They were the type of images you were hard-pressed to see during hours of television coverage.

In a cataclysm notable for its staggering loss of life, U.S. television news was reluctant to convey that fact graphically. The early days of coverage were dominated by video, much of it taken by amateurs, depicting the awesome spectacle of onrushing water. When professional TV crews arrived, the cameras focused mostly on the physical destruction -- buildings splintered, cars and boats flung along city streets.

When bodies were seen, they were mostly from a distance and usually covered. From television's perspective, they didn't have a face.

"What you want to do is show the horrific nature of what happened but do it in a way that you don't cause disgust among the viewers, particularly during the dinner hour," said Chuck Lustig, who coordinated ABC News' coverage on "World News Tonight" and other broadcasts.

With such a decision, journalists walk a fine line between showing sensitivity and giving short shrift to the enormous human cost and scope of the event.

"It anesthetizes the emotion," said Michele McNally, director of photography at The New York Times.

McNally was torn between two pictures she wanted to offer for the front page last Tuesday. Both were from the same hospital in India; one showed more bodies but faces were not visible. The other showed fewer bodies, but the children's features were evident, and a mother was clutching her head in agony for her loss.

McNally knew from the gasps of other editors that the second picture told a more dramatic story.

The picture took up much of the top half of the page, except for a banner headline and one column of copy. The Los Angeles Times layout was identical; the picture showed dozens of bodies in an Indonesian morgue. An ashen baby, its eyes closed in death, was in the forefront.

Geneva Overholser, a journalism professor at the University of Missouri and former editor of the Des Moines Register, said she's noticed a trend toward more revealing newspaper photos. When she was an editor, there was a strong sense that recognizable bodies weren't shown, particularly when the tragedy was close to home.

She doesn't know if those old rules should apply anymore. "I want to see what is happening," she said.

"My own instinct is almost overwhelmingly that we in the news media ought to be showing the truth to people and if we don't, we are in danger of not giving them the information that they need," Overholser said.

The New York Times in particular has made a habit recently of showing images that television has shied away from: a person falling to his death from the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001; the charred remains of Americans hanging from a bridge in Iraq.

McNally said she was unaware of any complaints from readers about the tsunami front page.

Television executives say their medium is different. Parents can better shield their children from gruesome images in a newspaper than they can when a television picture shows up quickly and unexpectedly, said Michael Bass, executive producer of "The Early Show" on CBS.

"We never forget that we are a guest in people's homes," said Bill Wheatley, NBC News vice president. "Any organization would be foolish to give people a steady diet of material that would be so offensive that they couldn't watch."

There's no hard-and-fast rule about how the victims of disasters are shown at NBC News. Producers decide on a case-by-case basis whether an image is right for their shows, he said.

Bass said viewers can tell what's going on without the more heart-stopping images.

"I don't think anybody could be watching our show or any of the other morning shows and not understand the staggering loss of life," he said.

Some TV anchors last week, like Anderson Cooper on CNN and Elizabeth Vargas on ABC, warned viewers before showing images of the dead that the video could be disturbing.

CNN became bolder as the week went on in showing dead bodies as the count of known victims continued to increase exponentially.

Both television and newspapers depend upon consumers. But it's easier for a disgusted viewer to click away to another channel -- something Nielsen Media Research would quickly notice -- than for a newspaper reader to cancel a subscription.

TV also depends on advertiser support, and companies might not want to plug their products right after unsavory pictures.

"We're showing an awful lot of the horror," said Jonathan Klein, CNN/US chief executive. "It's just a question of degree. A long shot or a medium shot of a father carrying his dead child out of the water is acceptable.

Almost all of the tsunami videos shown on television around the world were shot by amateur photographers
using what have become nearly ubiquitous digital cameras -- and most of them were shown first online, in weblogs.

