Gee, was everything assumed about the victims of Katrina and how the disaster was reported in the news wrong?

Four months after Hurricane Katrina, analyses of data suggest that some widely reported assumptions about the storm's victims were incorrect.
For example, a comparison of locations where 874 bodies were recovered with U.S. Census tract data indicates that the victims weren't disproportionately poor. Another database, compiled by Knight Ridder of 486 Katrina victims from Orleans and St. Bernard parishes, suggests they also weren't disproportionately African-American.

Another interesting tidbit is that the victims weren't stranded through a lack of transportation.

Lack of transportation was assumed to be a key reason that many people stayed behind and died, but at many addresses where the dead were found, their cars remained in their driveways, flood-ruined symbols of fatal miscalculation.

Of course, it doesn't matter what the facts are because the stereotypes and assumptions are already burned into people's minds. Having a correction published somewhere several months later doesn't pull the same punch as having reporters trumpeting the faulty conclusions at the time. But just remember this the next time there is some big story that reporters are trying to get a handle on while it is happening admist confusion and inadequate access to the sources of news.....Somethng sort of like Iraq, perhaps?