the american print news media ‘construction’ of five natural disasters

The American Print News Media ’Construction’ of Five Natural Disasters

PENELOPE PLOUGHMAN, Skidmore College

In 1985, five international ’natural disasters received prominent print news media coverage in the United States. Content analyses of selected print news media accounts of these five disasters were conducted. The purported evidence of alleged cause-effect relationships describing and explaining these disasters as ’objective’ realities was evaluated in the light of the subjective selection of explanato y factors, themes, frameworks, and value assumptions which underlie the media’s analysis and ‘consfruction’ of these events as ‘natural‘ disasters. Analysis of the American print news media coverage of these disasters indicated an emphasis upon the dramatic, descriptive, climatological or geological qualities of these events rather than upon causal explanations emphasizing the role of human acts or omissions in the development of these disasters. The print nezus media ’constructed’ these events as ’natural’ disasters despite clear evidence of their hybrid, natural- human origins.

Five of the ninety ’natural’ disasters occur- ring in 1985 (USOFDA, 1994) received prominent print news media coverage in the U.S. and the year 1985, while not atypical in terms of the incidence of disasters, was proclaimed ’the year of the disaster’ by the Associated Press. Through news media coverage, the world witnessed the continuing starvation of millions in the Sudan and Ethiopia, the drowning of thousands in a Bangladesh cyclone (25 May), the entrapment and death of thousands in Mexico City earthquakes (20 September), and the inun- dation, destruction, and death caused by mudslides in Puerto Rico (7 October) and volcanic lahars in Colombia (15 November).

Content analyses of selected print news media coverage of these disasters

were conducted. The purported evidence of alleged cause-effect relationships describing and explaining these five occurrences as ’objective’ realities was evaluated in the light of the selection of explanatory factors, themes, frameworks, and value assumptions which underlie the media’s analysis and subjective ’construction’ of these events as ’natural’ disasters.

Objective scientific knowledge of disasters often differs greatly in content, emphasis, and detail from the news media’s interpretation and presentation of disasters. The analysis of media coverage of disasters provides insight into the frameworks and operations of the media, including the predominant cultural and social definitions of ‘natural’ disasters and the ’hierarchy of credibility‘ (Becker, 1967) inherent in news selection and amongst

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newsmakers. Media coverage can also reveal the existence of underlying social, political, or technological factors which may have precipitated, contributed to, or exacerbated the disastrous event (Molotch, 1970, pp. 143-144; Molotch and Lester, 1973, p. 5). These preconditions for disasters include the socio-economic, socio-political, and socio-technical pre- cursors to disasters.

THE ’CONSTRUCTION’ OF ‘NATURAL’ DISASTERS BY THE NEWS MEDIA

Berger and Luckmann (1966, p. 1) wrote that ’reality is socially constructed’ and stressed the roles of society’s inherited collective past and its social institutions in objectifying social meanings. Kitsuse and Spector (1973, p. 415; see also Spector and Kitsuse 1973; 1987) developed a ‘social constructionist approach’ to social problems which, rather than focus upon the ’objective conditions’ of a social problem, emphasized their ’subjective elements’ - the process by which people define a condition as a problem.’ Lippman wrote that news and truth are ‘not the same thing’ inasmuch as the function of news is to ’signalize an event’ while the function of truth is to ‘bring to light the hidden facts, to set them in relation with each other, and to make a picture of reality’ (1922, p. 358). Accordingly, ‘journalism is not a first hand report of raw material’ but rather a ‘report of that material after it has been stylized’ (p. 347). The news story is a ‘created reality’, ’constructed’ by the news media and journalistic criteria of newsworthiness are ’constructed’ elements which are routinely applied to daily events in the course of ’constructing’ the public reality. (Tuchman 1978; Altheide and Snow, 1979; Gans 1980; Gitlin, 1980).

According to Tuchman (1978) news is a ’frame’ which ’imparts to occurrences their public character as it transforms mere

happenings into publicly discussible events’ (p. 3, emphasis in the original). The public character of news is that ’news simultaneously records and is a product of social reality’ (p. 189). Newswork (through its ideology, frames, and routines) transforms everyday occurrences into news events (Tuchman 1972, 1973; see also Gitlin 1980). News imposes meaning and in doing so ’. . . news is perpetually defining and redefining, constituting and reconstituting social phenomena’ (Tuch- man 1978, p. 184). According to Altheide and Snow (1979), ’select media promote a public portrayal of everyday life and political power according to the logic of the dominant institutions’ and therefore ‘social reality is constructed, recognized, and celebrated with media’ (pp. 11-12).

