Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, Vol. 6, No. 1, 2006, pp. 1–17

Race and Media Coverage of HurricaneKatrina: Analysis, Implications, and FutureResearch Questions

Samuel R. Sommers,∗ Evan P. Apfelbaum, Kristin N. Dukes,Negin Toosi, and Elsie J. WangTufts University

We analyze three aspects of media depictions of Hurricane Katrina, focusing on therelationship between race and coverage of the crisis. Examination of media lan-guage use explores the debate surrounding the terms “refugees” and “evacuees”—as well as descriptions of “looting” versus “finding food”—in light of the pre-dominantly Black demographic of the survivors in New Orleans. Assessment ofthe story angle indicates a disproportionate media tendency to associate Blackswith crime and violence, a propensity consistent with exaggerated and inaccuratereports regarding criminal activity in Katrina’s aftermath. A review of new mediasources such as mass e-mails identifies stereotypical depictions of storm survivorsthat both converge and diverge from coverage found in more traditional media out-lets. Psychological explanations, implications for public attitudes and behavior,and future research questions are explored.

Upon seeing the first images of New Orleans in the aftermath of HurricaneKatrina, Americans began to ask why there had not been better preparation for thestorm and what could be done to prevent similar catastrophes in the future. Almostas immediately, people also took note of one unmistakable aspect of these images,namely that the overwhelming majority of individuals depicted on rooftops, atthe Superdome, and in front of the Convention Center was Black. Accordingly,race-related questions about Katrina began to emerge as well: Why did race seemto covary with ability and willingness to evacuate before the storm? In what waysdid the race of the displaced residents of New Orleans affect public perceptions of

∗Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Samuel R. Sommers, De-partment of Psychology, Tufts University, 490 Boston Avenue, Medford, MA 02155 [e-mail:sam.sommers@tufts.edu].

Note: Authors are listed alphabetically, with the exception of the first author.

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C© 2006 The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues

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the crisis? And, perhaps most controversially, to what extent did the race of theseindividuals influence governmental preparations for and responses to the storm?

The focus of this article is on another, related series of questions concerning therelationship between race and media coverage of Katrina. Media portrayals havethe potential to both shape and reflect societal attitudes (see Entman & Rojecki,2001; Gandy, 1998; Gerbner & Gross, 1976; Gilens, 1997), and their examina-tion therefore has broader implications concerning the psychological tendenciesalluded to by the questions above. As such, the coverage of Katrina provides aunique, real-world opportunity to consider the relationship between race, popularmedia, and the general public. We focus on three specific aspects of this mediacoverage. First, we consider media language use, including two of the hallmarkcontroversies of the Katrina coverage: debate regarding the use of “refugees” todescribe survivors of the storm, and the widely circulated photo captions that de-scribed a Black man as “looting” and a seemingly comparable White couple as“finding food.” Second, we examine issues of story angle, particularly the media’sdisproportionate—and, in retrospect, exaggerated—focus on reports of violentcrime in New Orleans after the storm. Third, we explore first-person accountscirculated through “new” media outlets such as mass e-mails and weblogs, com-paring aspects of this coverage with that of more traditional media outlets. Foreach topic we offer analysis using psychological research and consider practicalimplications, all in the effort to identify new links between theory and real-worldevents and to generate avenues for future investigation.

Language Use

Describing the survivors. Much of the media controversy to emerge in theaftermath of Katrina focused on issues of language. Most notably, debate ragedregarding the language used to describe the displaced survivors (Prince, 2005).Indeed, in the first days after the storm, the most common description for theseindividuals was “refugees” (“Media abounds,” 2005), a word infrequently usedto describe American citizens still within the borders of the United States (Fen-ton, 2005; Kirgis, 2005). Within a week, President Bush decried use of the term,and many news organizations made formal announcements of a shift to the moretraditional “evacuees,” “survivors,” or “victims.”

To more closely examine this issue we conducted a Google News search forstories appearing in the two weeks after the storm (meaning that at least half ofour sampling window occurred after the “refugee” controversy exploded and aftersome organizations disavowed use of the term). Our search revealed 2,830 storiesabout Katrina using the word “evacuee,” compared to 1,040 using “refugee,” adifference that might be expected given the dubious applicability of the latterterm. Thus, “evacuee” was the more popular word by a ratio of 2.7 to 1. Theunprecedented nature of the Katrina crisis renders comparisons problematic, but

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in a crude effort at such an analysis, we conducted a similar search for storiesabout Hurricane Rita, a storm that made landfall on the Gulf Coast three weeksafter Katrina. This search revealed 1,510 stories that used “evacuee,” comparedto only 257 references to “refugee.” This ratio of 5.9 to 1 is more than twice thatobserved for Katrina stories, suggesting that, by one comparison at least, “refugee”was used disproportionately more often in stories about Hurricane Katrina.

