WSJ’s Joe Hagan and Joseph Hallinan explain how the media failed to report that the levees had broken. Everybody’s pointing fingers — a few gotta be pointed at the media.

But in the hours immediately following the storm, some news organizations seemed to play down the damage in New Orleans. Introducing “World News Tonight” on Aug. 29, anchor Charles Gibson said: “In New Orleans, entire neighborhoods are underwater, but the levees held. The nightmare scenario of an entire city underwater did not happen.”

Hagan and Hallinan note that the media may have missed the story because so many reporters were focused on the Mississippi River levees, which didn’t break, as opposed to the Lake Pontchartrain canal levees, which did.