Here's a sample of what these blogs have had up since the very beginning:

Tsunami hitting Phuket Beach (11.7 MB)

Tsunami hitting Penang, Malaysia (783 KB)

Tsunami hitting Sri Lankan beach (7.6 MB)

Tsunami hitting Patong Beach, Thailand (10MB)

Tsunami_Sri_Lanka_by_Camiseta.wmv (6.18MB)

british-tourist.wmv (2.69MB)

patong_beach3.wmv (10.0MB)

sea-spills.mp4 (1.42MB)

kenya.asx (1.38MB)

KATC.wmv (3.38MB)

NBR Online puts these videos up for viewing at some risk to the health of the website: The principal video collection and dissemination blogs report traffic levels that have required the installation of multiple mirror download centres.

One key blog, Cheese and Crackers reports more than a petabyte of videos had been downloaded since the blogger -- Jordan Golson -- began putting them online. The blogger describes himself as "conservative Poli Sci undergrad going to school and living in that liberal haven: Massachusetts" and notes that a petabyte is the equal of more than 300,000,000 mp3's.

The Wall Street Journal profiled the Cheese and Crackers evolution from a sparsely read political blog emphasising text to one of the most popular videoblogs (vblogs) online.

It also provides an illuminating overview of how one of the most-viewed (and chilling) amateur videos -- Tsunami hitting Phuket Beach -- found its way into so many computers and, eventually, television news outlets, and points to event-specific vblogs like WaveofDestruction.org, which was created by an Australian blogger to host tsunami videos. According to the WHJ, that vblog logged 682,366 unique visitors from last Wednesday through Sunday morning, and has more than 25 amateur videos of the impact so far.

That content has gone up since then and the website contains more than just videos -- it filters through the tsunami of news stories about the event and comes up with pointers to gems like this NYPost story about how a geography lesson well learned by a ten-year-old from England saved dozens of people at one beach resort.

Another blogger, "Kirk" from San Diego, California, has introduced relatively new technology -- DownHillBattle's BlogTorrent -- to serve the videos (of which he has a large collection) through a faster, more stable platform using peer-to-peer technology.

The torrent technology -- and its creator, Bram Cohen -- were recently profiled in Wired Magazine. According to that story,

BitTorrent lets users quickly upload and download enormous amounts of data, files that are hundreds or thousands of times bigger than a single MP3. Analysts at CacheLogic, an Internet-traffic analysis firm in Cambridge, England, report that BitTorrent traffic accounts for more than one-third of all data sent across the Internet. Cohen showed his code to the world at a hacker conference in 2002, as a free, open source project aimed at geeks who need a cheap way to swap Linux software online. But the real audience turns out to be TV and movie fanatics. It takes hours to download a ripped episode of Alias or Monk off Kazaa, but BitTorrent can do it in minutes.

And that technology -- as anyone who tries to download a 10MB or 50MB video over the internet using standard click-and-wait techniques will quickly agree, may be critical to the next wave of blogging.

The ability of the internet to operate as an information transfer medium is unquestioned -- except for bandwidth issues and the polyglot mixture of file formats that render some content useless to at least some potential viewers.

Still, while many had celebrated blogs during the US presidential election, there was a widespread sense that, after the election, readership would fall off sharply (it did, according to traffic stats published by many leading political blogs) and interest, along with sponsorship dollars, would wane.

Bloggers would go from media stars back to being earnest diarists, this reasoning went.

But the ability of the blogs to produce not only immediate access to video but to provide first person accounts from tsunami ravaged areas has quite possibly cemented their position among information gatherers.

For a collection of examples of those first person blog accounts -- from both tourists using internet cafes and residents throughout the devastated area -- visit Joe Gandelman's blog, The Moderate Voice.

Mainstream media have been positive about the development, for the most part, and the blogs reflect an astonishing convergence of advanced technologies.

The BBC profiled three blogs very positively, one of which -- Dogs without Borders -- published SMS text messages sent via cell phone from the affected areas of Sri Lanka, an area in which basic phone service was knocked out. Those SMS messages were the earliest first person accounts of what was going on in the region.

Another blog profiled by the BBC -- the newly created South East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Blog -- concentrates on acting as an informal clearinghouse for aid and rescue efforts, according to Dina Mehta, one of the Indian bloggers behind the website.