There are many potential explanations for this difference. Perhaps media out-lets learned that they could prevent controversy by avoiding the word “refugee,”and they adhered to this strategy when covering Rita. The damage and displace-ment caused by Katrina was unprecedented in recent U. S. history; perhaps theunique circumstances of the crisis rendered “refugee” more applicable (Pesca,2005). Others, however, proposed a more controversial explanation. Even thoughinitial media reports made virtually no mention of race in describing the scenein New Orleans (Shafer, 2005),1 the images transmitted from the Superdome andConvention Center left no doubt that the overwhelming majority of victims re-maining in the city was Black. To some public figures, the most parsimoniousexplanation for the unusual use of “refugee” was the demographic compositionof those affected by the hurricane. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, for instance,argued that the use of “refugee” was racially biased, as it depicted the primarilyBlack population in outgroup terms and implied that the victims were less thanfull citizens (“Calling Katrina,” 2005).

Was the unique language used to describe victims of Katrina influenced, atleast in part, by race? Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg has provided compelling evidencein the affirmative. Nunberg (2005) examined Nexis wire service articles in thefirst week after Katrina and found that those using “evacuee” (56%) outnumberedthose using “refugee” (44%). This 1.3 to 1 ratio is even lower than that of ouranalysis, presumably due to the different time frame of Nunberg’s study (as wellas potential differences in search engines). Most interestingly, in articles in whicheither “evacuee” or “refugee” appeared within 10 words of “poor” or “Black,”“refugee” was the more popular term by a statistically significant margin of 68% to32%. This result cannot be accounted for by the race-neutral explanations identifiedabove. Rather, these data support the conclusion that race played some role in theuse of “refugee” in the coverage of Katrina.2

1 This tendency to resist addressing race is an interesting one in and of itself (see Kurtz, 2005).Shafer (2005) argues that it resulted from media concerns about avoiding the appearance of racism, aconclusion consistent with recent psychological research regarding the general reluctance of Whitesto mention race in describing others, even when it is obvious and diagnostic information (Norton,Sommers, Apfelbaum, Pura, & Ariely, in press).

2 This analysis also raises the important question of whether the influence of race is separablefrom the influence of socioeconomic status (SES). Compared to social psychological investigations ofrace-related stereotypes and attitudes, far fewer studies have examined the specifics of people’s beliefsregarding SES. Still, many of the analyses offered in this article could also be used to support thecontention that SES colors media depictions, a conclusion we address again below.

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The “refugee” debate was not the only language controversy to emerge. Inearly September, two news service photographs taken in front of a flooded grocerystore received a great deal of television attention and achieved wide circulation onthe Internet (“Loot loops,” 2005; Ralli, 2005). In one of the photos, a Black malewas shown in waist-high water, carrying a carton of soft drinks and a full garbagebag. The other photo showed a White couple carrying food and drinks throughsimilar floodwaters. Although nearly identical in composition, the photos werereleased with markedly different captions. The first caption—for the photo withthe Black subject—began with “A young man walks through chest deep floodwater after looting a grocery store . . .” The caption for the second photo read,“Two residents wade through chest-deep water after finding bread and soda froma local grocery store.” That comparable photos could carry such different captionswas attributed by some to the major difference between the images: the race ofthe parties depicted.3 Although anecdotal in nature—and therefore not amenableto the type of analysis conducted above regarding the use of “refugee”—thesecompeting photo captions are certainly consistent with the conclusion that raceplayed some role in language use during coverage of Katrina.

Analysis, implications, and future questions. Given empirical evidence of theinfluence of race on perception and judgment in a wide range of domains (forreview, see Fiske, 1998), it would be quite surprising if similar effects did notoccur with media depictions. Race is one of the most salient characteristics peopleperceive when encountering others (Ito & Urland, 2003; Montepare & Opeyo,2002). Interacting with—or even viewing faces of—Black individuals has beenfound to activate stereotypical associations regarding criminality, hostility, andother negative characteristics, and this process often occurs automatically—outsidea perceiver’s conscious awareness—and absent explicitly prejudicial attitudes (e.g.,Devine, 1989; Eberhardt, Goff, Purdie, & Davies, 2004; Fazio, Jackson, Dunton,& Williams, 1995; Greenwald & Banaji, 1985).

