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Covering Disasters Without Becoming One
Marty Steffens
If you switch on the television news, it seems we live in dangerous and desperate times. Something palpable happens when we hear the words, âWe interrupt this program for a special report âŚ.â
We brace ourselves for a life-altering moment, the announcement of another tragic event that will appear on the timeline of human history. In 2011, it was a mass shooting and bombing that forever altered the peaceful country of Norway. In 2009, an earthquake in Haiti devastated that island nation and created social and political problems with which Haitians and the international community are still coping. Hurricane Katrina, in 2005, altered the social and political history of New Orleans, as well as causing an economic loss of $81 billion.
We experience tragedy through news coverage and now social media. Most of us did not personally experience the desperation of Midwesterners feverishly trying to stack sandbags to stop the Mississippi River floods of 1993, 2008 and 2011. Nor did we feel the panic of students fleeing a shooter on the Virginia Tech campus in April 2007, but we did feel the impact of that event through the depth of news coverage augmented by mobile phone video shot by students on the scene. While coverage itself is enhanced by technology, itâs the story of human drama and recovery that stays in the minds of readers, viewers and listeners. We turn to YouTube or CNNâs iReport to view how citizens have covered disaster, watching amateur video of California wildfires, mudslides, tornadoes and canned goods falling from grocery store shelves during minor earthquakes.
Furthermore, disasters now have global reach. It seems that every week, journalists report from the far corners of the globe, relaying dramatic stories of survival or heartache in big cities or remote villages struck by an earthquake, hurricane, blizzard, terror attack, tsunami, mine collapse, famine or plane crash.
Long before cable news networks, images of destruction and death were seared into the American conscience thanks to large black headlines and dramatic news photos of seminal US calamities, such as the Johnstown, Pa., flood of 1889. Historic newspapers, recalling disasters large and small, are tucked away in boxes in the attic to hand down to the next generation as an important piece of that communityâs narrative. As journalists, this makes us keenly aware that we write the first draft of history.
Since disaster is such an important part of telling the human story, this book helps frame whatâs necessary and whatâs new to consider in covering these seminal stories:
Despite the surprise nature of disaster, it is essential for newsrooms to train, prepare and create a written plan for significant events. But how do journalists plan for not only what disasters are probable, such as tornadoes in Oklahoma every spring, but plan for those that are possible? That includes creating plans to cover less likely, but horrific events such as mass shootings or plane crashes.
Journalists can learn much from the more holistic view of researchers, who study the social and economic effects of disaster long after the news crews leave. Journalists must consider not only covering the event, but also quickly explaining why and how it happened much earlier in coverage, teaming WHAT happened with WHY it happened.
Citizen media has significantly changed the coverage of disasters, but has turned into a double-edged sword. Citizens can aid in coverage with on-the-scene amateur videos and photos. Crowdsourcing and Twitter feeds can help journalists find victims and witnesses. But do citizen journalists allow for the immediate circulation of potentially harmful misinformationâor incomplete information?
Massive disasters such as Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the Haiti earthquake in 2009 have pushed journalists to fully embrace the cascading ramifications of such large calamities, including political upheaval, global relief aid and even racial politics in recovery. How can journalists, who are busy covering breaking news, also take the time to grasp the larger consequences of disaster?
Newsrooms must also consider the toll that covering disaster has on increasingly stressed journalists. New research shows that journalists are first responders as well, and they often deal with the same types of post-traumatic stress that victims do.
And, at what point do journalists leave the story? A sad fact of the news business is that there are more stories than time. Fresh news is what journalists do. But what responsibility do journalists have to keep the calamity fresh in the minds of readers and viewers? Or to report on other activities, such as scams that prey on victims or pinpointing government or corporate blame, if appropriate? This was the case for journalists who had to leave tornado-ravaged Joplin, Mo., to cover Texas wildfires in 2011.
For the casual observer of television, it seems the world is being plagued by disaster, in ever-increasing frequency: A suicide bomber in a Moscow airport, historic flooding in Australia or Pakistan, mudslides in California, tornadoes in Texas. But is it more disasters, or likely, more news coverage? Do we live in a world becoming more risk averse? This handbook doesnât take a stance on this important empirical question, but it does take a stand on how journalists should be thinking about and preparing for the disasterâlocal, regional, national or internationalâthat is literally and metaphorically just around the corner. To do that, examine some historical disaster coverage and ask yourself, how much has really changed?
