Press is blaming blacks for bad coverage?

In all my reading, I can’t believe I missed this, but Ace didn’t.

From the much linked-to LA Times article:

Times-Picayune Editor Jim Amoss cited telephone breakdowns as a primary cause of reporting errors, but said the fact that most evacuees were poor African Americans also played a part.

“If the dome and Convention Center had harbored large numbers of middle class white people,” Amoss said, “it would not have been a fertile ground for this kind of rumor-mongering.”

That’s really pretty staggering. And Ace is rightly ranging about it.

So who’s fault is it that they just reported this stuff as true? Why, it’s the fault of poor blacks, who passed rumors on to them! Apparently they had no obligation to confirm these things before broadcasting them.

Every time you think they’ve hit a new low, they just break out the shovels and dig a little deeper.

Go read.