Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Introduction:
Print and Electronic media have proved to be an important and effective tool in
providing the latest information to the people. Modern media has also shown its ability in
shaping the thinking and opinions of the general public. This essay will discuss the ability
Media has shown its great ability in drawing attention of the public towards
different calamities and disasters occurring in different parts of the world. Despites it’s
this great ability has media actually played its role in framing the disasters in its original
context? This argument should be assessed with great caution. The accounts of media of
any man made disasters depend on the information provided by the experts, spokesmen
of the corporation involved and government officials. It often ignores the voices of the
victims, their families and the communities of the affected neighborhoods. This results in
a one sided picture of what happened and who is responsible for all this human suffering.
A good example of this is the Woburn contamination of water case. The disaster involved
two of the largest corporations of the United States. The case was reframed by Jonathan
Harr in his best selling book “A Civil Action” and later Disney’s Touchstone Pictures
made it into a successful movie. The community of Woburn found both the book and the
movie marginalizing their involvement and activities against the corporations involved in
water contamination. This exclusion of the voices of the disaster victims and their
families and has collapsed the full understanding of the disaster. (Button, 143-158)
On the media has been unable to persuade the authorities to take early actions
during different human disasters which would have saved thousands of innocent lives.
The so called CNN effect has never played a central role in this regard but rather a
supportive one. There are other factors like foreign and domestic policies geo-political
interests which plays pivotal role in persuading the authorities. The drought in Southern
Africa in the early 90s is a clear example of this. In the United States the USAID
missions around the world has played more important role in convincing the U.S.
government to take humanitarian relief actions rather than the media. Despite all the
media reporting United States does not acted in Rwanda, Ethiopia and Bosnia. Thus
media does not have the central role in persuading responses again disasters. (Natsios,
124-139)
The disaster imaging before the 1980s has been accused of being under the
colonialist motivation representing starving African children. The images of helpless and
passive victims and heroic saviors were the major part of the African calamities portrayed
by different NGOs and relief agencies calling for charities. Still misrepresenting the
African image is the major problem in the electronic media where the editors do not
adhere to any guidelines as presented by Oxfam and other relief agencies. The main
reason of the exaggerated perception in the West about the third world poverty is this
misrepresentation by the media itself. Channels often show what they are fed without
balancing the picture thus portraying a gruesome picture of the third world countries
where human suffering is as prominent as human prosperity in the West. (Benthal, 173-
216)
Conclusion:
The overall assessment about the media depicts that it has the power to give us
understanding about the events and disasters taken place all over the globe, if its account
became more explicit about the local sources also, not depending on the official and
corporate explanation of what happened and why happened. But it is quite clear that
media is not the central power in pushing the authorities towards the action.
Works Cited
Benthal, Jonathan, “Images and Narratives of Disaster Relief” Disaster, Relief and
Button, Gregory V. “Popular Media Reframing of Man Made Disasters” Catastrophe and
Research Press.
and the Four Horsemen of Apocalypse, 1997, The Center for Strategic