The Historic Nature of Disaster Stories
Calamity is the great timekeeper for nature and humanity. Take a slice from a centuries-old giant redwood, and its rings are etched with the evidence of having withstood massive floods, wildfires and droughts. For communities and entire nations struck by calamity, time is marked before and after catastrophic eventsâwhether those events are an act of God, or the madness of man. And for journalists, tragedy is a great reference point, a form of âshorthandâ that most readers can easily recall.
The flood that devastated Johnstown, Pa., in May 1889 was a benchmark from which all disasters were measured for many decades (US Department of Interior). It became the second biggest story of the nineteenth century, behind the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. About 2,200 Johnstown residents were killed when a dam collapsed after days of relentless rainfall, sending 20 tons of water hurtling 14 miles downstream, and virtually obliterating the steel-making town. Photography, which had just come into widespread use in newspapers, chronicled the flood, making it one of the most photographed disasters of its era. Photographs and visual images still play an important role in disaster coverage, something this handbook examines in the next two chapters.
Lessons from the coverage of the Johnstown (Pa.) Flood still reverberate today. With telegraph lines toppled and railroad tracks washed away, contact with Johnstown was completely cut off. So, on June 1, 1889, most morning newspaper editions carried stories based on rumor, conjecture and the accounts of a few overwrought survivors. One headline wrongly proclaimed, âJOHNSTOWN BLOTTED OUT BY THE FLOOD! HALF OF ITS PEOPLE KILLED.â The story told of unbelievable horrors, but there was still a strong bit of truth among the exaggerations reported by the tabloid âyellowâ journalists of that era. In the end, more than 2,200 persons were found dead; hundreds more were missing. Property damage was $17 million, and cleanup would take five years. It was the first tragedy where the newly formed American Red Cross responded. Its founder, Clara Barton, stayed in Johnstown for five months. Frustration over who was to blame for the dam collapse changed US law, moving toward a system of âstrictâ liability in disasters, a precedent that echoes in the more recent 2010 BP Deep Water Horizon oil platform explosion and oil spill into the Gulf of Mexico.
Public and governmental reaction to the Johnstown Flood, much of it sparked by media coverage of the day, also set a precedent for how American society continues to react to such events. This handbook reviews how journalists might think about response as part of continuing coverage and provides examples of journalism that sets a standard for excellence in this area. This volume also takes a look at disaster coverage and how, even today, early coverage can be inaccurate and based on rumorsâsuch as the early reports that Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords had died after a shooter targeted her at an Arizona shopping center in 2011. Giffords not only survived the attack, but returned to her seat in Congress seven months later. Such examples underscore the need for accuracyâan important issue that raises questions of public safety, news ethics and journalistic craft.
When a gunman wounded Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson on January 8, 2011, National Public Radio aired a report at 2:01 p.m. that the congresswoman had died. Social media compounded the error, as Twitter links, email and Facebook posts relayed the story. Even other websites, such as NewYorkTimes.com, picked up the report.
The report came from NPRâs offices in Washington, and was based on information from a Pima County sheriffâs spokesman and from a congressional source. NPR correspondent Ted Robbins was still at the scene when his cell phone rang shortly after the report of her death aired. The call was a friend, who is also a friend of Giffords, and the man was sitting outside the hospital operating room with Giffordsâ mother Gloria, holding her hand.
âPlease tell them to stop reporting she is dead,â he told Robbins. âShe is in surgery.â Scott Simon, who hosts NPR Weekend Edition, also got a call from a Giffords family member, at 2:08 p.m. He said his friend said, âScott, where the hell is NPR getting that information?â Robbins had not been the source of the information, and called Washingtonâs NPR office. After those calls, the network changed its reporting, but didnât air a correction until the next day.
On January 13, NPR managing editor David Sweeney sent an email to staff, reminding them that reporting breaking news during a major eventâsuch as a terrorist attack or a mass shootingâmust be approved by a senior news manager. This extra layer of caution was not used in the Giffordsâ case, he said. âIt is vital that we take every step now and in the future to make sure this doesnât happen again,â Sweeney wrote.
The incident highlighted a component of breaking news coverageâairing or printing information during a time of chaos, and under competitive deadline. Such issues arenât new to the age of heightened media competition in the age of the internet.
When reporting on the shooting of President John Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963, legendary CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite also reported the president had died before it was official.
