Mississippi Gulf Coast feeling neglected

[Martrae]

January 17, 2006

GULFPORT, Miss. — Nicki Henderson has had plenty of reasons to be angry since Hurricane Katrina destroyed her Biloxi home, but it was a simple news item about dislocated dolphins that really made her blood boil.

Henderson lost her temper when she logged on to her computer and spotted this headline: “New Orleans Dolphins Find New Home.” She knew the dolphins actually came from a hurricane-ravaged marine park in Gulfport, not New Orleans.

The headline writer’s error reinforced her belief — shared by many on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast — that New Orleans has gotten a disproportionate share of the news coverage and the nation’s attention in the aftermath of the storm, now more than four months gone.

There is a growing sense the catastrophic damage along Mississippi’s 70-mile stretch of coastline is being treated as a mere footnote to the story in New Orleans, which was ravaged by flooding.

Worse, some say the lack attention could hamper the recovery of an area that had experienced an economic renaissance in the past decade thanks to billions of dollars of investment by major casino and hotel companies.

“I am terrified the American people are going to forget about us,” Henderson said.

On Dec. 14, The Sun Herald in Gulfport devoted its entire front page to an editorial, headlined “Mississippi’s Invisible Coast,” that argued the region is fading into a “black hole of media obscurity.” Next to the editorial was a graphic tallying Katrina’s toll on the region: $125 billion in estimated damage, 236 dead, 65,380 houses destroyed.

The piece ended with a plea to the national media to “tell our story.”

“The depth of the suffering and the height of the courage of south Mississippians is an incredible story that the American people must know. But, in the shadows of the New Orleans story, the Mississippi Coast has become invisible and forgotten to most Americans,” the editorial read.

Sun Herald publisher Ricky Mathews said more balanced coverage would give Mississippi’s residents a sorely needed morale boost. “They need to know they haven’t been forgotten,” Mathews said.