For a few days, it seemed every TV camera in the country was beamed on the New Orleans Superdome. Correspondents endlessly described the hellish conditions inside, so we all bore witness to anarchy, although who knows how much of what we heard was true. Most of the pretty faces didn't venture inside to get a first-person look, or if they did, hightailed it out of there when the first strand of hair got mussed.
Pack journalism is synonymous with the broadcast media. TV reporters were elbow-to-elbow telling the same story of hell breaking loose in the vicinity of the Superdome and later the Convention Center. They couldn't venture elsewhere, they said, because everywhere else was flooded and/or too dangerous.