Natural disasters have beset Australia’s neighbours in the last two days, with the Samoan earthquake and tsunami quickly followed by an earthquake in Indonesia. Considering how close these countries are to Australia and the scope of the disasters, it makes sense that they are front page news. Hundreds are dead. Thousands have been left injured and homeless.
But of course, there is always the desperate search for a local angle in Australian newsrooms. “Are any Aussies dead?”. The result: if you’re just a headline skimmer, sometimes the only thing you’ll know is the Aussie death toll.
We’re not saying we’re surprised, but there seems to be even more blanket Aussie coverage than usual.
Post Samoan tsunami:
- “Two Australians confirmed dead after massive earthquake triggers tsunami off coast of American Samoa” — Herald Sun
- “Third Australian confirmed dead in Samoa” — NineMSN
- “Three Australians dead in tsunami as death toll rises” — SMH
- “Four Aussies dead as Samoa tsunami toll rises” — Adelaide Now
- “South Pacific tsunami toll rises: three Australians among dead, grave fears for others” — The Age
- “Fears for fifth Australian after Pacific tsunami” — The Age
- “This isn’t paradise, it’s hell on Earth, says Aussie survivor” — The Age
- “Unaccounted Australians likely tourists” — Sky News
- “Ballarat school mourns loss of teacher” — Sky News
- “Sydney’s Samoans keen to return home” — Sky News
The Cairns Post takes the local angle to the extreme.
The Geelong Advertiser even more so, using the line: “A former Geelong woman…”
The Gold Coast Bulletin was particularly tacky, with their bad photoshopping job on the front cover and Aussie “Mum” headline.
And then the Indonesia earthquake hit:
- “DFAT confirms Aussie ‘affected by earthquake'” — The Australian
- No Australians hurt in quake — Sky News
But in the Northern Territory, there were issues far more pressing than natural disasters, death and mayhem:
It’s nice to see the media act with sensitivity in times like this. Just look at the DEAD in red capitals on the Hun’s front page. And the GC’s photoshop is just terrible – why not plant the family in front of a picture of a tidal wave and go the whole hog? Disgraceful.
Nothing new about the news. Australia isn’t alone in chauvinistic reporting.
In June this year, 84 (several hundred according to other reports) Amazonian indians were massacred by the Peruvian authorities. Not a single Australian amongst the victims.
At least 246 people died in the Philippines during the recent typhoon and another typhoon is on its way. Not to mention Vietnam. So far no Australians that I’m aware of. Can’t be many Australians in Sumatra either, where it is too early to tell how devastating and lethal their two earthquakes were.
In Guinea, troops killed 157 demonstrators. No Australians were shot.
This sort of jingoistic reporting has been going on (all around the world) for a long time. What is different now is the immediacy and overwhelming mass of information available on the internet.
Next week the Samoan tsunami will have been overtaken by some other “grab” (an Australian kidnapped in Colombia perhaps, or fallen out of the tower of Pisa).
Insensitive and offensive reporting is another issue but not confined to overseas reports.
I think the latter is worse.
Amber Jamieson is obviously unfamiliar with the Northern Territory News, anything less than the outbreak of World War 3 is relegated to the inside pages; local news only on the front page, although the sort of beat-up on today’s front page gets a look in now and then. And of course there is usually the obligatory crocodile story, preferably with pictures.
jeeze guys, it’s a big story and Australians were killed, it’s on the front page of the paper as Amber grudgingly admits, why wouldn’t the story also be about Australlians killed?….I think you’re doing the usual beat up on Australian newspapers for reporting news, something you don’t reckon they do half the time…
I don’t think it’s criticism of the fact that the deaths of Australians were covered, simply that this coverage is out of all proportion to the deaths of non-Australians – or, more to the point, people we don’t perceive as being ‘like us’: in this instance, non-Western and non-white.
However, it’s not as simple as the charge that ‘all journalists/media outlets are stinky racists’ – the vast majority of individual reporters would rightly refute this charge – it seems to be about a more complex combination of institutional (what is our news ‘like’/what do we usually cover, and how?), financial (i.e. ratings) and technical (can we get the footage?) factors.
There’s a significant literature on the media coverage of non-domestic events such as this, much of which shows that the major factors affecting reportage are:
– cultural proximity (how many tourists from this country go there/how many people in this country are from there?)
– the scale of the disaster, as estimated at the time it occurred (how serious did the event seem to be, such that it became something a self-respecting media outlet perceived it ‘should’ cover?) and
– geographical proximity.
That said, I agree with Amber that it’s intuitively ‘wrong’ that deaths of people who don’t look like us or speak our language aren’t covered as extensively and carefully as are those of Australians, Americans or Europeans. Sadly, First Dog’s cartoon yesterday remains entirely accurate… and has gone up on the fridge.