"Anyone who says, OK, I want to come and do some work in India, volunteer in India, or in Sri Lanka or Malaysia, this is the sort of one-stop-shop that they can come to for all sorts of resources - emergency help lines, relief agencies, aid agencies, contacts for them etc," she told the BBC.

The ususally irreverant Silicon Valley wrote at length not only about the "new opportunities" that were arising from the integration of blogs augmented by video, but about the essential services that were being rendered through them on an ad hoc basis as organisations put up message boards and online databases to assist in the location of survivors -- and the dead.

"You can get a really good consensus picture of what's going on that's stronger than any one news organization could offer," Jimmy Wales, founder of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, told Silicon Valley. "So many people are on the ground in different places. And people pick up very quickly which are the bloggers to read, and they bring that information to the forefront and amplify it."

The Toronto Star began its coverage of the phenomenon with descriptions of what some of the better circulated videos contain, including partial transcripts of the voice content as the camera operators began realising what was actually happening. The TStar is cautionary about video-blogging because the content is so often high in shock value, but closes with the fruits of an interview with Liss Jeffrey, director of the McLuhan Global Research Network.

"There are so many video blogs because the scale of the disaster was huge. And it happened at the beach, where camcorders are pervasive. There's easy access to Internet. There's video-blogging and the ability to solve bandwidth problems. All this has raised some very, very interesting questions about new media. These (video-blogs) show things you don't see on the news. For example, on one site you could see the waves coming. Then someone commented you couldn't see the tide going out. Immediately someone posted a link, where you could see it. There's interactivity. That's new technology," Liss Jeffrey told the TStar.

As an example of just how much possibility the combination of on-scene coverage with blogging can be, Cheese and Crackers points to English translations of stories and video soundtrack content published in the outstanding tsunami coverage in Norway's Dagbladet, resources that would normally be available only days after stories were picked up by English mainstream media, if at all. The blog also offers snippet translations of voices on some videos, such as one containing Malayalam, a language spoken by people from Kerala India.

Still, while blogs may get there first, it is television that carries, eventually, the video coverage that is seen by most -- and the better, more universal, format of television video clearly overshadows anything the internet has on offer ... today.

But what television -- with the exception of unregulated cable stations -- cannot do is provide instant, unfiltered coverage (unless a reporter with a videofeed camera is accidentally on the scene).

That instant-responder niche, and the the display of unfiltered images -- no matter how gruesomely graphic (use care in following this link) -- are where the vblogs and their more prosaic jpeg cousins are thriving today.

MSNBC/Slate blogger/columnist Glenn Reynolds, one of the most important voices in the blogosphere, called the blog response to the tsunami "distributed journalism" and said: "Distributed journalism, and distributed responses to disaster. I think we'll see more of both in the future."

Questioning Coverage

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

By Danny Schechter http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=19165

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.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

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. 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

News Strong in the Ratings After Tsunami

DAVID BAUDER

Associated Press, Jan. 4

NEW YORK - A hunger for news following the disastrous tsunami was evident in last week's Nielsen ratings. "Dateline NBC" finished just short of Nielsen Media Research's top 10 for its Sunday broadcast, which featured reports from Thailand and Sri Lanka. And an ABC "Primetime Live" special on the disaster was the most-watched prime-time show on Wednesday.

The story also helped the evening news broadcasts, which normally would expect a slow week between Christmas and New Year's. Instead, the "CBS Evening News" and ABC's "World News Tonight" were both up 12 percent in viewers over this season's average, and NBC's "Nightly News" was up 8 percent.

"World News Tonight," where Elizabeth Vargas subbed for a vacationing Peter Jennings, had its most-watched week since last February.

Oddly, the second-most popular prime-time show last week was "60 Minutes" on CBS, which tried but failed to finish a tsunami piece in time for the broadcast. The newsmagazine had a profile of the Internet search service Google.

NBC, which desperately needs some good news in prime time, saw 16.1 million people tune in to Monday's premiere of the supernatural drama "Medium." They were the best numbers for an NBC drama premiere since "Ed" in 2000.

