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      *Journalists have begun to speak out about what one CNN journalist referred to Thursday as “the elephant in the room” with regards to Hurricane Katrina coverage by the media.  The issue of race and class has rarely been mentioned as a point of context during reports on the refugees and looters, who are predominantly African American and poor.

       Slate.com’s Jack Shafer addressed the issue in his column on Thursday.

       “Now, don't get me wrong. Just because 67 percent of New Orleans residents are black, I don't expect CNN to rename the storm "Hurricane" Carter in honor of the black boxer,” Shafer writes. “Just because Katrina's next stop after destroying coastal Mississippi was counties that are 25 percent to 86 percent African-American (according to this U.S. Census map), and 27.9 percent of New Orleans residents are below the poverty line, I don't expect the Rev. Jesse Jackson to call the news channels to give a comment. But in the their frenzy to beat freshness into the endless loops of disaster footage that have been running all day, broadcasters might have mentioned that nearly all the visible people left behind in New Orleans are of the black persuasion, and mostly poor.

       “To be sure, some reporters sidled up to the race and class issue. I heard them ask the storm's New Orleans victims why they hadn't left town when the evacuation call came. Many said they were broke—"I live from paycheck to paycheck," explained one woman. Others said they didn't own a car with which to escape and that they hadn't understood the importance of evacuation.”

       Shafer points out that the storm appears to have hurt blacks more directly than whites, however broadcasters have barely mentioned that fact.

       “I don't recall any reporter exploring the class issue directly by getting a paycheck-to-paycheck victim to explain that he couldn't risk leaving because if he lost his furniture and appliances, his pots and pans, his bedding and clothes, to Katrina or looters, he'd have no way to replace them,” Shafer writes. “No insurance, no stable, large extended family that could lend him cash to get back on his feet, no middle-class job to return to after the storm.”

       Meanwhile, the message boards on the National Association of Black Journalists listserve and in other venues have been blowing up about the perceived lack of reporting on the issue by the black media and black politicians, reports Richard Prince in his column Journal-isms.

       "It's embarrassing, given the progress and the status of black media owners," Dwight Ellis, a consultant and a former vice president for human resource development of the National Association of Broadcasters, told Journal-isms. "We have the means to deliver messages. We need to tell our people that we are raising funds. We have to show solidarity with our brethren."

       Regarding the media’s coverage of rampant looting, Shafer writes in his column: “An informed reporter or anchor might have pointed out that anybody—even one of the 500 Nordic blondes working in broadcast news—would loot food from a shuttered shop if they found themselves trapped by a flood and had no idea when help would come.

       “However sympathetic I might be to people liberating necessities during a disaster in order to survive, I can't muster the same tolerance for those caught on camera helping themselves in a leisurely fashion to dry goods at Wal-Mart. Those people weren't looting as much as they were shopping for good stuff to steal.

       “MSNBC's anchor Rita Cosby, who blurted an outraged if inarticulate harrumph when she aired the Wal-Mart heist footage, deserves more respect than the broadcasters who gave the tape the sort of nonjudgmental commentary they might deliver if they were watching the perps vacuum the carpets at home.”

[Shafer’s entire column can be found at http://www.slate.com/id/2124688/nav/tap2/.]