Huh-whuh?

I've seen a couple of instances lately, in reference to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, where folks on the right either imply or state outright that the "mainstream media" predicted over 10,000 dead in New Orleans, which then leads to the mindboggling charge that now the "MSM" is disappointed that the actual death toll came in much lower than that. Setting aside the obvious perversity in assuming that an entire industry would actively root for over 10,000 people to die in a natural calamity, I'm wondering just how this can be pinned on the "MSM" at all, when it was perfectly clear that the "MSM" was merely reporting what various government officials, like a Republican US Senator, were predicting all along. The causal chain appears to be this:

1. Various people, some of them Republicans, say something;
2. Media outlets report what these various people, some of them Republicans, say;
3. Various Republicans then take that bit of reportage as some kind of evidence for the media outlets making up what was said by various people, some of them Republicans, in the first place.

It's really very head-spinning, the way the "MSM" manages to get blamed for stuff. I wonder why the "MSM" just doesn't collectively realize that they're damned if they report and damned if they don't report, they might as well just report anyway and be damned for what they really are. Of course, that won't happen.