Well, there is a tendancy for TV to cover the best and most easily
available pictures (if it bleeds it leads) and for those with power
and money to be able to better avoid some bad things. (if you don't
have a car, you were much less likely to have evacuated well before
the storm)

I believe in 1927, when there was a big flood on the Missippi, New
Orleans, then having all the area power and wealth, opened some levees
thus flooding rural areas with less power and wealth. It promised to
compensate the rural areas but never did. There are also numerous
stories from 1927, from various areas, of the poor, especially blacks,
being treated much worse than the whites.

There's an article in Saturday's NY Times about small towns
complaining that they're not getting coverage of damage.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/01/na...l/01flood.html

That was the end of his shrimping business, and his town too. "All
everyone out there is worried about is Houston and New Orleans," he
said, pulling on a cigarette. "We're sick of it. This storm hit
Cameron Parish 10 times what it hit New Orleans, and nobody even knows
it."