For last week, CBS was on top with a 10.2 million viewer average (6.6 rating, 11 share). ABC was second with 9.7 million viewers (6.2, 11), and won handily among the 18-to-49-year-old demographic that advertisers love. NBC averaged 8.5 million viewers (5.6, 10), Fox 5.5 million (3.4, 6), UPN 2.7 million (1.9, 3), the WB 2.2 million (1.5, 3) and Pax TV 660,000 (0.4, 1).

"Nightly News" won the evening news ratings race, averaging 11.2 million viewers (7.6, 14). "World News Tonight" had 10.4 million viewers (7.0, 13) and the "CBS Evening News" had 8.1 million (5.5, 10).

A ratings point represents 1,096,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation's estimated 109.6 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.

For the week of Dec. 27-Jan. 2, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," CBS, 18.3 million; "60 Minutes," CBS, 16.4 million; "NFL Monday Night Football: Philadelphia at St. Louis," ABC, 16.4 million; "Law & Order: Criminal Intent," NBC, 14.8 million; "Everybody Loves Raymond," CBS, 14.8 million; "Without a Trace," CBS,14.3 million; "NFL Monday Showcase," ABC, 14.2 million; "Crossing Jordan," NBC, 14.1 million; "Two and a Half Men," CBS, 13.5 million; "CSI: Miami," CBS, 13.4 million.

ON THE NET

http://www.nielsenmedia.com

A late start on tsunami story USA TODAY, Jan. 4
http://www.usatoday.com/life/columnist/mediamix/2005-01-03-media-mix_x.htm

Monday, nine days after a deadly tsunami cut a wide swath across Asia, network news stars such as NBC's Brian Williams, ABC's Diane Sawyer and CBS' Dan Rather finally began reporting from the region, a startling length of time given the scope of the tragedy.

Yet it was probably that scope — 11 nations over 3,000 miles, with parts of countries such as Indonesia virtually impossible to reach — coupled with the giant wave striking during Christmas vacation week that contributed to a slow network news start on the story.

"This is one of those stories nobody quite understood in the first couple of days exactly what this was going to be," says ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff, reporting Monday from Colombo, Sri Lanka. "The White House didn't understand it, journalists didn't understand it, and aid organizations didn't understand it.

"Now, more and more reporters are wandering into the story. But everyone was slow to completely grasp the significance."

The Asian tsunami is "one of those dauntingly horrible logistical stories to get to," making travel extremely difficult, says CBS News chief Marcy McGinnis.

Though CBS and other broadcast and cable networks had reporters in affected countries within hours of the tragedy, they held off before sending their big guns.

"There are better uses for an anchor than having him stand in the middle of rubble — with no disrespect to the people who are standing in the rubble," McGinnis says. Rather boarded the USS Abraham Lincoln as it traveled to the region and will report from it for 60 Minutes on Wednesday. He anchored The CBS Evening News from Thailand Monday.

CNN's Jonathan Klein says that with producers and correspondents already stationed around the globe, CNN was "able to flood the zone immediately" since last week and now has more than 75 staff members reporting the story. CNN has gone wall-to-wall on the disaster: "We plan to keep our foot on the accelerator — but be very sensitive to when enough is enough."

That probably will take some time, Fox News vice president John Stack says. "A story like this has different chapters every two or three days," such as the outpouring of relief from the U.S. government and its citizens.

Williams, on his first big story since replacing Tom Brokaw as Nightly News anchor, spent a grueling 48 hours traveling to Banda Aceh, Indonesia, "the hardest-hit of the hardest-hit region," Nightly News producer Steve Capus says. (ABC's Peter Jennings anchored from New York; a respiratory illness kept him from traveling, the network says.) Williams and his producers were vaccinated for malaria, cholera and hepatitis during a weekend stop in Singapore.

Capus says it's critical that Nightly convey to viewers stories of hope for the tsunami victims. "If we do story after story that is nothing more than misery, there is a danger of viewers just shutting down because they can't comprehend the enormity of it all."

Sawyer reported Monday from hard-hit Khao Lak, Thailand, for Good Morning America on stories ranging from schoolchildren excited to get back to class to a tour of a makeshift morgue.

