"The unusual reporting environment [caused by Hurricane Katrina [3]] allowed journalists in both print and television to exercise muscles that had long grown stiff," the New York Observer writes. Several reporters described to the Observer dramatic contradictions between what officials were saying and what they, the reporters, were seeing with their own eyes. “In some ways, it’s refreshing in a way to not have the official line, where your only choice is just to see it in front of you,” The New York Times’ Kate Zernike told the Observer after reporting for her paper from Gulfport, Miss. “We’ve all gotten used to doing Google searches and so forth. This was the unfiltered experience,” Zernike said.