Qinghai quake spared media circus
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After the dust settles, the most reasonable way to judge the response is the speed and quality of rescue efforts, medical care, and the provisioning of food, water and shelter.
There's also a learning moment in the aftermath of earthquakes, a window for discussion of related issues that normally might not seem so urgent, such as examination of building codes and the quality of construction materials, although it's a case of mending the fence after the sheep are gone.
Earthquakes are the ultimate human-interest story, but the world media sometimes loses perspective. One needs only to consider the thousands of front page news reports, television specials, talk shows, and on-the-scene stand-ups of famous media personages elbowing one another to report from poor Haiti to see how a earthquake narrative can go far beyond objective reporting into the realm of commercial-driven ratings wars, star turns, and humanitarian posturing. Are the photo-ops of media celebrities with stylish hair and powdered faces in safari suits really necessary?
Perhaps because it took place so close the US, home to a gluttonous media market, and because Haiti is so weak, the earthquake there was pumped up, massaged for all its worth and then squeezed dry, manipulated by the entertainment-driven media to sell media brands, along with soap, cars and smug political righteousness.
Not so in Qinghai. China's media and humanitarian agencies were quick to report on the recent quake and quick to rush aid to devastated areas. Foreign reporters were part of the response process.
Elite purveyors of so-called humanitarian narratives, such as the New York Times, which has recently come under fire for racial insensitivities in its own newsroom, slyly tried to exploit a perceived ethnic angle, but more generally, independent reports have been fair and without much bias.
Since the Beijing foreign press corps' coverage of the Qinghai quake has been reasonably free of sensationalism, and China's governmental response fast, reasonable and competent, the carnival barkers of the global media circus will have to go elsewhere in search of their next big story.
The author is a visiting scholar at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
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