RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — No one is singing in the rain. The mudslides here and the floods in Australia this month—both catastrophes of the first order—garnered a lot of press in the United States, and rightly so. Reporters have been calling both events the worst natural disasters the countries have ever experienced—but news coverage for each was anything but similar.
The mudslides in the state of Rio de Janeiro have displaced thousands of residents and resulted in over 800 deaths. In Queensland, Australia, the death toll was less (fewer than 100 people are estimated to have died), but the floods will have an enormous impact on the country’s economy by shutting down coal mines, cutting rail lines, and damaging crops. Reporters seemed to sense how to prioritize their stories—coverage of the mudslides in Rio revolved around the still mounting death toll, while reporters chose to focus on the economic impact of the floods in Queensland. It was quality reporting from journalists on both continents, even though readers could have benefited from a bit more diversity in news coverage exploring the socio-economic implications of both events.
A significant portion of coverage of the mudslides in Brazil has been devoted to human casualty and relief efforts aimed at helping the victims of the floods, and understandably so. Seeing as the mudslides affected the lives of tens of thousands of residents in Rio, it only makes sense for reporters to prioritize coverage in this manner. An article in the Los Angeles Times published seven days after the mudslides exemplified the tone and tenor or coverage elsewhere:
The death toll keeps rising as the mud is cleared in Brazil. More than 700 people have been reported killed in flash floods and mudslides last week in the state of Rio de Janeiro. More than 14,000 are homeless in one of the worst natural disasters in Brazilian history, officials said.
The stories trickling out of the remote mountainous region hardest hit by the slides are both moving and alarming.
With rescue crews arriving slowly due to poor weather and rugged terrain, survivors are digging out their own dead, and bodies are decomposing rapidly, spreading the smell of death.
There were also a lot of human-interest pieces highlighting the survivors, families of the victims, and even the volunteers who aided in the relief efforts. Describing the work here, for example, The Christian Science Monitor’s Taylor Barnes reported on January 16 that:
Many of those volunteering are students, and it helps that they are on their summer vacations, says Herculano Abrahão, who leads the Red Cross unit in the Teresópolis gym ‘Pedrão’ shelter.
He estimated on January 13 that 300 volunteers had already shown up to this shelter and smaller nearby ones, only a handful of whom were from the Red Cross itself.
These types of stories—highlighting the spirit of the affected nations—are always appropriate, but they are also predictable and don’t add much to readers’ knowledge of foreign affairs. Only a few reporters covered some of the political and social complexities surrounding the mudslides. Bloomberg News covered how the floods—an annual event—will add to the already rising inflationary pressures. The Wall Street Journal explained how changes in the public policy in Brazil could have reshaped the outcomes of the floods—citing local press outlet Estado de São Paulo:
“A look at public policy … or the lack thereof … reveals a long chain of unpreparedness, administrative incompetence, technical incapacity, and political irresponsibility,” wrote the Estado de S. Paulo, a leading daily, in a Monday editorial. Over the weekend, the newspaper reported that federal officials as recently as November admitted in documents that much of the country’s civil-defense network is “unprepared” to respond adequately to natural disasters.
If done properly, using and citing authoritative local press reports is a great way to ground American readers in the situation abroad. The Journal wasn’t the only one to successfully use this technique. News outlets ranging from AFP to The Trust quoted Brazilian press outlets like O Globo and Folha de São Paulo to better inform their readers.
And of course, some, like the SciDev.Net, have covered the scientific issues surrounding the mudslides in Brazil: http://bit.ly/ge79RH
#1 Posted by Mico Tatalovic, CJR on Wed 26 Jan 2011 at 02:43 PM
Excellent point, Mico, thanks for the link. SciDev.net consistently produces insightful science coverage from around the world. Nothing quite like it.
#2 Posted by Curtis Brainard, CJR on Wed 26 Jan 2011 at 03:37 PM
And the contemporaneous floods in Sri Lanka that washed a million people out of their homes? Not a mention because there weren't enough compelling pictures from such a remote place.
#3 Posted by Pat Rourke, CJR on Wed 26 Jan 2011 at 09:24 PM
The effects of the Australian floods in Queensland, New south Wales and Victoria are on a scale never experienced here before. Unimaginable amounts of rain were falling in Australia, Sri Lanka, South East Asia, Brasil, Italy, parts of Russia and South Africa At the same time, deep snow froze the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Europe, China, Russia, Canada and America.
After nearly a decade of drought and terrible bush(brush) fires, most of Queensland, a state nearly twice the land area of Texas, has been flooded.
These formally rare and often isolated natural disasters are now frequent and world wide.
I don't remember the Main Stream Media covering the Noah affair at the time but it has been widely written about since, in other publications. They missed a good story. Editorial pressures had staff concentrating on social entertainment, marriage coverage and engagement parties. The rest of the coverage was on the military wars and law and order issues concerning the then endemic violence. I think R Murdoch was a copy boy then.
#4 Posted by james fingleton wild, CJR on Wed 26 Jan 2011 at 11:51 PM
Sorry to post again. Just checked a source who confirmed Mr Rupert Murdoch as having held an apprenticeship being indentured by the printer. Copy boy was his job description but his official title was the printer's apprentice.
Local oral history has him coining the phrases 'Publish and be damned' and 'the devils in the detail'. He was reported to have referred to himself ( in the capacity of a media publisher) as the devil' advocate when applied to political reporting.
#5 Posted by james fingleton wild, CJR on Thu 27 Jan 2011 at 12:40 AM
The Australian story not covered in the main stream US press was the part in the disaster played by mismanagement of the system of dams intended for both flood control and water storage. The blogsphere had some good coverage of this aspect.
The Rio mudslides are a sad part of Latin American socio-political dysfunction. My wife and I saw the same thing, albeit with less loss of life, year after year in the Dominican Republic -- the poor live on land not suited to home building, flood plains or .critical slopes, in sub-standard housing. When the rains come, as they always eventually do, waters rise quickly and hillsides slide down.
#6 Posted by Kip Hansen, CJR on Fri 28 Jan 2011 at 07:22 PM