A recent editorial cartoon by Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Mike Luckovich depicts a bedraggled reporter aboard a boat, floating among the devastation, flotsam-and-jetsam of post-Katrina New Orleans. The reporter suddenly straightens up, surprised to have just found something in the debris. He exclaims, “My spine!”

The biggest silver lining in all the tragedy of Katrina might just be the very phenomenon in Luckovich’s cartoon – an awakening of America’s news media.

Since 9/11, the news media has been criticized in many circles for passivity. In many cases, reporters have seemed like little more than echo chambers for politicians’ talking points.

Consider, for instance, a question raised by a reporter at a presidential press conference before the invasion of Iraq. With the nation bitterly divided on the invasion, the merits of pre-emptive war and the likelihood of finding weapons of mass destruction, one hard-hitting reporter asked President Bush, “As the nation is at odds over war, how is your faith guiding you?”

There’s the no-holds-barred question America wanted answered.

The other reporters didn’t even bother to ask how he reconciled this deep personal faith while every major religion, including his own, opposed the war.

But Katrina, it seems, has taught reporters that objectivity and passivity are not the same thing.

Surprisingly, several recent remarks by Bush have come under fire. He told Diane Sawyer he didn’t think anyone could have predicted the levees in New Orleans would burst. But reports had predicted just that, prompting Tim Russert of “Meet the Press” to ask, “How could the President be so wrong, so misinformed?”

In one now-infamous remark, Bush told the former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Michael Brown, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.” With the press showing us what kind of job ‘Brownie’ was really doing, he was quickly recalled to Washington. He soon resigned.

Although Bush and Co. feel the brunt of the wrath, the media’s newfound spine is not limited to criticizing the right. One of the harshest examples was directed against Sen. Mary L. Landrieu, (D – La.) by CNN anchor Anderson Cooper.

Cooper is rapidly becoming the poster child for this change in the media. He seems to always be at the center of a disaster zone, and was on the ground early after the hurricane. That may be why he interrupted Landrieu when she began thanking some of the federal officials for their relief efforts.

“Excuse me, senator, I’m sorry for interrupting,” Cooper said. “For the last four days, I’ve been seeing dead bodies in the streets here in Mississippi. And to listen to politicians thanking each other and complimenting each other, you know, I got to tell you, there are a lot of people here who are very upset, and very angry and very frustrated.”

Cooper wasn’t alone. Shepard Smith of Fox News demanded answers from a police officer, shouting, “When is help coming for these people?” Bob Schieffer of “Face the Nation” told Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff that his department’s performance had been a “total failure.”

No one wants a media that is unfair or partisan. But we don’t want reporters to be simple bullhorns for politicians, either.

We want them to make people accountable for their rhetoric, to ask the hard questions we would ask if we had their kind of access – to be active and objective, without being biased. We want them to have what Ernest Hemingway, who started as a reporter, called the most essential gift for any good writer: “a built-in, shockproof s— detector.”

As for Katrina, “Perhaps this is the story,” mused NBC ‘Nightly News’ anchor Brian Williams, “that brings a healthy amount of cynicism back to a news media known for it.”

Here’s to hoping.

Columns reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily that of the Northern Star staff.