Getting Sawyer to the scene "is critical for our audience," GMA producer Ben Sherwood says. "There is a heartbreaking side to this story, but there is also a healing and life-affirming side." (Newsreader Ann Curry went for NBC's Today.)

Woodruff says his cameraman noted that this is the first time in years they didn't have to bring flak jackets on a big story.

"This is the kind of reporting where you don't make phone calls and set up interviews. You walk down the street and come into peoples' lives who have just gone through horrible events. You just try to put yourselves in their shoes — to see and hear and to some extent feel what they did, and reinvent that somehow on TV."

Observer: Tsunamis and cable news networks
Published: January 4 2005 02:00 | Last updated: January 4 2005 02:00

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/9bed7bb2-5df6-11d9-ac01-00000e2511c8.html

Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Channel surged ahead of arch-rival CNN in the ratings last year, as the right-leaning network's coverage of the presidential election and war in Iraq captured the mood of at least half the nation. However, the Asian tsunami disaster left Fox scrambling.

Not only did the event occur on December 26, a day when most anchors and producers were on Christmas vacation, but it involved part of the world where domestic-focused Fox has none of its own reporters.

While CNN, the only US news network with a strong global presence, was able to mobilise its correspondents in the region and fly in big-name reinforcements, Fox had to rely on untested freelancers, some of whom appeared to have never stood in front of a television camera before.

The contrast was reflected in the ratings, with CNN's audience up more than 70 per cent.

The only part of the story Fox appeared comfortable reporting was the ideological dispute over whether the US was giving enough aid. Fox anchor John Gibson asked a guest why US taxpayers should be expected to "rebuild hotels . . soSwedes can go on vacation in Phuket again".

Asian drama prompts unprecedented US media coverage

01-05-2005, 05h47
http://www.turkishpress.com/world/news.asp?id=050105054735.drhy53s3.xml

SGE.TUM96.050105054729.photo00.quicklook.default-245x174.jpg

Gabriel Piper - (AFP/US Navy)

NEW YORK (AFP) - Poignant images of the Asian tsunami tragedy continue to fill US television screens -- a rare event since international news seldom occupies a prominent space in US news media coverage.

"As, literally, whole villages and entire coastal segments of countries disappear before the world's very eyes, Asia finally surfaces on the American media map for more than a few fleeting minutes," writes Tom Plate, a syndicated columnist for the Los Angeles Times.

"Today," he continued, "the average American couch potato is hearing of places like Banda Aceh in Indonesia, Colombo in Sri Lanka and Phuket in Thailand over and over again. They are rapidly becoming household names even in the US."

The first images of the disaster arrived quickly and in great number, compared, for example, to the 1988 earthquake in Armenia, where it took 48 hours to get the first images on television screens.

"One was the climbing of predictions of the death toll ... and then of course all of these pictures that started coming in," said Robert Thompson, who heads the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University in New York.

"You put those two things together and this really then grew into one of the stories of the year," he said.

The death toll -- 6,000, 15,000, 100,000 and more -- fill the pages of US newspapers along with accounts of miracles, like the 20-day-old baby found alive or the fisherman who survived despite being trapped for a week under his boat.

The teary-eyed Swedish father who reunited with his boy was the hero of a story in The New York Post, while a Czech supermodel, who survived by clinging for eight hours to a palm tree was featured in The New York Daily News.

The vacation season resulted in American reporters being able to witness the tsunami themselves. One of them, Michael Dobbs of The Washington Post, said the event reminded him "of as scene from the Bible."

Media reports contain stories of suffering Americans as well as of tsunami victims awaiting US Marines for help. But some do more -- CNN television and other US networks reported on a train swept from its tracks by the waves, where nearly all passengers died.

Jon Friedman, a media analyst at CBS.Marketwatch.com, said the drama has offered US national media a chance to shine.

"The nation's television networks, newspapers and magazines had a rugged time in 2004," he explains.

"It might be fair to say that the media had a lot of explaining to do about their coverage of Iraq, terrorism and the presidential election during the first 51 weeks of 2004. The horror in Asia, however, has given the journalists an opportunity to exhibit the very best of their craft.

