complacency?
Background

7. KATRINA
“Pictures of bodies in the streets, video of a woman going into diabetic
shock, and thousands of angry men and women herded outside the [New
Orleans] Superdome.” (Melanie McFarland, Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
“Then the camera pulls back to reveal property destruction so vast and
complete that it calls to mind archival images of the European cities bombed
during World War II. And the ache deepens to anguish.”
(David Zurawik, The Baltimore Sun)
“[Hurricane Katrina was] unlike any other events most of us had
covered. A natural disaster combined with a manmade disaster, within the
United States and happening in real time, is a very rare
combination.” (Anderson Cooper, CNN)

9. Facts and Figures: Shear Size & Shear Strength
• One of five strongest hurricanes to hit US in 100 years
• Maximum winds greater than 170mph
• Minimum central pressure 902mb
• Diameter of more than 450 miles
• Storm surge of more than 30 feet
• Three landfalls: Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi
African-Americans, the disabled, sick,
elderly, and the poor suffered
disproportionately.
Hurricane Katrina making its second landfall
Up to 10” of rain from Gulf Coast to Ohio
Valley
80% of New Orleans under as much as 20 feet
of water
Much of Mobile, Biloxi, and Gulfport flooded
and under imposed curfews
3 million people without electricity
I-10 and coastal highways along Gulf
impassable
Economic loss estimates of $125 billion

10. Forging a Memory
The Biloxi-Ocean Springs Bridge Collapse
The Floods in
Gulfport, Mississippi
DO YOU REMEMBER?
The New Orleans Convention Center
THESE IMAGES
ARE INGRAINED IN
OUR
CONSCIOUSNESS

11. Forging a Memory
• In the 1920s, French social psychologist
Maurice Halbwachs was the first to study
what he later dubbed “Collective
Memory.”
– He argued individual memories could
only exist if a person could contextualize
them; to do so, one needed to tap into
the broader societal memory and, ever
since, the two became inextricably
bound.
“We identify ourselves with the
enduring memories of our
communities.”
Saul Friedländer (1979)
(Is not that difficult…)
• Most agree television serves as a communal
portal through which nearly identical memories
are made for the majority.
“When crises occur, one searches the depths
of one’s memory to discover some vestige of
the past, not the past of the individual,
faltering and ephemeral, but rather that of the
community, which, though left behind,
nonetheless represents that which is
permanent and lasting.”
Sociologist Barry Schwartz (1996)

12. News Coverage
Subjective Reporting:
Press Reports Rumors:
Skepticism Abounds:
• Reports infused with emotion almost
kitsch in derivation.
– Aimed to tug at our hearts and help us
both identify with, and remember, the
“DISASTER COVERAGE.”
• Exaggerated claims of looting,
lawlessness, murder, “babies being
raped,” and the number killed from the
storm.
• Use of unreliable sources with accuracy
taking a backseat.
• Journalists question
authority figures.
– President Bush mired in
ridicule.
– Typical CNN & FOX
partisan boundaries
pushed aside.
“TV united us across the political and
cultural divide. The media’s
refrain was that the planet’s most
powerful nation had abandoned
its own people, on its own soil, to
thirst and violence.”
Melanie McFarland, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 2005

13. Conclusion
• Katrina was an event made to
be broadcast.
• A unique set of circumstances
converged.
– TV only option for news due to
communication breakdown.
• Viewers became transfixed on
the subject and were
emotionally held hostage.
• Rumors were relayed, but few
were corrected.
– Other news sources contained
large lists of clarifications.
Path and Intensity
of Hurricane
Katrina
• The collective memory that formed during
the original broadcasts still remains today.
– First impressions most remembered.
• The history of a severe weather event is
altered by a collective memory created
by, and through, TV images and reports.

14. Is News History or is History News?
“How will today’s choices appear when they
are history—when people look back a
decade or a century hence?”
Political Scientist Richard Neustadt and Historian Ernest
May
Thinking in Time (1986)
“Memory events and their
narration are in competition with
the writing of history…Their
disruptive and heroic character is
indeed what is remembered,
upstaging the efforts of historians
and social scientists.”
Media Experts Daniel Dyan and Elihu Katz
Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of
History (1992)
Answer: News IS History for Hurricane Katrina
President Bush in
Biloxi more than
five days after
Katrina passed