Perhaps exposure to Black individuals also renders more accessible con-structs sometimes associated with “refugee,” such as “stigmatized,” “poor,” or“outgroup.” Consider the analysis of Mike Pesca (2005) of NPR, who wrote thateven though legal definitions of “refugee” did not apply to Katrina (see Kirgis,2005), the word seemed “apt” for other reasons. Automatic associations regard-ing the category African American may have played a role in beliefs that, in thisinstance, “refugee” just felt like the right word. Pesca (2005) draws analogies be-tween New Orleans and refugee scenes in Haiti and Kosovo (e.g., “the dynamic

3 This controversy suggests that at least some of the influence of race is distinct and separablefrom that of SES. The individuals in the two photos are not distinguishable in terms of SES, but areclearly members of different racial groups. Although it was almost certainly a combination of race andSES that had an influence on media coverage of Katrina, we believe that these effects would not havebeen the same were the survivors in New Orleans mostly poor White individuals.

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I witnessed was clearly of the dirty masses on one side and the soldiers and po-lice on the other”), but even more common were media comparisons to Africaor the “Third World” (Street, 2005; Wa Ngugi, 2005). Indeed, any overlap in as-sociations between “Black” and “refugee”—as suggested by Nunberg’s (2005)analyses—would have rendered the latter term more likely to surface in the mindsof journalists covering Katrina. In this manner, pernicious intent or racial antipa-thy would not have been required in order for race to impact media coverage, andjournalists’ denials of such influence would hardly preclude the possibility thatbias occurred.

However, it remains elusively difficult to determine whether race has affectedjudgment in any particular instance (Norton, Sommers, Vandello, & Darley, 2006).People are often unaware of the extent to which race has been influential, render-ing unreliable their self-reports on the matter (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977; Shafir,Simonson, & Tversky, 1993). Moreover, in a culture where motivations to avoidappearing prejudiced are pervasive (Dunton & Fazio, 1997; Plant & Devine, 1989),few social category labels are as aversive as that of “racist” (Crandall, Eshelman,& O’Brien, 2002; Sommers & Norton, 2006) and people are remarkably facileat recruiting race-neutral justifications for potentially biased behavior (Norton,Vandello, & Darley, 2004). The justifications provided by the two caption writersfor the Katrina photos illustrate the difficulty inherent in attempts to identify theinfluence of race. A spokesperson for the Associated Press, which published thephoto caption of the Black individual, explained that the reporter “saw the persongo into the shop and take the goods, and that’s why he wrote ‘looting’ in the cap-tion” (“Loot Loops,” 2005). The photographer who wrote the caption regardingthe White individuals explained, “I believed . . . that they did simply find them,and not [sic] ‘looted’ them in the definition of the word . . . they picked up breadand cokes that were floating in the water. They would have floated away anyhow”(“Loot Loops,” 2005). Standing alone, either explanation is plausible. In fact, hadonly one of the captions been published, it is likely that no one would have ques-tioned the motivation behind it. But the rare presence of a comparison group inthis instance led to the caption controversy and enables us to at least consider thepossibility that race played a role.

We suggest that the explanations for these captions, though likely honest,are just as unreliable as typical self-report accounts for social judgment. Theorysuggests that encountering the Black individual outside the grocery store wouldhave activated associations such as “thief,” “immoral,” or “needy,” rendering theconstruct “looting” more accessible. Indeed, researchers have demonstrated thatperceivers have a lower threshold for labeling an ambiguous behavior as criminalor threatening when an actor is Black as opposed to White (e.g., Correll, Park, Judd,& Wittenbrink, 2002; Duncan, 1976; Eberhardt, et al., 2004; Sagar & Schofield,1980; Wittenbrink, Gist, & Hilton, 1997). By the same token, the journalist whophotographed the White individuals ruminated on the circumstances leading up to

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their possession of the items, and decided to give his subjects the benefit of thedoubt. Would he have exerted the same effort if the individuals had been Black?Or would he have been more likely to rely instead on stereotypical and heuristicthought processes? Of course, these are empirical questions.