The US news media "wasn't timid about questioning the Bush administration's performance," Friedman points out. "In fact, many news organizations have put the White House smack against the wall."

Also unusual was the choice of dramatic images showing rows of dead bodies, corpses floating in water and weeping villagers.

Thompson believes the effect of that approach was immediate.

"I don't think Americans attitude about things that happen in other parts of the planet have changed, I think that they are still very much a nationally centered population for the most part," he says. "However, when you show those pictures, when you are able to provide a delivery system into the psyches and emotions of television viewers through this awful and spectacularly horror images, then all of the sudden this thing becomes the story of the holidays."

For Thompson, the timing of the disaster was interesting as well.

"It hits right after Christmas, so in this country you got all these people who have just gone through a month of listening to Christmas carols, and all the movies and everything," he said.

The disaster hit "right in a really dead spot in the news cycle, but also a spot charged with the notions of humanity and goodwill," he said. And that "certainly did something to the way we read this whole thing as well."

Sometimes the coverage has evoked an angry reaction.

"After 9/11, they chanted privacy, sensitivity," wrote Ashok Malik, a commentator for The Indian Express, a leading southern India newspaper based in Bombay.

"Why has Southeast Asias biggest tragedy become every American networks ghoulish Disneyland party? Has disaster finally found its paparazzi?" he asked.

Nevertheless, Peter Phillips, a sociology professor at Sonoma State University, point to another malaise he calls hypocrisy.

"The Iraqi word for disaster is museeba," he says. "Surely the loss of life from war in Iraq is as significant a museeba as the Indian Ocean tsunami, yet where is the US corporate media coverage of thousands of dead and homeless?

"Where are the live aerial TV shots of the disaster zones and the up-close photos of the victims? Where are the survivor stories, the miracle child who lived thought a building collapsed by US bombs and rescued by neighbors?" he asks.

Helicopter Journalism: What's Missing in the Tsunami Coverage

By Danny Schechter
Mediachannel.org

NEW YORK, January 5, 2005 -- The lead story from Aceh in today's Washington Post is vivid: The subhead offers its vantage point "Above Indonesia.

"LAMNO, Indonesia, Jan. 4 -- From the skies above Aceh's devastated western coastline, no sign of civilization remains except for the barren concrete foundations of houses sheared clean and wooden debris scattered like multicolored confetti. …. The line between life and death was evident Tuesday looking down at the countryside from one of the Seahawks.. . . "

It is colorful writing and graphic but also totally inadequate to the task of helping us understand what is happening on the ground in the catastrophe that has struck the region with a force of biblical proportions.

This is an example of helicopter journalism and distanced "outside-in" reporting that accesses few if any sources in the country itself, does not speak the language, and does not explain much about what is going on. It's like the foreign correspondent who flies into a conflict zone for an afternoon and gets most of his information from a taxi driver.

When you watch the coverage, you see endless stories of Colin Powell touring the devastation or Kofi Annan arriving in Jakarta and speaking to the press. You hear the sound bites of the elite and high and mighty, who tend to look at the world from 30,000 feet -- cruising in first class -- and far from the pain of the real worlds below.

And, yes, you also see US soldiers delivering aid, often dropping it from the skies. You hear about the UN Food program with enough food for l00,000 people. (When you read closer, you learn that the food supply will only last a week!)

It looks so impressive -- and in many ways it is. But the reporters on the ground say that there are still major problems reaching those most in need. And those people are dying and at risk from an epidemic of disease.

They say the crisis is getting worse, not better.

As the crisis deepens, the journalism has not.

The reporting is often more graphic than informative as the Indian Express notes:

"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 minimize the hysteria of less informed reporting."

Why is it so hard for western news organizations to connect with local journalists who often know the story best? What we need is "inside-out" and bottom up coverage -- not just reporting from the clouds.

One example of how that might strengthen our understanding. While we were shown examples of help on the way, the local media offered another story -- a story of chaos.

