ZDF Accusation

Via Kevin Drum (whose trackbacks are still broken), we find a reader Email reproduced at Laura Rozen's blog on U.S. hurricane response:

There was a striking dicrepancy [sic] between the CNN International report on the Bush visit to the New Orleans disaster zone, yesterday, and reports of the same event by German TV.
ZDF News reported that the president's visit was a completely staged event. Their crew witnessed how the open air food distribution point Bush visited in front of the cameras was torn down immediately after the president and the herd of 'news people' had left and that others which were allegedly being set up were abandoned at the same time.
The people in the area were once again left to fend for themselves, said ZDF.

Mr. Drum is buying: "This goes beyond stage management. This is criminal." Indeed, if true. The next step is the Google News search for "ZDF New Orleans" which, as of this writing, gives three hits.

The first is a September 4 article in the Workers World [sic] entitled Military moves in, not to help but to repress. It closes as follows:

But after this monumental disaster, no amount of posturing and media manipulation can hide the ugly truth.
After Bush's much-publicized photo-op, where he played hero and hugged two young Black women in Louisiana, the German television station ZDF News reported that the president's visit was a completely staged event. Their crew witnessed how the open-air food distribution point Bush visited in front of the cameras was torn down immediately after he and the herd of "news people" had left. Others that were allegedly being set up were abandoned at the same time.
The people in the area were once again left to fend for themselves, said ZDF.

I have placed in boldface the part of the quote which is repeated verbatim by Ms. Rozen's correspondent. The Workers World article is credited to Dierdre Griswold, and flagged by Google News as "3 hours ago", i.e., around 2 AM EST.

The second hit is a posting at Chattanoogan.com, which gives the same story in different words:

German TV, however, filed a much different report. ZDF news reporter Christine Adelhardt reported the president's visit to be a completely staged event. Their crew witnessed how the open-air food distribution point Bush visited in front of the cameras was hastily set up for his photo-op and then torn down immediately after he and the herd of "news people" had left. And those women Bush hugged for the camera were not even Biloxi locals. Some have even speculated that they were looters who were just individuals wandering in the area that were quickly recruited as props for Bush's faux compassion photo-op.

The author is listed as Bruce Wilkey of Signal Mountain. It adds color and different wording, but the verbatim overlap [again in bold] seems beyond coincidence.

The third hit is a false positive, a Herald Tribune article on the upcoming German election. So we are left with two related but not identical roots. Mr. Wilkey is a frequent correspondent to the Chattanooga Times -- this seems to cast doubt on his impartiality. It seems safe to assume that Mr. Wilkey read of the ZDF reports and found them plausible, so we are most likely left with a single source.

This, of course, in no way implies that that source is false. For that, we need someone who has seen the ZDF feed or, better, was involved in the photo-op itself. Unfortunately, Mr. Whitlock represents the southernmost outpost of my readership, so this will have to be undertaken by someone more industrious.

[Update 27 September: It appears the ZDF reports are not to be believed. Congratulations to Idealistic Pragmatist and Respectful of Otters, who did the legwork. Perhaps Mr. Drum will provide a retraction; though, since his trackbacks are still broken, he may not be aware of this update.]