Moving beyond the Katrina context, there are other interesting questions re-garding the language used by media to describe individuals of different races.For instance, is the qualifier “alleged” used more often to refer to White versusnon-White criminal suspects? Does race covary with the use of other phrases withsubtle differences in connotation such as “suspect,” “detainee,” and the recentlyubiquitous “person of interest?” The real-world repercussions of such variations inmedia language use are also important considerations, as media coverage not onlyreflects, but also shapes public perception. For example, Dunn, Moore, and Nosek(2005) have shown that subtle variations in the words used to describe violent ac-tions have a significant impact on individuals’ attitudes toward terrorism, as wellas their actual memory for events. In the case of Katrina, one might ask whetherexposure to the same photo labeled with either a caption of “looting” or “findingfood” could affect participants’ willingness to donate to relief efforts (see Iyengar& Morin, 2006). The factors predicting differential media language use—as wellthe attitudinal and behavioral consequences of this language—are issues that meritcloser empirical investigation.

Story Angle

Focus on violent crime. Related to how language is used to depict eventsis the broader question of which aspects of a story the media focuses on—orwhether a story is deemed newsworthy at all in the competitive marketplace ofinformation. With regard to Katrina, one story emphasis in the days after landfallwas the outbreak of violent crime throughout New Orleans. “Looting” comprisedone aspect of this coverage, but beyond property crimes, a great deal of attentionwas also paid to what was described as a “violent crime wave” within the cityof New Orleans, particularly among evacuees at the Superdome and ConventionCenter (Loney, 2005). Reports described sniper fire aimed at rescuers, rampanthomicide, and roving gangs of youths committing rapes against teenage victimsand even babies (Pierre & Gerhart, 2005; Rosenblatt & Rainey, 2005).

One set of questions psychologists could ask concerns the deindividuationprocesses contributing to these acts. But another interesting aspect of these behav-iors is that, in retrospect, many of them did not happen at all, or at least not tothe extent that media and local officials led the public to believe. With regard toallegations reported by CNN and other outlets on September 1 that gunfire directedat helicopters halted a hospital rescue mission, “National Guard officials on theground at the time now say that no helicopters came under attack and that evac-uations were never stopped because of gunfire” (Pierre & Gerhart, 2005). That

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same week, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported that 40 murder victimshad been found in a freezer at the Convention Center; one month later a govern-ment spokesperson reported that four bodies were found, and only one appearedto be that of a murder victim (“Auditing the early,” 2005; Rosenblatt & Rainey,2005). Finally, although sexual assaults often go underreported even under normalcircumstances, only one such assault (with an adult, not child victim) has beenconfirmed at the Convention Center or Superdome, hardly supporting allegationsof a sexual assault wave (“Auditing the early,” 2005).

It is difficult to prove that the largely Black population in question led tothis focus on—and overestimation of—violence, but other media analyses areconsistent with the proposition that race was at least a contributing factor. Entmanand Rojecki (2001) have chronicled a wide array of evidence demonstrating thatmedia coverage of Blacks disproportionately emphasizes violent crime, and thatthis coverage is more likely to focus on race when a suspect is Black as opposedto White (see also Dixon & Linz, 2000). Biases are also evident in the public’smemory for media representations. In one study, when participants presented withcrime stories and photographs were asked to reconstruct the faces they had seen,they selected features that were more Afrocentric than those of the original suspect,particularly when the crime was violent (Oliver, Jackson, Moses, & Dangerfield,2004).4 Findings such as these are consistent with the more general tendency ofsocial perceivers to fall victim to illusory correlations: overestimations of the co-occurrence of distinctive events and distinctive group memberships (Hamilton &Gifford, 1976).

Analysis, implications, and future questions. Much of the analysis above re-garding race and language use also applies to story angle. Automatic associationsbetween “Black” and “criminal” likely color the perceptions of journalists andnews producers even if they do not harbor explicit prejudice. Moreover, beliefsabout which stories will interest an audience may also be affected by race. Forinstance, the extent to which a Black suspect at-large is viewed as a greater publicsafety threat than a White fugitive may influence the coverage his story receives.Such portrayals can then bias public perceptions, reinforcing preexisting beliefsabout race and crime (e.g., Correll et al., 2002; Oliver et al., 2004). Coverage of Ka-trina may have had even more immediate behavioral consequences. Stories aboutviolent crime deterred some individuals from rescue efforts (Pierre & Gerhart,

4 This association between prototypical Black features and stereotypes of criminality (see Dixon& Maddox, 2005; Maddox & Gray, 2002) is yet another interesting topic that would require too muchof a tangent to address presently in sufficient detail. This issue was at the center of controversy in 1994when the cover of Time magazine featured a mug shot of O. J. Simpson with heightened contrast anddarkened skin tone. The magazine’s editorial staff explained the motivation behind the alteration as“aesthetic,” although many criticized it as an attempt to portray Simpson in a more threatening lightby preying upon stereotypical associations with skin tone (Sturken & Cartwright, 2000).

