European media outlets reported extensively when flooding of the Mississippi river caused major damage in the U.S. Midwest last week. Much of the European reporting linked the latest floods to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which received huge amounts of negative media coverage in Europe and was widely used to accuse the Bush administration of insensitivity and incompetence.
Writing for the German news outlet Tagesschau from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, German journalist Anna Engelke reported June 20 that the locals were unimpressed with President Bush's offer of financial help. With the headline "Bush Visits Flooded Areas: The President Has No Idea," the article presented a critical view of Bush's handling of the crisis, suggesting he had not learned the lessons of Katrina. The article's headline purportedly reflected the sentiments of locals Engelke had interviewed.
In an article on a recently released report by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, the German daily der Tagesspiegel linked the Mississippi flooding to global warming and claimed that the Bush administration had persistently sought to restrain researchers and the language of reports on climate change until a few years ago. In the United States, the Washington Post's article on the same report contained no mention of the Bush administration's resistance to combating climate change.
Not all European coverage, however, reflected badly on Bush. In Britain, for example, the frequently anti-Bush the Guardian reported no negative sentiments toward Bush in articles covering the flooding June 18 and June 20. Although the June 18 article recalled that Bush had been criticized after Hurricane Katrina, it made no mention of similar criticism this time and noted that the President had promised financial aid to affected farmers. June 23 the Guardian carried an Associated Press story which cited local flood victims as saying that this time, "FEMA is doing a heckuva job." Bush was ridiculed after Hurricane Katrina, when he had said that the head of FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) was doing "a heck of a job" – despite the fact that most people considered FEMA's response totally inadequate.
This post was written by Ola Ulmo, Transatlantic Media Network Intern
