LONDON, 31 January 2006 — Hurricanes Katrina and Stan struck within weeks of each other last year, and both killed more than a thousand people. But while Katrina devastated New Orleans, Stan wreaked his havoc in Central America, mainly Guatemala. No prizes for guessing then, which storm has been referred to some 3,105 times in UK papers since then, and which a mere 34.
The Western media’s response to these and other humanitarian disasters is driven by “selfishness and egocentricity”, a new report alleges. Domestic politics, tourism and feel-good tales about Western heroism and donations make a story, it says, rather than human suffering.
Tom Vesey, head of media analysts Carma International, which carried out the study, says Western self-interest determines whether or not natural and humanitarian disasters earn column inches. “There is a clear link between the volume of reportage and global economic impact of these events.
So, while the political subtext determines the timing, level of commitment and story angle, no connection exists between the scale of the disaster and media interest in the story,” he says. The study rated almost 2,000 articles drawn from 64 daily and weekly publications across nine countries including the UK, US and Australia, with an emphasis on the European press. It compared coverage of six disasters: The earthquake in Pakistani Kashmir, the Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2003 earthquake in Bam, Iran and the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Darfur, Sudan, as well as the two Gulf coast hurricanes. Each article started with a score of 50, and subsequently lost points depending on the headline, its placing in the paper, the portrayal of the situation and any evidence of bias. “This rating system allowed Carma to treat each article with great sensitivity to detail,” the report says.
The results showed no link between the scale of a disaster and resulting media coverage (measured from two days prior to 10 weeks after). Katrina got by far the most media attention; Hurricane Stan the least. The Kashmir earthquake attracted similar interest to Bam, despite its 90,000 death toll being more than three times larger.
But the report claims to have found a clear correlation between the perceived economic impact of a disaster on Western markets and the quantity of media coverage. Some 17 percent of articles about Hurricane Katrina focused on economic issues, for instance, and, including effects on tourism, some 15 percent of those about the tsunami.
Politics also played a key role in newsdesk decisions, it says. “For the first 18 months of the Darfur disaster, only 73 articles were written globally, as the disaster had not developed political capital.” Most newspapers preferred to use coverage of Katrina as an opportunity to savage the Bush administration for the inadequate aid effort.
Besides political and economic angles, the report cites a “tasteless egocentric tendency” in reporting disasters.
As evidence, it highlights a headline above a story about tsunami donations from the Sunday Times on Jan. 2 2005: “The British public should be feeling a little better about itself this morning.”
But the report reserves its strongest condemnation for reporting of the crisis following hurricane Stan: “The Hurricane Stanley emergency stands out as the worst indictment of the selfish Western approach to humanitarian disasters. “