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2005) and could have affected people from outside the region as well, renderingthem less willing to make donations or more likely to minimize the hardships ex-perienced by evacuees (for potential example, see “Barbara Bush,” 2005). Mediafocus on crime also may have affected government officials. Several state andlocal governments ran criminal background checks on victims of Katrina who re-located to their jurisdiction, often as soon as these individuals stepped off a planeor bus (“Authorities hunt,” 2005), a move criticized by some as unprecedented andinappropriate (“ACLU criticizes,” 2005; Foley, 2005).

The unique aspect of the Katrina coverage, though, is that much of the reportedinformation about violent crime turns out to have been false. Yes, the lack of re-liable channels of communication was unprecedented in contemporary America,obstructing the media’s ability to obtain and confirm information. But this was notthe case at the Superdome and Convention Center, where operations were carriedout by the National Guard and where reports should have been more easily con-firmable.5 Moreover, communication issues did not lead to similarly misleadingcoverage in storm-affected areas with largely White populations. Perhaps mosttellingly, the inaccuracies regarding the behavior of the storm survivors seemedto err in the same direction, portraying these individuals more negatively, moreviolently, more stereotypically; there were few if any stories that depicted the pre-dominantly Black population in a more positive or generous light than the factswarranted (Britt, 2005; Rosenblatt & Rainey, 2005). These observations suggestthat demographic factors such as race contributed to the nature of the inaccuratereporting. As the editor of the Times-Picayune postulated, “If the dome and Con-vention Center had harbored large numbers of middle-class White people, it wouldnot have been a fertile ground for this kind of rumormongering” (Britt, 2005).

Another consideration related to story angle involves whether the media deeman event worthy of news coverage in the first place. In the case of Katrina, coveragewas extensive. In fact, many pundits credit the media with goading governmentalagencies out of their apparent inaction in the immediate aftermath of the storm,as well as “redeeming” a news institution that had become increasingly defer-ential and preoccupied with melodramatic human interest stories in recent years(Carr, 2005; Kurtz, 2005). But other recent news items suggest that race can playa role in determining whether a story even receives media attention in the firstplace. Consider, for example, the spate of missing woman cases that have recentlycaptured media and public attention in the United States. The disappearances ofChandra Levy, Laci Peterson, and Natalee Holloway, received extensive cover-age. One characteristic these cases share is that they involve young White women.Similar disappearances of non-White women have not received comparable atten-tion. The disappearance of Tamika Huston, a 24-year-old from South Carolina,

5 Indeed, much of the false information reported appears to have originated from governmentofficials who had not taken the time to confirm the rumors (Pierre & Gerhart, 2005).

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was covered by local television stations, but efforts by her family to draw widermedia attention were largely ignored (Mankiewicz, 2005). LaToyia Figueroa waspregnant at the time she went missing in Philadelphia, yet her case received afraction of the coverage devoted to the disappearance of Laci Peterson (O’Connor,2005). Such discrepancies are not limited to missing persons stories: the March2005 school shooting that killed 10 Native American students on a reservationoutside Minneapolis received far less attention than similar school shootings withpredominantly White victims, such as the 1999 murders at Columbine High Schoolin suburban Denver (Teng, 2005).

When pressed to explain these disparities, journalists and executives often ex-plain that they are simply covering the stories that interest the audience (O’Connor,2005). This may be the case: Perhaps viewers feel greater empathy toward vic-tims who are similar to them, or toward young White victims in general; perhapsthey also experience more fear and threat in response to Black criminals. Butregardless of whether media decisions about story angle and newsworthiness in-fluence or merely reflect the attitudes of the public, the conclusion that race canaffect these decisions is problematic. To no real surprise, journalists and mediaexecutives underestimate the potential role of race in these judgments, as illus-trated by this vehement denial from the former president of NBC News: “Letme make this clear: Race is not a factor in who we cover or how we cover it”(Mankiewicz, 2005). Comparisons of the coverage of stories involving individualsof different races—crude as they may be—converge with psychological theory tosuggest otherwise. But the extent to which race influences such decisions, and thecircumstances under which this influence is strongest, have yet to be identifiedempirically.

