Thousands in city feared dead." That was the lead headline on the front page of The News & Observer on Thursday, Sept. 1, three days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans.

As of Friday, Sept. 30, 923 deaths in Louisiana had been attributed to the hurricane, most from the New Orleans area. The death toll may rise, but not into the thousands and certainly not to the 10,000 figure that was reported widely in the media, including The N&O.

Last week, bloggers and other folks began jumping on the "mainstream media" (MSM) for hyping the news of deaths and violence in New Orleans during the first days of coverage after Katrina. Among the rumors shot down last week: hundreds of dead bodies in the Superdome and the New Orleans convention center, rapes of women and children, the raping and killing of a 7-year-old girl, gang activity, sniper attacks on rescue helicopters and even sharks in the flood waters from Lake Pontchartrain.

More recent assessments showed that there were "only" six dead bodies found at the Superdome and four at the convention center. Only one involved a slaying, according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Authorities confirmed four murders in New Orleans the week after Katrina, which is average for that city. No rapes have been documented, although that doesn't mean they didn't occur.

How much did The N&O contribute to the misreporting? I looked back over the papers for two weeks after the hurricane and found some instances -- most egregiously, the inflated body count -- of exaggerated reports in the storm's aftermath. But the paper avoided the wilder excesses of other news outlets, particularly regarding murders and rapes, and it made an effort to shoot down unfounded rumors.

The N&O, like most papers, was handicapped in its ability to provide verified information because it was largely dependent on news services for information from the stricken area. The paper did send five reporters and photographers to the Gulf Coast, but they arrived after the worst part of the evacuation.

A greater problem was the quality of information from news sources that in normal circumstances would be considered credible authorities. The first claim of thousands dead came from New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin on the Wednesday after the storm, and it was repeated by other officials, including U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt. Nagin later hoisted the number to 10,000, and both he and Police Superintendent Eddie Compass spoke, on "The Oprah Winfrey Show," of killings and rapes in the Superdome. The N&O stories reported the death projections, attributing them to the New Orleans officials, along with the actual reported body counts, which were much lower.

I asked Eric Frederick, The N&O's front-page editor, how the paper can protect itself and its readers from misinformation when it doesn't have control over the reporting.

"Since we don't have the ability to talk to the sources that we're using, we would apply the same standards to the news services that we would to stories we report ourselves. That is, that we would not go with just one source," he said. All of The N&O's wire services, he said, were reporting the high body count numbers. "Then we would use our best judgment. If Ray Nagin says thousands of dead bodies in the city, that would be a pretty good source."

Frederick noted that The N&O did not report some of the wilder stories regarding rapes and violence and in fact published on Sept. 2 a story, compiled by Nation & World Editor Ann Kennedy, that was titled "Bursting Katrina's myths." Here's an excerpt: "Myth: There was rape and murder in the Louisiana Superdome. Is it true? No....There were stories of rapes, killings and abductions. One rumor even said a rapist was arrested. 'None of that,' said Major Ed Bush, chief public affairs officer for the Louisiana National Guard."

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