Did the media ignore the poor?
"TV dislikes poor people," says Newsweek, because they're a "downer" and bad for ratings."

actually this whole review by howard Kurtz is good, but for the lazy, more excerpts below:

A Sept. 12 Washington Post story was headlined "Katrina Pushes Issues of Race and Poverty at Bush." An equally apt headline would have been, "Katrina Pushes Issues of Race and Poverty at a Media Establishment That Has Largely Ignored Them."">Wiped Off the Map, and Belatedly Back on It: "The fact that most of those left behind in the New Orleans flood were poor and black is being treated by the press as a stunning revelation -- 'A National Shame,' as Newsweek's cover put it.
But not exactly a national secret.

'Apparently none of these ace reporters has ever set foot in Washington's Anacostia district, or South Central Los Angeles, or the trailer parks of rural Arkansas,' writes Los Angeles Times columnist Rosa Brooks.
A Sept. 12 Washington Post story was headlined 'Katrina Pushes Issues of Race and Poverty at Bush.' An equally apt headline would have been, 'Katrina Pushes Issues of Race and Poverty at a Media Establishment That Has Largely Ignored Them.'"