According to Gans (1980, pp. 146- 181) judgments of ’story suitability’ include the substantive considerations of story importance2 and story interest3 as well as product considerations (medium and format), novelty,* ba lan~e ,~ and story quality6 and lastly, competitive considerations. Fiske (1987, pp. 288-89) and Fiske and Hartley (1978, p. 87) apply the concept of ’clawback’ to describe how television news and documentaries keep control of disruptive events by restraining such events with an established central focus whereby that which has been interpreted and ’constructed’ (from the eyewitness account through the interpretations of news reporter, editor, and anchor) appears to be ‘objective’ and factual. According to Gitlin (1980, p. 7), ’symbol handlers’ apply ’persistent patterns of cognition, interpretation, and presentation, of selection, emphasis, and exclu- sion‘ and ’traditional’ assumptions (’media frames’), in their routine processing of inf~rmation.~

According to Benthall (1993), ’disasters do not exist - except for their unfortunate victims and those who suffer in their aftermath - unless publicized by

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the media. In this sense the media actually construct disasters.’ (p. 27, emphasis in original). Gans (1980, pp. 14, 17) found that victims of natural or social disorder were the second most newsworthy group of unknown news actors and that disasters, actual and averted, were one of the eight most important activities in the news. Gans also identified eight clusters of ’enduring values’ in American news: ethnocentrism, altruistic democracy, responsible capitalism, small-town pastoralism, individualism, moderatism, social order, and national leadershipB (p. 42). Ethnocen- trism is most obvious in domestic coverage of foreign news, ’which judges other countries by the extent to which they live up to or imitate American practices and values’ (p. 42). Foreign news falls into seven categories and is typically based on ’unusually dramatic happenings’ such as wars, coup d’dut , or major disasters (pp. 31-37).9 Foreign disasters must be more serious than equivalent domestic ones and ’the farther from America the country is geographically, politically, culturally, or racially, the larger the number of victims necessary for the story to receive attention’ (p. 36). The news media of the developed world have a brief attention span regarding disasters in general and particularly regarding disasters in developing nations (Moore 1958, p. 195; see also Galtung and Ruge, 1965). Galtung and Ruge (1965) found that events were more likely to become news if they involved ’elite’ nations or peoples. In order to be deemed newsworthy enough to be reported distant nations have to produce events that capture attention particularly easily and with little ambiguity (e.g., natural disasters, accidents, and revolutionary changes in governments). In addition, the lower the rank of the nation or person, the more negative the news will have to be in order to be reported domestically. Furthermore, the less personal the news, the more negative it will have to be in order for it to

be reported (pp. 64-90).1° In his discussion of the images and narratives of disaster relief, Benthall (1993) notes that the dominant imagery applied by the Western media describes Third World people as ’the other’, characterized as either ’exotic’ or ’inferior’ and most typically in terms of ’helplessness and negati- vity‘ (pp . 186 - 188).

Adams (1986) found that the news media prioritized the globe and assigned a news value to the ethnicity and nationality of disaster victims. This ethnicity-based news value was more important than the number of deaths in explaining the varia- tion in the amount of news coverage afforded a disaster by the U.S. media. According to Adams, ’overall, the globe is prioritized [by the news media] so that the death of one Western European equaled three Eastern Europeans, equaled 9 Latin Americans, equaled 11 Middle Easterners, equaled 12 Asians’ (p. 122; see also Sood, Stockdale, and Rogers 1987, pp. 36-37). According to Gans, the desirability of social order and the need for national leadership in maintaining and restoring that order are reflected in the two major types of news stories: those that deal with disorderirestoration of order, and those that deal with the routine activities of public officials.” According to Gans, the news functions as an ’order barometer’, informing the audience of a disordered condition as well as reassuring it with ’order restoration stories’ (1980, p. 295).