"The massive relief operation for tsunami-hit areas in Aceh is on the brink of chaos with the absence of a single authority directing the aid effort," reported The Jakarta Post. "Vice President Jusuf Kalla, did not deny suggestions that in the first week after the devastation, coordination among government agencies was poor, if not absent."

We have heard about all the money that is being raised, but where is it going and how should it be spent?

What do the people who know the most about delivering aid have to say. What about the agencies who know Aceh best who report that the Indonesian military is using the crisis to sustain its war against local rebels?

Who is thinking about longer-term reconstruction? And what are they planning?

What about organizations in Indonesia who know the country best, groups like United in Diversity. Why not give their thoughts and actions more visibility? They will be living with the crisis long after CNN packs up its cameras and goes home.

What is the relationship between the so called "core countries" designated from afar by President Bush to lead the Aid effort and the UN which will coordinate most of the international involvement?

How about some background on the US history with Indonesia dating back to Washington's support for the dictator Suharto and Indonesia's invasion of East Timor. That would put Secretary of State Colin Powell's comments about "American values "into an Indonesian context --not just one about the war on terror. Are we being as idealistic as many media accounts make it appear?

Covering a crisis like this one is tough and heart breaking. It is easy to criticize from a distance. But there are parallels between the coverage of this disaster and ones in the past. They share problems in common.

Can we learn the lessons of the past and correct the limits of "parachute" reporting before the world press corps gets back on the helicopters for the long ride home?

-- News Dissector Danny Schechter is the "blogger-in-chief" of Mediachannel.org. His new film WMD (Weapons of Mass Deception)exposes media complicity in the War in The War in Iraq. See www.wmdthefilm.com.

Gail Shister | In Indonesia, news stars are roughing it to get the story

By Gail Shister

Philadelphia Inquirer Columnist
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/entertainment/10566771.htm

Tsunamis and network prima donnas don't mix.

With no food or water or hotels left standing in Indonesia's Banda Aceh (ground zero), network anchors covering the tsunami disaster there are working under grueling conditions.

After spending his first night on the floor of the airport, NBC's Brian Williams rotates two-hour sleeping shifts in the damaged home of an Indonesian aide who lost his sister in the catastrophe.

Though her executive producer insists she never sleeps, ABC's Diane Sawyer and her crew catch z's in an open parking lot.

As for food, practically everybody lives on power bars, peanut butter and bottled water. Anything portable and nonperishable.

"Let's face it, being an anchor during a normal time is not a bad gig," says NBC Nightly News chief Steve Capus. "This is not a normal time."

Sawyer has been going nonstop since she left Saturday, says Good Morning America boss Ben Sherwood.

"This is a woman who does not sleep when she's in the field and on the hunt. Anyone who works with her will tell you she has superhuman stamina.

"She's left long lines of producers clobbered and spent." (Were you a cheerleader at Harvard, Ben?)

By the way, Sawyer's charter from Thailand to Banda Aceh had to turn back on Monday because a herd of water buffalo and cows on the runway forced the airport to shut down.

At NBC, Tom Brokaw, who left as anchor of Nightly News after 21 years Dec. 1, has checked in with Capus several times this week.

"He's an interested observer, and he's delighted with our coverage and plans," Capus says. "He's resisting the temptation to get into the game and letting Brian have the playing field to himself."

Images, though horrific, help us grasp tsunami tragedy

Posted: Jan. 1, 2005
http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/jan05/289239.asp

Questioning Coverage

News Strong in the Ratings After Tsunami

Asian drama prompts unprecedented US media coverage

Gail Shister | In Indonesia, news stars are roughing it to get the story


		In Sri Lanka: CNN says that with staffers already stationed in the area, it was able to get there faster. Anderson Cooper is one of 75 on duty.
		CNN

Images, though horrific, help us grasp tsunami tragedy

Posted: Jan. 1, 2005 http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/jan05/289239.asp

Questioning Coverage

News Strong in the Ratings After Tsunami

Asian drama prompts unprecedented US media coverage

Gail Shister | In Indonesia, news stars are roughing it to get the story

Posted: Jan. 1, 2005
http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/jan05/289239.asp