Endless Haiti News Coverage
Here’s something that I don’t feel good about: in the past few days, I have been avoiding mainstream news websites like CNN and the New York Times because of their endless coverage of the horribly tragic earthquake in Haiti. I recognize that the event is excruciatingly devastating for the Haitian people, as their impoverished society has absolutely no resources to deal with the disaster. But, like most coverage of natural disasters, these news agencies have little to add beyond the classic “mass devastation,” “trapped people,” “limited supplies,” and “large global response” story lines. I end up feeling like there must be other news going on in the world that I am missing because of the singular focus.
But what would happen if the New York Times stopped covering the earthquake after just one or two days? The post disaster situation would grow increasingly worse, but without news coverage, the public would be largely unaware. After all, the news media does a lot to set the agenda for what people think are important issues. Given this fact, do news media agencies have a moral and ethical duty to continue reporting on a disaster, even if the reporting gets repetitive? This reporting likely drives donations and other forms of international response. As boring as it may get for hardened hearts like mine, it helps the victims.
I’ve never worked as a journalist, so I don’t know if news rooms have policies on how long a disaster should be covered. And if they do have policies, I don’t know if they take into consideration the beneficial aspects of news coverage. If their policies don’t, then they ought to be revised. Even in our age of hugely varied news sources, the mainstream media is still most people’s main source of information on world events. News rooms should embrace this power and recognize the important role they play in disaster response. And people like me, tired of the repetitive coverage, should recognize that role as well. Reduced news coverage won’t make the problems go away; increased news coverage, on the other hand, has a good chance of helping.
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