Beena Sarwar is op-ed and features editor at The News International in Karachi, and is currently a Nieman International Fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. This article is from Chowrangi Magazine [5], April 2006.
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It's official. Media is no longer the purview just of professional journalists and editors. Thanks to media-related consumer technology, ordinary citizens play an essential part in news-gathering and dissemination, particularly in disaster situations. During the World Trade Centre attacks of September 11, 2001 amateur video and text messages formed an integral part of the news coverage. The phenomenon has only grown. Media around the world relied on the accounts and visual material supplied by eyewitness survivors of the tsunami that hit Southeast Asia on December 26, 2004. Public input after the attacks on the London subway on July 7, 2005 moved the BBC "way beyond where we'd been before," according to Richard Sambrook, director of the BBC's World Service and Global News division.
"Our reporting on this story was a genuine collaboration, enabled by consumer technology -- the camera phone in particular -- and supported by trust between broadcaster and audience," writes Sambrook. "And the result was transformational in its impact: We know now that when major events occur, the public can offer us as much new information as we are able to broadcast to them. From now on, news coverage is a partnership." ("Citizen Journalism and the BBC [6]," Nieman Reports, Winter 2005).
After Hurricane Katrina, the Times-Picayune of New Orleans forged a similar partnership with "citizen journalists" who provided information crucial to the paper's reporting. In fact, those working with www.nola.com [7], until then a touristy website, now actually share the Times-Picayune newsroom in New Orleans and have active web collaboration with the paper.
After an earthquake devastated parts of northern Pakistan and India on October 8, 2005, the most vivid descriptions of the earthquake and its effects came in e-mails and texts from the area, says Sambrook. "On page after page off the BBC's News's Website we carried the most compelling eyewitness testimony. And as happened during previous disasters, our site was used as a notice board for families trying to contact each other."
The BBC used the new media to push its earthquake coverage beyond the ordinary. But media in much of the Western world -- the United States, Japan, and Europe -- paid far less attention to the disaster.
This was in stark contrast to coverage of the tsunami ten months earlier and Hurricane Katrina a month before the earthquake. The theory about 'disaster fatigue' doesn't hold ground as far as the media is concerned: for the media, good news tends to be no news.
The tsunami's direct impact on many Westerners, particularly Europeans, may be a factor in this, as it devastated popular tourist destinations familiar to the world through photographs if not actual visits. "Westerners identified with the first photos that came in," commented George Rupp, president of the International Rescue Committee, talking to the New York Times. He blamed the palpable neglect of the earthquake on "lack of donor identification" rather than "donor fatigue" ("When One Tragedy Gets More Sympathy Than Another [8]," David Rohde and Somini Sengupta, NYT, 11/14/05).
The theory about "bias against Muslims" also falls flat given that the tsunami also hit a predominantly Muslim country: Indonesia.
In the case of the earthquake, the biggest initial problem was lack of access. It was weeks before the visuals started coming in, and indeed, before the full extent of the disaster became known. Pakistan's "image problem," its weak democratic system and lack of accountability, did not help either, as foreign journalists had trouble verifying reports about the death toll from government officials whose claims they didn't trust.
 New Orleans, LA, March 18, 2006. © 2006 Diane Greene Lent |
Images are important. The visuals of apocalyptic walls of water captured by tourists during the tsunami and flashed across television screens worldwide kept the issue alive and catalyzed donor generosity. Hurricane Katrina generated shock as it hit the world's only super-power, exposing the skewed development in the mainland United States and generating generosity unprecedented before the tsunami. (Although Washington also pledged billions of dollars, the pledges have not been kept and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin is now looking to other nations for help because of shortcomings in aid from the US government, according to a Reuters report of February 7).
The earthquake shook poor, under-developed areas (kept deliberately so by their governments, according to some analysts, these areas became fertile breeding grounds for militants operating in the name of religion). Severe weather conditions and recurring tremors devastated the little existing infrastructure in this harsh mountainous terrain, making it even more inaccessible, particularly after the blizzards and sub-zero temperatures of winter set in.
There was no strong media presence in the quake-affected area as there was in New Orleans. Locals with web or cell phone access relied on Pakistani newspapers and television channels -- and BBC World News, widely watched in South Asia -- to tell their story. It is basically these media outlets, along with web sites and blogs like despardes.com [9] and saquake.org [10] set up by Americans of South Asian origin, that are continuing to follow the story, even though, with rare exceptions, it slipped off the front pages a long time ago. Web postings by media professionals like the Columbia journalism professor Sreenath Sreenivasan [11] have done much to keep journalists informed about the issue, perhaps contributing to their taking up the matter in their own media organizations.
Many of the South Asians in the US who are involved in such earthquake web sites and postings became politically and socially engaged with events "back home" after the attacks of September 11, 2001, propelled by changing perspectives on life in their adopted land. While dozens of doctors flew to Pakistan for earthquake relief work, for most people the most effective way to help was through collecting donations and relief goods. Their web sites got the word out about what was most needed, as well as coordinating donation drives and logistics on getting the relief goods across. Many also actively lobbied with their local media to get the issue back in the news.
Such efforts attempt to make up for the mainstream media's neglect, although individual reporters have dispatched some excellent reports from the earthquake zone. Often these reports were not as prominently displayed as they should have been but, coupled with the South Asian community's efforts, may have nudged op-ed editors and media gate-keepers in the US to run more articles and reports on the earthquake.
The question of constituency may be another factor in the relative silence on the earthquake. Compared to the US, it is believed that Britain has a larger concentration of Pakistanis and Indians, specifically Kashmiris from the earthquake-affected areas. This may have compelled the British media to focus on the issue in a sustained and in-depth manner. There is no such pressure for media networks in the US, where there is in any case considerably less international news [12] reporting compared to Britain.
The media neglect corresponded with the world's initial lack of financial help for the affected areas. A month after the tsunami, the global community had pledged 99 percent of the United Nations' emergency appeal for donations. For the earthquake, over three months later, the UN was still appealing for more funds: by January 2006, it had received only 47 percent of the $550 million it needed to help survivors make it through the April thaw. Private donations by Americans totaled just $13.1 million for earthquake victims a month after the event, compared to $1.3 billion for the tsunami victims and roughly $2 billion after Hurricane Katrina, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy. (Pakistani-Americans in the USA raised up to $77 million for the earthquake survivors by the year's end according to Irshad Salim on www.despardes.com [13])
Interest in the earthquake dropped even further after pledges of $5.4 billion were received at the November 19, 2005 donors' conference in Islamabad, more than the $5.2 billion requested by Pakistan. But much of this consists of loans aimed at reconstructing the devastated areas, despite the urgent and more immediate need to provide relief to the victims. Pakistan already owes $32 billion in foreign debt, on which it pays billions more in interest every year.
Sustained interest and aid in the case of such disasters is essential. But this is difficult to manage in today's fast-paced world where attention spans are growing ever shorter. High-profile celebrity visits (movie stars Angelina Jolie [14] and Brad Pitt on Nov. 24, 2005) are important, but follow-ups are important.
However, let us remember that short attention spans are not limited to the tragedy of remote Kashmir in faraway Pakistan and India. Despite all the efforts of local New Orleans media professionals and 'citizen journalists' to keep their story alive, there's a palpable sense of neglect in that still-devastated city, five months after Hurricane Katrina. The earthquake areas, remote and snow-bound, don't have even the few advantages that help keep the issues of the US Gulf Coast alive. It is left up to those far away to keep the story alive and ensure that the world does not forget.