“New Media” Reporting

Web-based first-person accounts. In the 21st century the term “media” hasbeen expanded to refer to outlets other than newspaper, magazine, radio, and tele-vision. In the 2004 U. S. presidential campaign, for example, weblogs (or “blogs”)were a popular source of news and analysis, and several candidates maintainedofficial blogs (Rice, 2003). As such, it seems appropriate to consider the coverageof Hurricane Katrina in the “new media,” including weblogs, listservs, on-linebulletin boards, and mass e-mails. Evidence of the influence of race in these me-dia would not be surprising; these are typically products of individual writers andit is well documented that contemporary individuals exhibit subtle and explicitracial bias despite norms of egalitarianism. In fact, White supremacists and othersespousing overtly racist ideologies responded to Katrina with a barrage of e-mailsand postings warning that Black evacuees would start crime sprees across thecountry, blaming the victims for their fate, and proposing strategies for sendingaid that would exclusively target White survivors (“Racists stir,” 2005).

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But one did not have to frequent extremist web sites to find accounts of Katrinatinged by race. In the aftermath of the storm, several mass e-mails began circulatingas ostensibly first-person accounts from New Orleans and beyond. Many describedsurvivors in an unflattering as well as stereotypical light. Consider, for example,excerpts from an account of the behavior of evacuees at a Texas rest area:

Last Friday, my dad, who works for TxDOT, answered a call for TxDOT employees to gohelp with the refugees at this rest stop. These buses from New Orleans start pulling in. . . .As they get off the bus, they are greeted and shown to the restrooms—where they pee allover the walls, floors, mirrors, etc. They did not even flush the toilets. Left the restrooms ina HORRIBLE mess. . . . He and my mom said the people were HORRIBLE. Nasty, filthymouthed, ungrateful. . . . Why the hell can’t they line up themselves and help unload allthese trucks and cars full of FREE stuff? Okay, let them have a day or two of rest but thenput those folks to work taking care of themselves. Why the hell should any of them wantto get a job when they can lay around all day in free air conditioned stadiums where theydon’t have to spend a dime and they have TV, entertainment and education and great food?

(“Rest stop,” 2005)

The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) was unable to confirm theseallegations, and the supervisor of the rest stop refuted them, particularly the allegedincidents in the restroom (“Rest stop,” 2005). Again, it is not surprising that thereexists an e-mail that describes the survivors of Katrina so negatively, and onesuch account hardly indicates a general media bias. But it is noteworthy that thisaccount shares some characteristics exhibited by the traditional media coveragereviewed above. The full e-mail consistently refers to survivors as “refugees,”at one point using quotation marks to make sarcastic reference to “evacuees.”Although the focus of this e-mail is not on violent tendencies among the survivors,the depiction is consistent with stereotypes, suggesting that the individuals weredirty, ungrateful, lazy, and manipulative.

Another circulated e-mail does focus on issues of crime and violence, inaddition to casting aspersions on the survivors’ work ethic and general sense ofmorality:

Let me tell you a few things about the wonderful group of evacuees we received here inUtah . . . the National Guard removed from their person; 43 handguns . . . 20 knives, oneman had 100000 dollars in cash, 20 pounds of Marijuana, 10 pounds of Crack, 15 poundsof Methamphetamines, 10 pounds of various other controlled substances including Heroin.Upon their arrival here in Salt Lake City, two people immediately deplaned and lit up ajoint. . . . It was discovered that parents were using their kids to carry loads of looted jewelry(price tag still on), and other items. . . . By the second night in the shelter, there was oneattempted rape of a relief worker, sales of drugs on going and a gang had begun to rebuild. . . .This past Saturday, workforce services held a job fair. 85 of the 582 evacuees attended. 44were hired on the spot. 24 were asked back for a second interview. Guess the others had nodesire to work.

