Wave of Change
The torrent of coverage of the tsunami tragedy was media herd mentality at its finest. Let’s hope journalists continue to use their power for good
BY Arthur Johnson
Photography by Kamarulzaman Russali
When critics assess the performance of the press, one of their most persistent complaints is the “me too” behaviour of so many journalists. Google “herd mentality” and “media” and you get more than 33,000 hits. But what is infuriating when it comes to, say, coverage of the latest Harry Potter book or movie (usually blurbed for weeks in advance on the front pages of newspapers and on TV newscasts throughout much of the world) can actually be crucially important in not just alerting the world to a great tragedy, but in moving governments, corporations, organizations and ordinary people to extraordinary acts of compassion and generosity.
I can’t recall any instance in recent history where the bandwagon phenomenon among the media worked to greater effect than in the relentless coverage of the tsunami tragedy in southeast Asia. Just think of what might—or might not—have happened had newspapers, newsmagazines, television networks, websites and blogs the world over not been seized with the horrific death toll and devastation caused by the great wave.
The initial response of many governments, including our own, was to do as little as possible, spend as little as possible and hope that the focus shifted elsewhere. But news coverage of the terrible, heartbreaking losses made it impossible for governments to confine their efforts to token gestures. Any story that begins with more than 100,000 people killed, and many more left without parents, children, homes or livelihoods, cannot possibly end happily. But as billions are spent to help rebuild lives in the devastated regions, we should all be thankful, for once, that the press does indeed have the mentality of a thundering herd.
It would be naïve to think that governments, the press or humankind have been changed for the better by a great and terrible wave on the other side of the world. But the tsunami did bring out some of the best in journalists, and there’s reason to hope that even more good may yet come of the media rat pack.
As media coverage of the carnage in Asia intensified and enormous amounts of money were pledged for relief efforts, it was inevitable that comparisons would be made to the lamentable lack of money and attention directed toward the AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa. In the past 20 years, almost 20 million Africans have died of AIDS—more than two million last year alone. About two-thirds of all cases of HIV/AIDS in the world occur in sub-Saharan Africa, yet media attention to this, one of the greatest human tragedies in history, is erratic, and, all too often, lacking any sense of urgency at all.
But my sense is that AIDS, Africa’s own slow-moving tsunami, is in the process of becoming the next focus for media disaster hunters.
After two decades of plague, many African regions are de-populated, unimaginably impoverished and, some say, rapidly becoming unviable as nations because their leaders, their doctors, their farmers, their labourers are dead or dying. All of this has occurred while multinational pharmaceutical companies have done their best to keep AIDS drugs as costly as possible and governments around the world have shown a scandalous reluctance to contribute more than token sums of money or help of any sort to stop the spread of the virus or to ease the suffering of the dying.
By the time you read this, journalists will have explored just about every possible aspect of the tsunami story. But at news-gathering organizations around the world, thousands of reporters, editors, photographers and producers have now become accustomed to covering a “natural disaster” in a way that few have ever covered any event—turning the abstract horror of mass death into a moving series of stories of individual loss, heroics, compassion and generosity. Journalists are notorious for their short attention spans, but the tsunami and its aftermath challenged them to bring fresh perspectives to this human tragedy day after day for weeks and months.
My guess is that with so many journalists—and their readers and viewers—now accustomed to giving such concentrated consideration to human suffering, the charnel house of sub-Saharan Africa will finally become a major and continuing story around the world. It will probably start with a large newspaper or network—say, The New York Times or CNN—sending several reporters in to begin asking questions about how so many could have died while so little was done. Competitors will pile on with stories about selfless medical volunteers, waste, corruption, callousness and hope. Attention will begin to focus on how shamefully little that countries around the world have done to help, and finally, money and real assistance will begin to flow to one of the most devastated areas the world has ever known. When it does, give thanks to journalists, those indispensable pack animals.
