Storm refugees, nearly all of them black, are on the move throughout the city. And they are refugees, as in, people fleeing misfortune and seeking refuge. NPR and other news organizations caved to pressure from critics who did not like the word. We substituted "evacuees." Some listeners thought "refugee" carried a pejorative foreign connotation, something that happens in Sudan or Somalia but never the United States. That's precisely why I preferred the term. I hoped it would shock people into realizing that an American city had sunk to Third World conditions.

Hawke and I hop out of the truck to interview a ragged string of refugees walking up Howard on the way to the Superdome, trailed by an obese woman in stretch shorts. "I got a bad heart. I ain't got no business travelin' like this," she says.

A woman with matted hair in a Tweety Bird T-shirt says, "We slept all night on the bridge. They say go across the river and the buses will pick us up. Now they're turnin' us all around. We need somebody who knows what's goin' on!"

I ask more questions, but they want answers. Where to get a meal? Where to find a bus?

"Tell the truth," a young man in a Bob Marley T-shirt asks in exasperation. "Y'all care about us?"

"Of course we do," Hawke replies.

"Well, help us," he says sharply. "They got people layin' up there on the bridge dyin' . . . I know y'all want our story, but we need help!"

We don't know where they should go, either. And we're worried that if we hand out the little food and water we have in the truck, we'll cause a scene. Still, he makes a powerful point: We need a story; he needs a rescue.

A couple of weeks later, a listener will e-mail NPR and ask, "What about the demands of suffering humanity? Do you ever feel that journalism is an inadequate response to the tragedies you report on?" Other listeners suggest we should have turned our sat phone over to the cops after they lost communication.

The role of journalist as detached chronicler or part-time rescuer will be discussed intensely after Katrina. Purists argue that journalists should never participate in a story -- period. We bear witness to history; we don't step into it. But it's not that simple. We don't leave our humanity at home when we cover a disaster. Anytime I, as a journalist, record a person in misery and then walk away, I feel like the photographer who queasily described his role, saying, "We came to take our trophies and left." There's something unbecoming about that behavior, particularly if we can offer a small kindness without neglecting our job.

Later in the week, Hawke and I hand out water and snacks to individual refugees we encounter, and the NPR crew gives four desperate Canadian tourists a ride to Baton Rouge. I heard of other journalists using their news boats to rescue people. I believe you do what you can, but you never let go of the story. And on this story, in particular, journalists will perform a service by being on the ground and in the water to show the world and our own government the terrible conditions in New Orleans.

Page 1 of 2 :: First | Last :: Prev | 1 2 | Next