(“Utah evacuees,” 2005)

Public safety officials and the Governor of Utah immediately and categoricallydenied these allegations (Dethman, 2005; “Hurricane Katrina,” 2006; “Utah evac-uees,” 2005). It is difficult to estimate just how many similar “first-person accounts”

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were written in the weeks after Katrina. But as demonstrated by the fact that aspokesman for the Department of Public Safety, as well as the Governor himselffelt obliged to respond to it in public, the Utah evacuee email—as well as emailserroneously attributing a string of carjackings in other states to relocated evacueesfrom New Orleans—was widely distributed after the storm (Dethman, 2005; “Utahevacuees,” 2005), and has continued to circulate into 2006 (“Hurricane Katrina,”2006).

Analysis, implications, and future directions. Interestingly, these emails sharecharacteristics typical of many urban legends, including a fantastical nature andpropensity to elicit emotions of fear and disgust (Heath, Bell, & Sternberg, 2001).The accounts are not content to portray the survivors of Katrina as common crimi-nals, but rather go further, focusing on bodily function and barbaric behavior. Suchoutrageous claims may explain why these e-mails in particular achieved mass dis-tribution. It is important to note, however, that even though these e-mails are lesspolished and eloquent than traditional media output, they are reminiscent of theexaggerated media claims of violence analyzed earlier in this article. Inaccuratemainstream reports about crime in New Orleans also included fantastical allega-tions, such as the claim that babies were being raped. The nature of these inaccurateaccounts in traditional and new media formats suggests that future investigationsmight consider the possibility that urban legends and other unreliable “memes”(see Dawkins, 1976) are propagated more easily when they involve members ofparticular racial groups.

How to explain these biased first-person accounts? First, it is important tohighlight a clear distinction between these e-mails and the reporting found in tra-ditional forms of media, namely, that the latter format has more established ethicalguidelines and a higher level of accountability. A few recent high-profile cases ofjournalistic fraud aside, when television, newspaper, or magazine reporters offera first-person account, there is usually every reason to assume that the individualhas been to the area in question and that they are making a reasonable effort ataccurate fact-finding. No such assurances exist for personal blogs and e-mails,particularly when the identity of the author is inconsistent across versions or evenanonymous. These e-mails could simply be efforts to capitalize on the Katrinadisaster by spreading stereotypical depictions and rumors, as opposed to the ex-amples reviewed above, which may very well have been cases of racial bias absentpernicious intent or even conscious awareness.

Yet another possibility is that these e-mails reflect other social motivations,such as efforts to bolster just world beliefs (Lerner, 1980). The belief that theworld is an orderly, predictable place is positively associated with subjective well-being and the willingness to commit to long-term goals (for review, see Hafer& Begue, 2005). As such, an event such as Katrina poses a threat to just worldbeliefs, and, by association, to well-being and motivation. These conclusions help

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explain why people often do not respond with “unqualified compassion” to victimsof natural disasters (Skitka, 1999). One strategy for coping with the threat posedby Katrina would be to distance oneself from the victims, either by deciding thatthey are not “innocent” or by situating them firmly within the confines of anoutgroup (Drout & Gaertner, 1994; Hafer, 2000). The excerpts above are certainlyconsistent with these strategies. In fact, the first e-mail ends with a clear effort toblame the victims: “I have always said New Orleans was a toilet; now everyonehas proof that not only was it a toilet, but a toilet long overdue for a flush” (“Reststop,” 2005). A similar just world explanation could account for the assertion oftelevangelists and religiously oriented blogs that Katrina was the punishment fromGod for the perceived sins of legalized abortion, homosexuality, and a generallydecadent lifestyle among residents of New Orleans (Grieve, 2005; “Religiousconservatives,” 2005).

This analysis of new forms of media raises interesting questions for the broaderconsideration of Katrina coverage. Presumably, the authors of the above e-mailscould have attenuated the threat posed by Katrina to their own belief systemsby portraying the survivors as undesirable, immoral members of the outgroup.But what of the effects of such strategies on readers of these accounts? Moregenerally, to what extent did media exaggerations of violent crime and use ofoutgroup language such as “refugee” not only render the storm’s survivors lesssympathetic, but also assuage the anxieties and uncertainty of the viewing public?In this manner, could exposure to media coverage of a crisis such as Katrina actuallypredict decreased concern that a similar fate could befall one’s own family someday? That the potential biases described throughout this article could reflect morethan just race-based associations, but also efforts—conscious or not—to cope withpsychological threat is a provocative proposition.

