Katrina and the American news

I was watching MSNBC here in Spain during the aftermath of Katrina and the differences in the reporting between the Spanish channels and MSNBC were astounding.

For instance: here in Spain they were showing bodies in the streets days and days afterward, yet on MSNBC not even one was shown (and I watched it every night). You did see lots of shots of people pitching in to help and one story about people rescuing stray animals. Talk about sanitized, mostly fluff pieces. I realize that the constant footage of decomposing bodies in trees and on streets (with vehicles idly passing by) we saw here in Spain might have been too much to bear, but at least we got a good sense from these images that things weren’t going quite as right as they should have been (or as MSNBC would have you believe).

Another difference I notice is that practically every story on that channel headlines with large, alarming graphics usually containing the words TERROR, or ALERT or ATTACK written in large bright red colours. It’s like there is this constant state of alarm and it makes me wonder what the agenda is.

Anyone else notice this? Was this just MSNBC?

Hi Spanadian: I have been for the last few years getting my news from U.S. sources mostly and they rarely show death bodies or very graphic scenes on TV news. I think this has to do with many things, but especially with Government control and regulation over the media and marketing. For example I think no newspaper or news channel is allowed to show the death body of an American soldier or even the coffin of an American soldier without the American flag on top of it. I suppose the reason is to show respect for the families of the men and women serving abroad. Also, most people I know in America don't like to see very graphic scenes on TV news. I suppose marketing departments in TV stations know that.

I don't know, some times, because I have kids, I prefer the news the American way. I know as we say in Spanish that "one picture says more than a thousand words", but a good reporter can do an excellent job using the right words.

For me the biggest issue with open television in the U.S, is that news are very local. It is really amazing how local news are. Most of the news Americans get have to do with things that happen only in their communities. For national news to be aired locally they have to be something really big, most times they have to do with politics or natural disasters in another states. Also, most international news have to do with US-related issues abroad. It is funny to see things like "and in our international news section, Armstrong has won the tour de France again! (Silence for 3 seconds)...Next, our air reporter with an update on traffic news…” And that was it for the international news!!! Most times you don’t get any relevant information from abroad, you have to look for it. When I mentioned this issue to an American friend of mine he explained to me that international news don’t “sell” in the U.S. That people don’t want to know and don’t have time for international news.

That is an interesting contrast between Spanish and U.S. new broadcasts. It is a difference that has always existed.

I well remember watching TVE in the early early nineties and observing a news film crew reporting on a man on the roof of a building threatening to commit suicide.

He eventually jumped off the building and the camera recorded his fall all the way to the ground, including when he bounced.

I was watching the program with some Spaniards and I commented that it just wasn't necessary to show the man bouncing off of the ground. It seemed to me to be a sensless exhibition of a man's death.

I knew he was probably going to die and watching him bounce didn't contribute anymore to my understanding of the story so why show such gruesome footage?

It is a subject of which I have debates with Spanish and Mexican friends and we never agree with when "news" ends and "sensationalism" begins. We all agreed that we knew the man was going to die after he jumped, which was "news". Showing him bounce didn't change our understanding or knowledge of the situation, so it became "sensationalism".

(We also had this debate regarding the showing of dead people during the current Iraq War...)

I know there are dead people in the water in New Orleans - it is well known that when a big hurricane hits a city, people will die. Seeing a body doesn't increase my understanding or knowledge that people are dead.

My guess is that a Spaniard will have a limit as to how much visual news he/she wants to see. Obviously, they believe watching a man bounce off the road is an important element of the news story. I don't know where that line resides though.

Hi Jabach:

Re: national/international and local news.

You have to think in terms of market space - news (atleast in the U.S.) isn't strictly a information transmission source - it is an advertising platform. The TV stations pay for their equipment and salaries by selling advertising space.

CNN/MSNBC/FOX all have very very large national and international operations and are able to bring international and national news to whomever would be interested. These are billion dollar companies.

A local TV station will not have the $$$ or resources to provide (read that as compete) the same international/national news as CNN so they decide not to compete with CNN/MSNBC/FOX. Try to imagine being the General Manager of a small tV station in Toledo, OHIO. He cannot possibly compete with MSNBC/CNN.

So, he finds a market in which MSNBC/CNN/FOX are not active, which is local news and local weather.

That a local station only mentions international news briefly doesn't mean Americans aren't interested in international news. It means the local TV station only has about 23 minutes of air time in a 30 minute period to deliver its product to its market.

