Questioning Coverage

Danny Schechter, media commentator, reviews international coverage of the tsunami and finds it lacking in context and analysis

By Danny Schechter

2005 promises to be the year of continuing calamity and cleanup, the clean up of the disaster that was the year gone by.

Most pressing now of course are the countries and peoples afflicted by the tsunamis and the earthquake in South and Southeast Asia. With the death toll climbing, one week later effective help is still not on the way. The response has so far been so disproportionate to the need. All the money pledged means nothing if aid is not delivered in a timely way. People without food or medical attention will die. They don't have time to wait for the international "community" to get its act together. Already, it's being reported that the death toll in Indonesia alone is climbing, now nearing l00,000.

"A manifestation of global unity"

Indonesia's President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, sees aid not as charity but as a "manifestations of global unity." He says, "I appeal to the world community to contribute to the reconstruction of Indonesia that has been hit by disaster and we welcome those contributions as a manifestation of global unity."

Many of the crisis stories follow traditional human interest templates with stories of heroism and survival amidst the death and destruction. One classic of the genre come from the Associated Press: "Family dog saves boy from waves."

The Indian Express in New Delhi raises some valid questions about the coverage in India that seems to have a larger relevance:

"Perhaps it's time for channels to draw up a blueprint of coverage norms for different events/ incidents/ disasters that involve violence, death and extreme suffering. Perhaps, as is the print media, reporters, or a team of reporters should specialize in certain fields -- as they already do in sports and business -- so that in such moments, they have some understanding of the problem, know what to ask or say. Don't say food, medicines and supplies are required, identify what food, which medicines and the nature of supplies so we Northerners don't donate bajra, Vitamin C and warm clothing. Expertise may help minimise the hysteria of less informed reporting."

What are the investigative reporters digging into and why its taking so long to get the resources to those who need them? The needs of tsunami victims needs are most immediate, but let's not forget the other crises the media has all but swept aside like Iraq, or AIDS, or even our own election where nagging questions have been drowned under the mantra that the counting has been done and that's that. It isn't. (A CNN interview program Sunday featured some pundits explaining why this crisis is good for Bush because it drives the horrors in Iraq off the front pages. That's one heck of a bloody "silver lining.")

When Bad News is Good News

Reuters reports: "Coverage of the Asian earthquake and tsunami disaster has increased cable news channel ratings during the usually dormant year-end period. Both Fox News Channel and CNN have seen double-digit increases to their total-day and primetime ratings this week versus the same time last year, but nowhere near the viewership levels that flocked to other major news stories."

As some media outlets benefited with a rise in ratings and revenues, a question must be asked, why didn't American TV media take the lead in helping? They showed us the problem but did not focus on solutions or help their audiences respond in some structured and effective way.

Bureaucracies are rarely inventive or efficient enough to provide immediate aid. As one senior official told me, it took them a long time to get a Global AIDs fund going and it has not had a great track record of getting money to those most in need. While it is not entirely unfounded to question sending money to the UN, surely some coordinated effort by the independent sector of NGO's and humanitarian groups is needed and possible. The UN can help coordinate. A new US led "coalition" of "core countries" on the model of the "coalition of the willing" is the last thing we need.

Right now, there is a militarization of the US aid effort underway with Navy helicopters and ships engaged on Indonesian soil. BBC reports "12 American Seahawk helicopters delivering aid from a US aircraft carrier stationed off the coast of western Aceh."

Foreigners versus Locals

Some critics like Jeremy Seabrook in the Guardian are upset about the way the media focuses more on the plight of tourists than locals: "For the western media, it was clear that their lives have a different order of importance from those that have died in thousands, but have no known biography, and, apparently, no intelligible tongue in which to express their feelings. This is not to diminish the trauma of loss of life, whether of tourist or fisherman. But when we distinguish between 'locals' who have died and westerners, 'locals' all too easily becomes a euphemism for what were once referred to as natives. Whatever tourism's merits, it risks reinforcing the imperial sensibility."

Activists in Australia have put up a blog to report on the grass roots response.

Media Cooperation Can Work

Some media outlets are cooperating in asking the public for donations. The Guardian and Independent in England are doing appeals. Chicago media outlets are working together this week on a big "ask" but so much more could have been done, and can still be done. A correspondent in Denmark advises:
"You may find joy in the fact that here in DK both DR and TV-2 are joining the help-work in the way that you [MediaChannel] have suggested in US. They work in unison with the Tele-companies and the rescue organizations -- Red Cross, Unicef, Doctors without boarders etc. -- to collect money. All week you have been able to send money directly to the organizations through the Tele-providers. By each call a 100 kr. (=18-20$) will automatically be charged to your next telephone bill. This coming week both stations will have daily programs for collections and information."

If Denmark can do it, why not our networks?

Continuing Coverage?

Will the networks stay with the story? Will they track the continuing crisis and what is certain to be a protracted, and if the past is any guide, screwed up reconstruction effort? Will they look into why there were few warnings or the reports overseas that the US military and some Asian governments had warnings but didn't sound them for various reasons?

We also have to contrast the willingness of the networks to bring us ghastly images of the dead in Asia where nature can be blamed for the carnage but not from Iraq where the US has a certain responsibility.

Writes Ghali Hassan on Uruknet: "Unlike the death toll from the latest Tsunami in South-East Asia, which has morphed into an urge to hear more updates and to see more TV footages, the death of innocent Iraqi civilians is systematically ignored. The "stingy" outcry over natural disaster, and complete silence over the US-made disaster(s) is the West self-induced moral hypocrisy."

Mike Whitney makes a similar point on ZNET:
"The American media has descended on the Asian tsunami with all the fervor of feral animals in a meat locker. The newspapers and TV's are plastered with bodies drifting out to sea, battered carcasses strewn along the beach and bloated babies lying in rows. Every aspect of the suffering is being scrutinized with microscopic intensity by the predatory lens of the media.

"This is where the western press really excels: in the celebratory atmosphere of human catastrophe. Their penchant for misery is only surpassed by their appetite for profits. Where was this 'free press' in Iraq when the death toll was skyrocketing towards 100,000?"

In short, we need more than a litany of horror. We need context, explanation. Analysis. History.

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Danny Schechter is a television producer and independent filmmaker who also writes and speaks about media issues. He is the author of several books about the media and the executive editor of MediaChannel.org and recipient of the Society of Professional Journalists' 2001 Award for Excellence in Documentary Journalism. His new film WMD (Weapons of Mass Deception) critiques media coverage of the war. You can read Schechter's blog, News Dissector, at http://www.newsdissector.org/weblog/.

The views expressed above are those of the author and are not necessarily those of AsiaMedia or the UCLA Asia Institute.

Date Posted: 1/3/2005