Dear all,
I think it's long been clear that foreign news tends to be undercovered by
much of the mass media. Having said that, there were some sections of the
media - e.g. Radio 4 - that were pretty on the ball about the specific area
affected by the recent cyclone.
It's perhaps ironic that this skewedness is so evident today when we are
supposed to live in a 'wired world', a world where the local is global and
the global is local. At the same time, I think there are reasons for this
situation that are more important than simple matters of a lack of concern
for 'the lives of distant strangers' (Corbridge).
1.The media has a key aim - to sell news. If foreign news sold as well as
domestic news, there would be more foreign news coverage. The media is
parochial because we are - and obviously, this situtation becomes self
perpetuating.
2.I don't think lack of news coverage necessarily equates to a conscious
lack of concern for non UK WASPS. The sheer volume of information that
greets everyone every minute of everyday necessitates a high degree of
(often arbitrary?) 'sorting out' of what will be taken particular notice
of/acted on. In the case of distant disasters, if we took equal notice of
all of them, I think we would all go and shoot ourselves at the sheer
awfulness of so much waste of human life.
3.Related to that above point, we shouldn't assume that just because
something isn't highlighted in the news, there aren't people out there
tacking it. At the same time, it is only too often the case that once a
'big' foreign story does disappear from the headlines, public support can
dry up (to a certain extent, this was the case with Romania, a case I am
directly involved in)
4. Having said all this, I am uncomfortably reminded of Richard Rorty's
comments in 'Contingency, Irony and Solidarity'. Rorty suggests that
appealing for help for others is most effective when done on the grounds of
parochialism. Thus, he argues, it is more effective to appeal to WASP
Americans to assist Afro-Americans on the grounds that these 'others' are
Amercian rather than on the grounds that they have a shared humanity. Is
this perhaps what we are seeing - people choosing to notice on 'local'
rather than 'global' terms?
5.Finally, perhaps we should consider whether the overriding emphasis on
'difference' in critical geography isn't undermining a sense of 'sameness'
with others; if, as some radical theorists insist, there are no essential
grounds for a common humanity, on what basis, other than contingency or
whim - do we justify helping the 'lives of distant strangers'?
Just some thoughts.
Graham Gardner
University of Wales
Aberystwyth
Copyright Graham Gardner 1999
At 18:09 09/11/99 GMT, you wrote:
>Following Raju Das's contrinbution, yes it is very interesting no-one
>else has commented on the cyclone - a similar principle seems to
>apply here to the way UK newspapers covaerage of disaters is
>proportional not only to the loss of ;life but alos to the distance
>away that the loss of life took place. That is to say, a 100 life
>disaster in the UK merits the same no of column inches as a 10,000
>life disaster in say Bangladesh; a disaster killing 500 in the UK
>gets many more inches than the same disaster in say Iran or Nigeria.
>
>On a related note, I have long been wondering how many climatic
>disasters have to hit developed areas, like say New York or London,
>before the world economic consensus begins to move in favour of say
>limiting CO2 emissions rather than continued economic growth? And
>what will be the role of the world's insurance companies in speeding
>up this shift in emphasis? Or to put it crudely, exactly how many
>metres underwater does a nice new financial centre like London's
>docklands have to be before businessmen put the environment first?
>
>Hillary Shaw, P/G Geography, University of Leeds.
>
>
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