Americans are interested in international news. The difficulty we have (read that as I HAVE) is that there are so many international news stories out their demanding my attention that I get overloaded. Which international news should I follow? China, Japan, Spain, France, expansion of the EU, NAFTA, CAFTA, Rawanda, Darfor, Neo-nazis in European soccer fan clubs, Iraq War, Al-Qaieda, Hugo Chavez buying more AK47's than he has men in his army, alternative agricultural crops for Columbian coco bean farmers, Chinese agression towards Taiwan............

If I pay all my attention to UK news, someone from France would say, "damn Americans don't know anything about international news..."

Hola Murdy, well that really makes sense. When I came to the U.S. to study, I didn't have cable, and was forced to watch only local chanels. It was really surprising to see that most news were about criminal matters, the weather, and traffic. Later I found public radio and television. PR and PT are really good options for good international news without subscribing to cable or satellite. They actually air BBC's news.

At the end I think most countries suffer from the same lack of internatinal news. In Mexico they showed a lot what was going on in the U.S. and western Europe, but I never really heard much from South-America, Asia and Africa. All right, thanks for your message!

Spanadian: Sorry for the off-topic messages

TJGUY said: "I know there are dead people in the water in New Orleans - it is well known that when a big hurricane hits a city, people will die. Seeing a body doesn't increase my understanding or knowledge that people are dead."

Sure we know people are going to die, just like they do in war. That thought (for most of us) crosses our minds for a few seconds and then we go comfortably go back to our dinner and forget about it. It's much harder to forget an image of a human being lying in stagnant water for days and days, at least it is for me.

See, this is exactly where I disagree with you: I think images (up to a certain point) can increase a persons awareness and understanding of a tragedy or situation and can be an incredibly powerful medium (war photographs and documentaries are a good example of this). Sure you know there is famine in Africa, but a child’s starving face looking out at you from your TV screen is simply hard to ignore. We often do just that, ignore it, but it’s hard.

We need those images to remind ourselves that all is not right with this world and that we have to struggle to try and change it. I shudder to think what this world would be like without a news camera.

Keeping people in the dark keeps them content I guess; and you know what they say about contented cows...

Hi Spanadian: I feel the same way as you do. When I see those starving kids or kids living in a garbage place that really makes me feel bad and donate to Worldvision and organizations of the like. However, in the case of Katrina most people haven't seen the worst images of death. And Americans together have probably made one of the largest money donations ever. I'm trying to say that even without images you can move people to help. Then if they are already helping why they need to see that death body? That may be only seen as morbid.

Hi there...

I'm just not sure what showing me 30 dead bodies accomplishes that showing me 5 would not have. If the bodies themselves were the only image available to convey the scope of the disaster, it would be appropriate. Between the images of the flooded city, the Superdome disaster, the knowledge what a CAT 4 hurricane can do and the interviews with thousands of displaced people, the news more than conveyed how desperate the situation was.

BUT...you do have a very very valid point about showing graphic images to create an appropriate response. I can see how showing the very very sick people suffering from famine in Africa can be beneficial - the images help show the scope and scale of the suffering.

I just don't see what showing a man bouncing off a street or focusing the camera on blood stains on a wall at a scene of a drug gang shooting accomplishes.

It's that constantly moving line between "news" and "sensationalism" that probably will never be established.

Saludos - TJ

The American news media is one that you have to scratch your head and wonder about. During the evening dinner hour news on TV, they will not show bodies floating in the street, but will break for a commercial and sell douche. They will have a new article about African Famine then break for a commercial and show an American family eating out, with a mound of food on their plates. Or my all time favorite is news about the economy slowing down and the next commercial is for a bank wanting to loan money on the equity in your house. The American auto industry is in bad shape, then the next commercial is about the supeiror quality in a Japanese car. They will show a traffic accident, then the next commercial is selling beer.

If anyone can explain this let me know. So far the only thing I can figure out is Freedom of the Press.

TJguy, I disagree with you. Most americans are not interested in international news. I lived in Michigan from August 1990 to July 1991. All the international news I saw were concerning the gulf war, but even those news were scattered. I got much more information from the newspapers my friends in Spain sent me.

JasMadrid, I totally agree with you. Americans are quite nationocentric. The masses pay barely any mind to international news that does not in some way effect them. Even when it does, there remains a ho-hum attitude. The media know this and they cater to it. They also know that the eye and the ear of the American is fickle and easily bored, so they do pepper their reports with sensational words to grab our attention. Once one story has worn out, all attention shifts to the next BIG story, regardless of the pain and suffering that remain from the last story. (e.g. I haven't heard the word "tsunami" for months now, although clearly their strife and story remains.)

