Coverage of the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans was a disquieting reminder of the need to better prepare tomorrow’s journalists to report on catastrophic events – particularly those that raise issues of race and class.

The “Katrina as Curriculum: Considering Media Coverage of Race and Class in America” presentation at the AEJMC convention touched on the role of the journalist in disaster coverage, the need to integrate Katrina into college curricula, the importance of increasing newsroom diversity and what, exactly, it means for society when New Orleans is referred to as the “chocolate city.”

The panel, co-sponsored by the Newspaper, Cultural and Critical Studies, Minorities and Communication and Radio-Television Journalism divisions featured: Marguerite J. Moritz of the University of Colorado at Boulder; Federico Subervi of Texas State University; Kirk Johnson of the University of Mississippi; Anita Fleming-Rife of Clark Atlanta University and Peggy Bowers of Clemson University.

Many journalists are ill-prepared to handle issues of race and class so they paint an inaccurate picture of tragedy, Johnson said.

“White and black journalists think differently about race,” he said.

He noted that white America’s response to Katrina has been more “apprehension than comprehension,” adding that the preponderance of news and images about looting conveyed a sense that merchandise loss was more important than human lives.

Meanwhile, Bowers cited a need to teach a new generation of journalists to be aware of poverty and not in denial of it.

“Poverty continues to be widespread. It has been climbing not because people don’t know it exists. They do, but they just don’t care,” Bowers said.

Bowers also offered theories about why the nation couldn’t get through the disaster. She suspected that Americans have a love affair with bureaucracy, as well as a short attention span for issues that need time for reflection. Americans also share an inability to talk about the abstract and are fascinated with superficial images, she added.

Fleming-Rife suggested that one of the problems in the Katrina coverage aftermath was that it tended to follow the hero-villain model: The American public saw the white population as heroes and the black community as antagonists.

Questions were also raised about the language of disaster, such as in references to survivors as “refugees.” Fleming-Rife said her students questioned why the news media referred to native citizens as “refugees” when they were relocated.

Subervi addressed the issue of dealing with the non-English-speaking population in an emergency:

“You might say that not being able to speak English well is their problem, but it affects you, too. It’s not only a minority problem but a societal problem that we have to be aware of.”

The panelists shared their ideas on how to bring future disasters, such as Katrina, into the classroom. Fleming-Rife pointed out that her class now understood the necessity for mass communication research.

“I avoided talking about [Katrina], but students wanted to deal with it,” Fleming-Rife said.

Bowers suggested that journalists are “uncomfortable about their emotions and their ability as storytellers. We need to make budding journalists come to terms with their own humanity.”