As the super cyclone Phailin approached the Bay of Bengal, over 500,000 people in Orissa and Andhra Pradesh were moved to various relief centres. It was presumed that the effects of this cyclone would be at par with the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina in the US, in 2005.
The media reaction was not unnatural as in its initial stage Phailin’s wind speed was equivalent of a category 5 hurricane, capable of catastrophic damage. With an estimated US$ 81 billion in damages, Hurricane Katrina was the costliest natural disaster in the country’s history; more than 1,800 people had died while 15 million people were impacted economically or otherwise. It put 80 % of New Orleans city under water. While the population of New Orleans has not rebounded, this hurricane, and the subsequent flooding, forever changed the city.
In India, initially the storm surge posed the biggest danger from Phailin due to the low-lying terrain at the Orissa coast which was expected to be easily inundated. The strength of Phailin’s winds and its mammoth size were expected to generate a massive surge.
The media went berserk as news of the cyclone approaching broke. Both national and regional media were quick to set up 24X7 control rooms to track its downfall. Most news channels had more than five to seven reporters in different districts of the two states the cyclone was expected to hit. The reporters not only gathered and transmitted information about the affected areas but facilitated discussions about disaster preparedness and response.
While the 2010 near-flood in Yamuna was disastrous from the beginning and showed political incompetency, for cyclone Phailin, the reporting was restrained though no different from blowing these occurrences out of proportion. The media kept the audience on tenterhooks for nearly two days in anticipation of the cyclone and the devastation it was expected to cause.
Zee News, for instance, presented a report on the minute-by-minute coverage of Phailin, ranging from its distance from the main coast in Orissa to the speed of the winds, to rescue operations, the impact on transportation to the response of the authorities and government officials on the issue. The obvious seemed to be overloaded with the dramatic.
There is no doubting the fact that natural disasters pick on the weak; the weak are also those who are voiceless when it comes to government aid. The media plays an important role here, especially at the time of natural disasters, to keep the authorities aware of the challenges people face and thus intervene on behalf of the helpless victims. It cannot be denied that it is perhaps due to this extensive coverage that the government was well-prepared even before Phailin hit to reach out to expected victims.
When Hurricane Katrina hit the US coast in 2005, the news was not just about the natural disasters but that of the role of politicians and society in being better prepared for such an event. For some, President Bush’s initial denial of humanitarian aid from the international community was read as another example of his arrogant attitude, while, for others, the administration’s eventual requests for aid diminished the credibility of the US as an international leader. Much of the coverage had emphasized that both lesser developed countries, as well as typical adversaries of the US, have offered humanitarian aid in the wake of the crisis.
Key newspapers created special sections to disseminate detailed reports of the disaster but at the same time took a critical view of the administration. The Washington Post commented on the “less than admirable US policies such as environmental neglect, imperial hubris and social callousness” and noted how countries like the Russia, China, Cuba and even Sri Lanka were offering assistance in what they saw a “lesson for the sole remaining superpower”.
The New York Times noted the hurricane confirmed “the vision of a country of staggering inequalities, of a kind of political indifference to the general welfare (especially in the Bush administration), and an absence of what the Europeans call ‘solidarity’... That things have gone so badly so quickly after the storm in New Orleans has produced something beyond sympathy in Europe: disappointment, distress, fear that a major city in the world’s most powerful nation could have fallen into something that looks, from this side of the Atlantic, like anarchy.”
The Los Angeles Times said: “The scenes of devastation and civil unrest in New Orleans have made Katrina and the ensuing floods more reminiscent of Third World disasters than anything we would expect to see on US soil. But nothing will reinforce the surreal foreignness of this calamity as much as the novelty of American refugees having to settle, at least temporarily, in new communities. They aren’t technically refugees, of course, since no national borders will be crossed.
The international legal term for those fleeing Katrina and its aftermath is IDPs, for “internally displaced persons”, a staple of underdeveloped and war-torn nations unable to control their whole territories.” However, even the US media was criticized for some overboard coverage and also on the usage of certain terms like identifying victims as Blacks, Mexicans and not seeing them as part of the population affected by the tragedy.
This is what led the government to issue guidelines in the aftermath of Katrina for the media to cover natural disasters. The media has an important role to play in the wake of events that place people’s future in uncertainty. These are sensitive issues and the media therefore needs to take a pause before overreacting.
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