Recommendations and Conclusions

Our objective in this article has been to analyze the media coverage of Hurri-cane Katrina and its aftermath in order to offer more general psychological conclu-sions and to identify future research questions regarding race and media depictions.Whereas we cannot identify with absolute certainty the extent to which survivordemographics influenced media coverage, a review of psychological theory andfindings converges with anecdotal examples to suggest a high likelihood that raceplayed a contributing role. We would hasten to point out that the difficulty of con-clusively identifying the influence of race in any given depiction or judgment is notlimited to the media domain; as Norton et al. (2006) suggest, absent an appropri-ate comparison group or data from aggregated judgments, it is often impossible torule out alternative race-neutral justifications. As such, we hope that researcherswill consider directing future attention to more controlled investigations of the

Race and Media Coverage 13

effects of race on aspects of media coverage, not to mention consideration of theimplications of these tendencies for public attitudes and behaviors.

Providing recommendations to combat these potential biases is no easy task.One of the unique strengths of media coverage in the United States has alwaysbeen the freedom of the press, and far be it from us to suggest that this rightshould be restricted. In fact, much of what went awry in the coverage of HurricaneKatrina was first commented on and brought to public attention through the workof other reporters and journalists who took themselves and their industry to task.Nonetheless, to combat the potential racial biases—including those of an automaticand nonconscious nature—that may lie at the root of these problems, psychologistscan offer some specific strategies.

Greenwald and Banaji (1995) describe three categories of strategies to curtailracial bias: blinding, affirmative action, and consciousness-raising. In the specificcase of media coverage, the first category is not viable, as blinding journalists tothe race of the individuals they cover is a practical impossibility. Affirmative actionis a more intriguing possibility. In the media context, this might entail consciousefforts by journalists to compensate for potential biases by forcing themselvesto report on an equal number of positive and negative story angles regardless ofa subject’s race. This would seem to be a difficult task given that not all storysubjects are comparable, and a true version of “affirmative action” might includeexaggerating or at least placing greater emphasis on positive angles for storiesinvolving Black individuals—hardly strategies befitting an institution with an ex-pressed commitment to accuracy and objectivity.

We would therefore suggest that consciousness-raising is likely the mostpromising tool with which to address racial bias in the media. As Greenwaldand Banaji (1995) explain, when individuals motivated to be fair-minded are madeaware of a potential source of bias, they are often able to avoid discrimination;making conscious the category associations that typically reside outside of aware-ness is one way to render those associations less influential. Of course, such astrategy is only effective to the extent that the individuals in question are moti-vated to avoid bias. We assume that—with the notable exception of the authorsof the fabricated first-person e-mails described above—the vast majority of jour-nalists covering Hurricane Katrina fall into this category. If this is not the case,then efforts to ameliorate racial bias in media coverage would require an entirelydifferent course of action.

But if this assumption is valid, then perhaps the compilation and presentationof data regarding disparate media coverage of White and non-White individuals—as achieved by many researchers cited in this article (e. g., Dixon & Linz, 2000;Entman & Rojecki, 2001; Nunberg, 2005)—can serve to remind journalists oftheir motivations to remain accurate and impartial. Presumably, few reporters willnow be able to utter the word “refugee” or type the word “looting” without giving

14 Sommers et al.

newfound thought to the implications of their language choice. Public dissemina-tion of social psychological research findings regarding the nature of contemporaryracial bias has the potential for similar effects on a broader societal level. It is ourhope that the present article furthers, at least in some small way, these objec-tives. By continuing to highlight the ways in which race can color media coverage,even when the individuals involved believe that it has not, perhaps psychologistscan play a role in curtailing the media biases that simultaneously reflect and shapepublic opinion.

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SAMUEL R. SOMMERS is assistant professor of Psychology at Tufts Universityin Medford, MA. He received his Ph.D. in social psychology from the University ofMichigan in 2002. His research focuses on the influence of race and stereotyping onsocial judgment, real-world decision making, group dynamics, and interpersonalinteraction.

EVAN P. APFELBAUM is a third-year Ph.D. student at Tufts University. Hisresearch focuses on the relationship between race-related norms, interpersonalconcerns, and the dynamics of interracial interaction.

KRISTIN N. DUKES is a second-year Ph.D. student at Tufts University. Herresearch focuses on phenotypicality and other race-related cues of stereotypeactivation.

NEGIN TOOSI is a second-year Ph.D. student at Tufts University. Her researchfocuses on how people use, adapt, and perform their various identities in responseto social cues.

ELSIE J. WANG is a second-year Ph.D. student at Tufts University. Her researchfocuses on the role of race and cultural differences in emotion and interpersonalprocesses.