Online media may still be tying itself in knots over the small matter of how to make money but when it comes to covering horrific humanitarian crises, it really comes into its own.
Compare this example of print coverage of the Haitian disaster:
With this from @theparkerreport:
@theparkerreport The wretched smell of dead bodies. Bloated and stiff. People still litter the roads. Everyone is wearing masks. More on this later.
@theparkerreport One lady in Carrefour last night set up triage on a dirt road. She stitched someone from elbow-Shouldr. I held the light for her. #haiti
@theparkerreport https://twitpic.com/xzk23 – People were killed by the steeple, which fell from a great distance. #haiti
Or this picture gallery from The Boston Globe.
Or a rolling update from The New York Times blog The Lede that’s been tracking news coverage on the web, collating personal accounts posted online and asking readers to help draw their attention to any news and first-hand accounts they come across.
There’s nothing like a live twitter feed from the streets of a crumbling country to really punch you in the solar plexus. And this kind of as-it-happens coverage can serve to convey the full scale of the tragedy much more effectively than any sensational tabloid headline.
The ABC TV news also ran with a stream of tweets apparently from the Haitian capital and I realise that communication is near impossible from a disaster zone but aren’t journalists, and news organisations, supposed to try and verify their sources. Can this be done with Twitter?
Now that Australian reporters have got to Port-au-Prince, will the reliance on tweets be reduced?
Crikey sticks the boot into the Bulletin, and then leads today’s subscriber email with the weighty, serious topic “MP Matt Brown denies dancing in jocks — who’s telling the truth?”.
Glass houses, stones, etc.
Yes, but what’s the point of the media? To punch you in the solar plexus? To tell you mass death is awful? To tell you what dead people smell like? Is Twitter performing the alleged role of the Fourth Estate of guarding against the guardians? Of asking why a Haitian disaster that unfolds in hours hits the headlines, but a Haitian disaster unfolding over a lifetime, over generation after generation, century after century, isn’t worth reporting?
The superficial concentration on minutiae, on emotion, perpetuates an ignorance and indifference to underlying problems – poor housing, overcrowding, poor infrastructure, poor health services etc – which is the ideological cornerstone of global inequality.
Why bother with Twitter when you could have just used an emoticon?