Across the world editors in TV studios and newspaper offices are looking for something else to lead on apart from Haiti. I know, I’ve been there. It’s the biggest story in the world, but it’s been around for a few days and it is starting to fit into the pattern of all disaster stories. If we want the viewers/reader/listener to pay attention we’re going to have to headline something without the words ‘Haiti’ ‘Aid’ or ‘Death’.
So the big US TV networks will be the first to leave, while everyone else will scale down their presence and perhaps rely on the agencies. The story will slip down the running order or the page. This is how news works and it’s not wrong.
Mainstream news can’t headline the most important or most deserving issue in the world every day. Otherwise the top story would always be Global Warming. So don’t get too pious or upset if new stories get to the top of the agenda.
We all know about Haiti now and the assistance is there. The important thing is what happens in the longer term. Will the world’s attention and effort still be deployed after, say, the flurry of first anniversary stories in January 2011?
This is the point where the Internet and Social media becomes more important. The fact that platforms like Twitter, Facebook and digital mapping websites have played a part in the initial alert and humanitarian action is great. Take the example of the Twittering media development worker @firesideint whose photo adorns this page. They were in Haiti when it hit, they are chronicling the effects and they will be there when the international media departs.
And that is the important task for social media.
We can’t expect everyone in the world to keep caring about Haiti forever. But online networks have an ability to reach the right people and allow them to mantain their involvement in a co-ordinated way. This will be the real test of the Net for Haiti.
Too true.
For those that have donated cash though, its important that they get to see where it goes and who it helps. That’s not the job of the news but as you’ve pointed out many, many times Charlie NGO’s can tell the stories of what happens now in a powerful and newsworthy way.
I agree.
However, does the appetite for the rebuilding of Haiti have legs? Even within social media I wonder how long it’ll be before the bloom is off the rose. I hope this is not the case and that people decide to stick around and find out that Haiti offers more than just images of poverty, sickness, and devastation.
Channel 4 and BBC will be there till the weekend and then it will drop but level of investment, closeness to US and long running nature of story means that ins / outs will go on for some time. We are having interesting conversations about longitudinal projects and following a community through recovery, if on a site with say 30 mn unique users it could be valuable than mere clips on networks and generate real engagement and show the transparency required around successes / failure. tags: haiti media journalism) […]
Hiaiti will, for sure, rocket back up the global media agenda if there is a complete social breakdown and widespread violence – because that is what much of the media hungers for.
From early on in day two of Haiti’s disaster, I have been struck by, and disgusted at, how the global media, almost without exception, gushed on and on, in barely supressed anticipation, about the imminent, or likely, or ‘feared’ outbreak of widespread violence from the displaced population at large.
As the media became frustrated with the Haitian people’s failure to play their alloted violent role, there was even a short period of determined seeking out of relatively small or isolated incidents of violence (presumably in the hope that these were the start of something bigger). There were some instances of irresponsible tragedy-chasing around the broken streets by journalists who were, in effect, almost egging on disaster victims to shout about how they were angry and rage against … well against everyone.
The global media may yet get its communal violence out of the Haitian disaster, but what a pathetic indicator of the perspectives and values of this media..