Cronkite was on air relaying details of the Dallas shooting and learned at a break that two priests had been called to give the president his Last Rites. About 10 seconds later, word reached Cronkite of another report given from CBS correspondent Dan Rather, then based in Dallas. At 2:22 p.m. EST, Rather had phoned a CBS executive and said, âI think heâs dead.â
CBS radio newscaster Allan Jackson was then handed a sheet of paper saying that Kennedy was in fact dead and reported as if the incident was officially confirmed. Five minutes later, after some debate over whether or not to mention it, Cronkite relayed the following information to the viewing audience:
We just have a report from our correspondent Dan Rather in Dallas, that he has confirmed President Kennedy is dead.
Ratherâs report to the executive only theorized the President was dead, but Cronkite did not know that. On the air, Cronkite stressed that the report was not an official confirmation and continued to report on the incident as if Kennedy were still alive, relaying that Father Huber, who had told reporters at the scene that he had to pull back a sheet covering Kennedyâs body to perform Last Rites, didnât believe that the President was dead at the time he entered the room.
Less than two minutes later, Cronkite received a report that the two priests who were with Kennedy were now saying the President was dead. However, Cronkite continued to stress that there was no official confirmation from the hospital, although through Cronkiteâs tone of voice he seemed resigned about the likely outcome.
Meanwhile, ABC took the priestâs report as official and made the Presidentâs death official on the air. Cronkite would later report on the official confirmation (Museum of Broadcast Communications, 2012).
These patterns, and the questions they raise, repeat themselves. For citizens of Cedars Rapids, Iowa, time is now delineated by the devastating Mississippi River floods of 2008. âIâve covered Midwestern flooding before, but this is amazing,â said Steve Buttry, who had worked as a newsman in Des Moines and Omaha, in years prior to his stint as editor of the Cedar Rapids Gazette. âIt is incredible,â (Strupp, Editor & Publisher, 2008; personal communication).
This volume will review how natural disasters are like and unlike human-made ones. It will take a special look at that human-made disaster we now call terrorism, and what terrorism means for journalists and their audiences. Whether itâs the domestic terrorism of a 22-year-old gunning down Giffords and nine other people in Tucson or airplanes used as missiles aimed at buildings in New York, terrorism, which creates events with disaster-like impact, raises particular questions for journalists. This handbook attempts to deal with those questions as well as demonstrate how preparing to cover one sort of disaster can also help when the more unexpected one comes along. Such events perhaps stoke an audience interest in international news events, encouraging better news coverage, according to Orville Schell, then Dean of the Journalism School of the University of California at Berkeley (Barrett, 2002).
The Advent of the Global News Village
We also live now in the global satellite village, with 24/7 news channels. The emergence of cheap, portable broadcast and cellular technology has also meant that itâs easier than ever for print and broadcast journalists to report from the scene of a disaster.
New tools come along every year. In 2009, Buffaloâs NBC affiliate, WGRZ-TV, used Skype to cover the crash of a Continental Airlines commuter plane near its city airport. News director Jeff Woodard says that the first reporters close on the scene used a simple webcam and a laptop equipped with a cellular modem to send broadcast quality images (Carr, 2009).
When journalists arenât present, citizens are snapping videos of cars being swept into raging rivers or twisters chewing up Kansas cornfields. CNN says it has 750,000 registered users for its iReport citizen journalism site, who send in thousands of videos each year. These citizen videos help inform reporting as on April 16, 2007, when mobile phone video submitted by graduate student Jamal Albarghouti captured the sounds of gun shots during the Virginia Tech massacre in Blacksburg, Va. CNN paid Albarghouti an undisclosed fee for rights to the video, which became a pivotal part of coverage. The immediacy of the video availability demonstrated the potential for such user-submitted content.
Disaster videos have proven wildly popular. Nearly 9 million people have viewed a 2:41-minute clip of a F5 tornado traveling near Elie, Manitoba, in June 2007, uploaded to YouTube by a Canadian man. An 8-minute version, shot by another amateur, has garnered 2.3 million views (YouTube).
Forty years ago, when there were no satellite links and hand-held video cameras, and even less air service, those massive floods in the Middle East, earthquakes in Turkey, or capsized ferry boats in Indonesia were relegated to short wire dispatches on the World pages inside newspapers. And Chinaâs tight hand on the media during the Cultural Revolution hid the fact that an early morning 7.8 magnitude earthquake killed more than 250,000 people in Tangshan on July 28, 1976. Some estimates put the death toll at more than 600,000, but even at the most conservative count, it was the deadliest disaster of the twentieth century. Due to tight government controls on the press, it did not become a great media e...
