MEDIA BIAS IN BATON ROUGE

By Susan Stamper Brown

The recent flooding in Baton Rouge is a study in media bias if you compare it to media coverage of Hurricane Katrina.

While Baton Rouge flooded, President Obama continued to play golf at Martha’s Vineyard, as if nothing was happening, and the media gave him a pass. George W. Bush was accused of being a racist when he cut his vacation short and did a flyover of New Orleans back in 2005.
Talk about double standards.
Without a doubt, media coverage of Katrina was a hack job done by Bush-haters who wanted to paint the sitting president in the worst possible light.
Because they had an agenda, they failed to report about what may well have been one of the most successful search-and-rescue operations in American history.
NBC News’ Brian Williams missed the real story because he was busy misreporting un-facts about un-events that the Washington Post said he perhaps “misremembered” the same way he did about his helicopter ride in Iraq. Williams and NBC News were awarded the 2005 Peabody Award for coverage of Hurricane Katrina. The award website states NBC reported on “all angles of events related to Hurricane Katrina” including “disintegrating social conditions” in New Orleans and for posing “difficult questions to government officials…dealing with issues of race and class…”
They covered all angles? What a bunch of bologna.
Williams was eventually relieved of his duties as NBC anchor for the kind of tale telling one would expect to hear while sipping hot cocoa around a campfire at Lake Wobegon.
Williams and other media hacks conveniently passed over the real story… about what went right when Mother Nature went wrong. A Real Clear Politics piece, “Katrina: What the Media Missed,” reports that upwards of 100,000 lives were saved. Sure, FEMA missed the mark, but a lot went right. While the media were looking for bad news and a thousand ways to blame it on Bush, our well-prepared military was busy saving lives, delivering babies and restoring law and order.
Which leads us to Baton Rouge, where flood waters ravaged homes and torrential rains delivered death and destruction —- and the mainstream media ran cover for their golden boy who found time to pull away from his merriment at Martha’s Vineyard for a posh Hillary fundraiser, but was far too busy to fire up Air Force One to pay a visit as Comforter-in-Chief.
Let’s not forget that Bush-43 was castigated by the media and liberal pundits —- including President Obama —- for the fly-over they misconstrued as aloofness.
From the Senate floor, a preachy Obama said, “We can talk about what happened for a few days in 2005 and we should. We can talk about levees that could not hold…about a president who only saw the people from the window of an airplane instead of down here on the ground to provide comfort and aid.”
At least Bush showed up.
The outright hypocrisy of Obama golfing while the waters rose in Baton Rouge after making political hay out of his predecessor’s so-called indifference makes no difference to the Bush-Deranged-Syndrome media crowd who continue to cover for the guy who promised that waters would recede on his watch but obviously didn’t.

Kicking off a new school year also means the start to the fall sports season. As a softball coach for 27 years and a father of children who participated in athletics, I know that safety always comes first. Sports should be fun, but in order to maintain that fun, safety must be put before anything else, including winning.

After sustaining a head injury, it is important athletes are healthy before they start physical activity again. Hoosiers also need to be well informed on precautions, symptoms and the proper steps to take once an injury occurs. Concussions are a serious threat, which can have long-lasting effects on the brain. Symptoms may not become apparent until days or weeks after the injury, which is why concussions are known as the “invisible injury.” Once an athlete sustains a concussion, they have a higher likelihood of experiencing more concussions down the road. Through education, we can help decrease the number of injuries.

As a lawmaker, I worked with fellow policymakers to increase safety for our student athletes. This year we passed a law requiring coaches to complete a safety education course to better prevent and identify head injuries in student athletes. The head coach or assistant coach of an interscholastic sport must be certified in a player safety education course by July of next year.

Currently, athletes who are suspected of having a concussion are not able to return to play until they have been evaluated by and received clearance from a qualified health-care provider. This new law takes an additional step in keeping our athletes safe by ensuring coaches can detect warning signs of a concussion and prevent further, more serious injuries. Coaches who complete the required training will be protected under this law unless there is evidence of gross negligence.

As always, please contact me with questions or input at 317-232-9833 or by email at h75@iga.in.gov. I appreciate hearing from you in order to better represent our district. Stay up-to-date with the work being done at the Statehouse by signing up to receive my email updates at www.in.gov/75.

Sterling Brewers, Inc.

With the influx of German immigrants into Evansville in the nineteenth-century, beer production was a major industry throughout much of the city’s history, especially on the West Side. Sterling Brewery evolved from the Fulton Avenue Brewery, which had opened at Fulton and Pennsylvania (now the Lloyd Expressway) in 1880. The building was also notable for being the first in Evansville to boast electric lights. By 1920, the Fulton Brewery was renamed Sterling, which survived Prohibition by manufacturing malts and other food products. The company’s long history finally ended in 1997, and the plant was razed a year later.

FOOTNOTES: We want to thank Patricia Sides, Archivist of Willard Library for contributing this picture that shall increase people’s awareness and appreciation of Evansville’s rich history. If you have any historical pictures of Vanderburgh County or Evansville please contact please contact Patricia Sides, Archivist Willard Library at 812) 425-4309, ext. 114 or e-mail her at www.willard.lib.in.us.