False news reports of pandemonium slowed aid :: WaPo

Via Instapundit whose summary is, as usual, impossible to improve upon. Key quote from the Washington Post article, emphasis added:

Five weeks after Hurricane Katrina laid waste to New Orleans, some local, state and federal officials have come to believe that exaggerations of mayhem by officials and rumors repeated uncritically in the news media helped slow the response to the disaster and tarnish the image of many of its victims.