Photo:Ramon Espinosa/Associated Press
To say that life has been tough for the people of Haiti since January 2010, when a magnitude 7.0 earthquake devastated their nation, would be an understatement. With over 200,000 killed, 300,000 injured and approximately 1.5 million people left homeless after the disaster (World Vision 2011), the nation was, and largely remains, in ruins. Upon seeing the earthquake’s aftermath in the media people, governments and NGOs worldwide opened their hearts to donate their money, time and resources on a massive scale; however, despite this a second disaster befell Haiti in October 2010, an outbreak of cholera.
Cholera causes only mild illness in the majority of the people who contract it, however in a small percentage of infected people, (approximately 5%), life threatening dehydration can occur. According to the Centre for Disease Control two conditions must be met for cholera to spread: “(1) there must be significant breaches in the water, sanitation, and hygiene infrastructure used by groups of people, permitting large-scale exposure to food or water contaminated with Vibrio cholerae organisms; and (2) cholera must be present in the population (CDC 2010).” Given that the huge number of homeless in Haiti remain in “temporary” tent villages, with poor sanitation and water distribution systems, the first requirement is obviously met. However, it was not anticipated that cholera infection would become a problem because Haiti did not meet the second condition. Now that it is present, however, it cannot be ignored; while only a small percentage of people will become gravely ill from cholera, when virtually the entire nation’s population is at risk, the number of severe cases becomes unacceptably high. As of Mid January 2011 almost 4000 people had died of cholera in Haiti (BBC 2011a).
Gourevitch, in his article “Alms Dealers,” takes a critical account of aid organizations, saying that despite having good intentions, things don’t always go well for them and they’re not accountable for their actions (2010:109). He also outlines the critique Linda Polman puts forward in her book, “The Crisis Caravan: What’s Wrong With Humanitarian Aid?” explaining how the media brings attention to the work of aid organizations, but not always positively. For example/ in Sierra Leone, when the R.U.F.’s soldiers realized that amputees were attracting support from international aid agencies due to international news coverage, specifically by the BBC, they increased the number of amputees dramatically. Additionally, many amputees began hoarding prosthetics and going around without them to keep the media attention, and the aid, coming. Meanwhile, people kept sending support, not knowing they were essentially part of the problem.
This villainization of the media is not entirely warranted, at least not in the case of Haiti. The media cannot be faulted for its failure to mention fears of cholera from the outset, when nobody could have foreseen that cholera would make its way to Haiti. It cannot be faulted for the amount or continuation of coverage it gave the problem. A search of the BBC news website shows that there were 92 articles published about the cholera epidemic between October 21, 2010 and January 23, 2011 (BBC 2011b). Until the beginning of January, multiple articles were written daily. That seems like good coverage considering that the media tends to give new stories priority, and a lot happened in the world this year. For example, if Haiti remained the feature story we would not have known about the disastrous flooding in Australia, or the trapped Chilean miners. It is simply the nature of the news to prioritize the next big story, and I would argue that that is in large part due to popular demand and what will bring in readership. Responsibility also lies with readers to go beyond the headlines if they want to stay informed.
Haiti received massive amounts of aid, and without media attention it likely would not have; the world would not have been aware of the issue in the first place. Certainly the ability to move people to action is a power the media has, and one to be taken seriously, but the media is limited by the constraints of its structure as a mode of reporting current affairs. With prolonged situations, it cannot continue to give priority to every issue. In fact, it would be irresponsible to keep the public from learning of new issues facing the world by focusing on just one. Therefore, the media is a limited resource for mobilizing aid, with only limited responsibility, and should not be judged for its role in sufficiently or insufficiently aiding the cholera epidemic in Haiti.
No comments:
Post a Comment