earthquake

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A quick thoughts post… covering a disaster – and looking at how a disaster is covered – can quickly bring up some dicey ethical questions. My instructor for Journalism Ethics says he avoids hypothetical situations, and one major reason this makes sense to me is that it seems real live ones are everywhere you turn and much more relevant than anything constructed from the abstract. The big one everyone’s talking about is Anderson Cooper’s on camera moment, though First Draft quickly moves the debate from Cooper to the coverage as a whole with this article: The Giggly Twerps on the Evening News.

Meanwhile, the New York Times has created an index of their multimedia coverage, which simultaneously feels organized and… odd… Do I pick the video or the photography next for my visuals of earthquake victims? I feel strange asking myself the question – and yet I am.

Prison Photography asks the questions bluntly and graphically with posts like this: Staring at Death: Photographing Haiti.

And yet the work of photographers / reporters like Minksy is undeniably important, and her quick thinking and speed are definitely a factor in the impact of her work: Behind the Lens: There for the Quake (from the New York Times’ Lens Blog). Reports like Minsky’s Haiti coverage or Melissa Bloch’s China coverage both have an immediacy because of how and when the work was done that can’t be replicated by people who weren’t there because it records both the earthquakes themselves and the experiences of someone going through them – and then beginning to report on others (I wrote about NPR’s radio coverage here during last semester).

Finally, for those who really want to wonder about the metaphysical – media coverage of how people are using media: How does Haiti communicate after the earthquake? (BBC).

If you’ve got thoughts or answers for how to handle these kinds of questions and issues, let me know below…

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radio

So the timing of this Must See Monday could not have been better – in the middle of the radio segment of broadcast, sound is a big topic on all of our minds lately. This week’s speaker, Susan Feeney is Senior Editor for Planning at All Things Considered.

Why is this relevant to travel? Well, I probably inherited the itchy feet and restless nature, but I might have gotten the idea that I could tie this into making a living from somewhere else. As I listened to the clips Feeney brought as examples, I was transported back to how I felt when I was a kid and the radio, especially NPR, first started to take me places. Growing up without reliable television reception meant I spent a lot of time listening to radio in the house, as well as in the car; I heard news long before I got older and interested in newspapers. The drive to school, five minutes early on but, as I got older and switched around a bit, up to half an hour, meant morning updates. Road trips meant frantic searches on the radio dial for the next public broadcast station, because static and station boundaries always seemed to hit just at the good parts.

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One of the reporters I remember most is Sylvia Poggioli – her stories and, even more, her frequent signoff from Rome, sunk deep into my memory and imagination, even as she continues to broadcast.

Now, I still put radio on whenever I’m in the car. However, a bike commute means I drive much, much less and the unexpected (and probably only) downside means much, much less radio.

It was startling, after just a semester, to see how differently I could listen to a radio piece. Feeney’s discussion of each piece, and radio in general, really made the presentation even deeper. Information, like behind the scenes information like what happened to the journalists reporting on the earthquake from China, how their stories got put together, or the reaction afterward made good listening. But they helped us understand how reporters operate in tense, emotional, possibly dangerous situations and still get their jobs done. These examples also illustrated some of the differences between radio and other formats, especially the discussion of whether the family’s search for their son would have been different in print or television.

RadioAntennaes

Feeney played a piece on Hurricane Katrina by Robert Siegel to discuss accountability journalism, a piece which also happened to have very little natural sound, but a high emotional impact for many listeners.

She also played two pieces from a series by Melissa Block that took place in Sichuan province, China. The first actually recorded the 2008 earthquake that hit Sichuan province and the second documented a couple’s search for family members. A third piece, which I came across on NPR’s website, has Block’s follow-up work one year later in pictures as well as sound.

Overall, while I wish I had more time in radio this semester, an evening listening to/with Feeney is the perfect way to keep me interested in sound – and set the bar very, very high for anyone who wants to get involved.

mic2

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More action via my correspondent in NZ…:

“Sent at 4:02 PM (GMT-12:00). Current time there: 11:59 AM
Subject: Another big earthquake in South Pacific
near Vanuatu
Waiting to hear about tsunami threat….quoting from news on radio…..stay off beaches in NZ
The quake was 7.9, 3 minutes after 11 NZ time, dept 33 km, all of NZ under tsunami warning. All of South Pacific under tsunami warning.
We of course are not under any threat in the center of the island”

Your news:
Powerful 7.8 quake off Vanuatu, tsunami alert
Tsunami warning after 7.8 quake off Vanuatu
Latest updates: Vanuatu quake, tsunami warning
Pacific quake sparks tsunami alert

Your instructions:
What to do in a Tsunami

Your fast facts:
Vanuatu – CIA World Factbook
Vanuatu – National Geographic

And your map:

Vanuatu

Vanuatu

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