16. Josh Nathan
Broadcast Meteorologist
After nearly 10 years working as an on-air meteorologist and reporter, Josh Nathan
enters the classroom. He teaches students at The Ohio Center for Broadcasting’s
Colorado Campus, imparting the fundamentals of broadcast news including theoretical
lectures as well as hands-on training in edit bays, the Studio, and the Control Room.
Nathan recently earned an M.A. in Communication from Hawai'i Pacific University with
the 2006 publication of his master’s thesis, considered by some to be a foundational
citation in the field: “President Bush’s Response to Hurricane Katrina as Portrayed by
the Media: An Imprint on American Collective Memory.” He also earned a Certificate
of Broadcast Meteorology from Mississippi State University and a B.S. in Journalism
from Northwestern University, where he graduated Magna cum Laude. He has
published several scholarly papers with research focusing on Organizational Change
& Development, Collective Memory, and Emergency Disaster Preparedness. His
practical background includes ten years on-air work for television news affiliates with a
strong emphasis in educating the public about disasters and how to better prepare for
them.
Information on the Researcher

17. References
CNN Programs. (2005, December 20). CNN Live From information. Retrieved December 20, 2005, from
http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/live_from/
Dayan, D., & Katz, E. (1992). Media events: The live broadcasting of history. London: Harvard University Press.
Friedländer, S. (1979). When memory comes. New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux.
Halbwachs, M. (1980). On Collective Memory. (F. J. Ditter, Jr. & V. Y. Ditter, Trans.). New York: Harper & Row.
(Original work published 1950)
Halbwachs, M. (1992). On Collective Memory. (L.W. Coser, Ed. & Trans.).New York: Harper Colophon.
(Original work published 1950)
Jurkowitz, M (2005, September 16). Katrina rips Bush a new one. The Boston Phoenix. Retrieved September
18, 2005, from http://www.bostonphoenix.com/no/index.asp
Kurtz, H. (2005, September 5). At last, reporters’ feelings rise to the surface. The Washington Post, p. C01.
Lawrimore, J. (2005). Climate of 2005: Summary of Hurricane Katrina. National Climatic Data Center, Asheville,
NC.
MacCallum, M. (Anchor). (2005, August 30). FOX news live [Television broadcast]. New York: Multivision Inc.
MacCallum, M. (Anchor). (2005, August 31). FOX news live [Television broadcast]. New York: Multivision Inc.

18. References
MacCallum, M. (Anchor). (2005, September 13). FOX news live [Television broadcast]. New
York: Multivision Inc.
MacCallum, M. (Anchor). (2005, September 14). FOX news live [Television broadcast]. New York: Multivision
Inc.
McFarland, M. (2005, September 3). Katrina’s other ugly side: Race and class divide. Seattle Post-
Intelligencer.
Retrieved September 6, 2005, from http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/tv/239212_tv03.html
Nathan, J. D. (2006). President Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina as portrayed by the media: An imprint on
American collective memory. Washington D.C.: UMI Dissertation Services.
Neustadt, R. E., & May, E. M. (1986). Thinking in time. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Phillips, K. (Anchor). (2005, August 30). CNN live from [Television broadcast]. Atlanta: Cable News Network
LP, LLLP.
Phillips, K. (Anchor). (2005, August 31). CNN live from [Television broadcast]. Atlanta: Cable News Network
LP, LLLP.
Phillips, K. (Anchor). (2005, September 6). CNN live from: Special event [Television broadcast]. Atlanta: Cable
News Network LP, LLLP.
Phillips, K. (Anchor). (2005, September 13). CNN live from [Television broadcast]. Atlanta: Cable News
Network LP, LLLP.

19. References
Phillips, K. (Anchor). (2005, September 14). CNN live from [Television broadcast]. Atlanta: Cable News
Network LP, LLLP.
Schudson, M. (1993). Watergate in American memory. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.
Schwartz, B. (1996, Fall). Introduction: The expanding past. Qualitative Sociology, 19(3), 275-282.
The state of the news media. (2006). Journalism.org. Retrieved September 9, 2006, from
http://www.journalism.org
Winfield, B. H., Friedman, B., & Trisnadi, V. (2002). History as the metaphor through which the current world is
viewed: British and American newspapers’ uses of history following the 11 September 2001 terrorist
attacks.
Journalism Studies, 3(2), 289-300.
Zurawik, D. (2006, August 21). Sound, fury, haunting images. The Baltimore Sun.
Zurawik, D. (2005, September 5). TV news juggles two big stories. The Baltimore Sun.