The Oshkosh West Index - Media cashes in on time of disaster

Volume 106, Issue 4

Online Features

Media cashes in on time of disaster

By Morgan Redemann
posted January 23, 2010

When have we turned on the television and NOT seen coverage of the disaster in Haiti? Open any internet news page or newspaper and you will be greeted with headlines pertaining to this natural disaster. Death tolls totalling to more than 200,000 people within one week is the extreme of tragedy and is certainly worth devoting a generous amount of attention to, but the media seriously needs to look at priorities when the next most important news story is about Tiger Woods. What about the genocide in Darfur, the regime of anarchy in Somalia, the Israeli conflict? This horrific moment showcases mass media’s greed and its short attention span.

Immediately before the Haitian earthquake, the media was abuzz with Tiger, caught in the woods of superfluous personal affairs, not other serious concerns in other parts of the world. Currently, mass media vacillates between a golf pro and a country ruined by a natural disaster, and falling back on general politics. With only so many hours in a day, the media must cover the extremes: lives of celebrities that have such impact on our welfare and natural disasters that humans cannot control.

This exploitation of world affairs is how the media conveys issues that continue day to day, forgetting to inform the American people of the other disasters controlled by man, namely terrorism. A storm or earthquake that destroys an entire country is devastating, but also great and profitable news for the media. However, it is science (and perhaps divine intervention) that shifts the tectonic plates or creates a funnel of wind and water - nature disasters will continue to exist. The media responds to these events as if they will never happen again. Let me assure you that there will be plenty of devastating storms in the future, so I believe the media can afford to focus their attention to other issues: terror, genocide, oppression...the list goes on.

Haiti is in the midst of tragedy, a country collapsing under its own chaos, much less the rattle of an earthquake. America and the rest of the world have attempted to come to the rescue of this country. However, this full-fledged global aid, although necessary and heroic, has negatively absorbed media mainstream, and must be vindictively counter-balanced with ethereal Hollywood gossip to buy viewers. Darfur, Somalia, and Israel are placed below the lives of the rich and famous to maximize media profit

Instead of obsessing over Tiger’s mistresses and the latest tweets of our precious celebrities, the media should devote attention to reality. It would be worth mentioning that over 2.5 million people have been displaced and malnutrition and violence has claimed the lives of more than 2. In Somalia, pirate attacks have gained the media spotlight – briefly, but the average American probably has little to no notion of the horrors and bloodshed Somalia has experienced since 1991, when dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown and anarchy ensued. And what of the Gaza, the Israeli conflict? So many issues go unaddressed because the media is too infatuated with the current buzz and the viewing populace is valued by the number of Franklins. Here is capitalism at its finest, with the media squeezing juice from natural disasters and Hollywood, simultaneously brainwashing the populace to drink a steady flow of cash. Here lies the absurdity.

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