It's demonstrated by the coverage of the Iraq war....it's a WAR for crying out loud and it has been reduced to a couple of sentences like "24 marines were killed today. Insurgents take a stronghold in Tikrit" and then on to Tom Cruise impregnating Katie Holmes. As a consumer of the news but also someone who craves more international coverage, it is very frustrating.

The rest of the world knows more about the rest of the world than most Americans and they are interested in it. Every time I've been in Europe (most recently Madrid last July) the average European could name more cabinet members than the average American. That is very sad. If you were to ask an American on the street to name the heads of state in 3 other countries, they could probably only name "Tony Blair" and only him because our news has been full of his name over the war.

As to the issue of images, I feel torn. I worry that too much airing of bodies bouncing as they hit the ground or dead soldiers or bodies floating in the streets of New Orleans desensitizes us to it. On the other hand, should't we see it, in all its horror, take it in? Shouldn't we be made to face it? To the posters before who used the starving faces of children as an example, I agree. The sentence "people are starving in Ethopia" does not have as much effect as the indelible image of a hungry, globe-eyed child. To show that child's face is not sensationalism, it is reality.

I too was struck by the difference of the international news channels while in Spain compared to those in the States. We claim to have a free press but it is not free. It is sanitized, propogandized and compartmentalized. And most Americans are satisfied with that and sit idly by.

Well said, Lynette.

"The sentence "people are starving in Ethopia" does not have as much effect as the indelible image of a hungry, globe-eyed child. To show that child's face is not sensationalism, it is reality."

I think any person who lives in Spain for some years will remember this phenomenon:

Some years ago, a well known TVE program ("Documentos TV") show a documentary about the inhuman conditions in Chinese orphanages. They told how many families in China were forced to have only one child, and when the newborn was a girl, they abandoned her. Those families didn't want a girl as unique child for social reasons. So those orphanages were full of little girls (mostly) and some boys.

The documentary show with all harshness (and a hidden camera, because filming in those orphanages was not allowed) how those poor children "lived" in a dreadful place that I can only describe as Hell. The images were truly terrible. I was a young(er) guy of those that never used to cry... but watching that indescribable documentary I dropped my tears. It was tough to see, really tough to see. You couldn't believe that was possible to treat those little children like that. I was young, I lived well and was happily unaware and I've never noticed before that the world could contain something like that. It opened my eyes.

The fact is: since they broadcasted the documentary, there began a cascade of adoption solicitation from Spanish families, who wanted to adopt Chinese girls from THOSE orphanages. They did want not only to adopt a child, but to save the little girls from those inhumane situations. Adopting a Chinese girl was then more difficult, arduous and yes, expensive, that adopting children from other countries (the adoptions from China are a bit easier today). But people had seen the Chinese orphanages with his own eyes and without softened images, and they wanted to save at least one life from that torture.

And I think: would a single phrase about Chinese orphanages have had the same effect? Of course not. People would have heared the words to forget them some time later.

So those harsh images really helped to save a number of lifes. Today, parents of Chinese girls (although those girls are growing up as Spanish so they're Spanish now) organize meetings in many Spanish cities, to share their experiences, etc.

So a harsh image DOES give MORE information than a bunch of phrases from a newsreader. We're genetically builded to answer to human suffering... but we need to SEE that suffering. A number, a statistic, a phrase, an abstract idea ...don't affects us as much as a suffering face.
You can forget a statistic, but you can't forget a suffering face so easily. So, avoiding images of what's really happening in the world (during a war, for example) is psychologically equivalent to putting your head underground like an ostrich.

If more people could see the real and true effects of a war, for example, they would change their perspective about what a war means, and about what a war makes to people: civilians, soldiers. If they could see what effects the hunger and diseases have, they would be more concerned and worried about that.

I know that TV bulletins are, sometimes, more sensationalist than the necessary about some isolated facts (i.e. suicides, common crimes, etc.). But I think that the opposite (not showing harsh images) makes you live in some kind of glass bubble. Just my opinion.

One thing I did notice about the spanish tv coverage of Katrina was that they did continuously show stock footage of the same things. Which meant that not all the video shown was of the most current conditions. Even weeks after the worst of the flooding was over I was still seeing images that they had shown over a week earlier including clips of dead bodies shown previously. IMO, that is more about poor reporting than realism.