News media coverage of disasters has positive and negative effects. The media can issue warnings of impending disasters, convey information regarding the extent of destruction, and coordinate and help mobilize rescue and relief. In addition, media disaster coverage can dis- seminate false and incorrect information and either substantiate or refute the salience of a disaster simply by virtue of the fact of their recognition and designa- tion of its newsworthiness. The news

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media sometimes perpetuate the surface rationales for specific disasters and in the process reinforce some of the ’mythology’ of disasters.12 Explanations for the sources of disaster myths include: the news media’s dependency on official sources (Quarantelli 1981); journalists’ value orien- tations which result in ethnocentric biases and differentiated treatment of foreign and domestic disasters (Gans 1980; Galtung and Ruge 1965); and organizational resource limitations and audience considerations (Goltz 1984). Goltz’s (1984, pp. 364 - 365) analysis of the widespread assumption that the news media play major roles in creating and perpetuating inaccurate images of human responses to disaster indicated that while the restora- tive activities of organizations were the most prevalent images conveyed by the print news media, a ’foreign-domestic dimension’ was also evident in the imagery of social breakdown. Specifically, social breakdown imagery was signifi- cantly more likely to appear in coverage of foreign disasters. Proffered explanations for this ’foreign - domestic dimension’ included an ethnocentric bias in the coverage of foreign disasters that was the product of journalistic values and news processing routines, resource limitations of newspapers in covering foreign disasters, and the heavy reliance upon official information sources in covering foreign disasters (p. 365). Turner (1979, p. 55) suggested the existence of an ‘international ranking of disaster proneness’ based upon the ’degree of coincidence’ resulting from superimposing the distribution of the ‘political economy of disaster- s~sceptibility’’~ upon the distribution of all energy sources, natural and human-made, with the potential to create disaster^.'^ According to this ‘international ranking of disaster proneness’, South and East Asia and Africa are most vulnerable, Eastern Europe, Latin America, Japan, and the Middle East are moderately vulnerable,

and North America and Western Europe are least vulnerable.

METHODOLOGY

The five disasters were selected for analysis because they were identified as ‘natural’ disasters and they received the greatest frequencies of disaster coverage in the Reader‘s Guide to Periodical Literature and The New York Times Index. The print news coverage devoted to the aforemen- tioned five disasters by the New York Times, Newsweek magazine, and Time magazine were content analyzed. These publications were selected due to their extensive rea- dership and their status as national ’opinion leaders’. The New York Times was examined on the day of the initial report of the event as were the relevant weekly issues of Newsweek and Time.15 The analytic approach of this research emphasizes the news media’s ’construction’ of disasters and asks what is the ’construction’ (logic, theme, frame, style, routines) utilized to present these events? and why is it this ’construction’ and not another?

Journalists utilize an inverted pyramid writing style to organize and present the information they deem most important as prominently, efficiently, and effectively as possible (Hohenberg, 1962). This pyramid structure indicates that the most important information is placed at the outset of the article in what is called the ’lead’. The lead contains the ’who, what, where, when, and how’ of the event. The ‘why’ of the event, if it is reported at all, is covered later in the article. The lead is followed by documentation that is structured in des- cending order of ‘judged documentary importance’ (Tuchman, 1978, p. 100). Accordingly, all paragraphs of articles selected for analysis were numbered and their content was analyzed with particular emphasis upon the initial three paragraphs which typically convey the journalist’s overall perception and ’construction’



of the event. The principal hypothesis was that these five disasters would be 'constructed' as 'natural' disasters in the cru- cial lead paragraphs.

DROUGHT AND FAMINE IN AFRICA

Background

Long before the public witnessed the tragedy of starving Ethiopians in Time (1984; 1985a, b) and Newsweek (1984a, b, c, d), officials of the U.S. Government had sent reports to Washington stating that 'there is an environmental nightmare unfolding before our eyes. It is the result of the acts of millions of Ethiopians strug- gling for survival: scratching the surface of eroded land and eroding it further, cutting down trees for warmth and fuel and leaving the country denuded, diverting streams to irrigate dry land and depriving others of their water source' (Cox News- papers, 1986, p. 2). Although the Sahel region of Africa has suffered from chronic drought and famine for decades (Glantz 1976), the American public was again made cognizant of it in 1984-1985 through extensive media coverage. The surface explanation for the African drought was a lack of rainfall. The drought was presented as the reason for crop failures, and crop failures as the reason for the famine. In actuality, the forces involved in the African drought and famine were complex, multi-causal, and interacting. These factors included: population growth, food supplies, foreign aid policies, national security policies, and the international economic order. The lack of rainfall was the triggering mechanism but human elements, not drought, were the ultimate cause of the famine and possibly even the drought itself through landuse and over-population16 (Hunger Project, 1984; Sai, 1984; Brown, 1985b; UN Chron- icle, 1986; Walsh, 1986a, b; Mellor and Gavian, 1987).

Famines make the news because they are not the 'normal' condition and because the statistics of 35,000 hunger deaths per day - 24 every minute, 24 hours a day - make famine the most visible and dramatic manifestation of hunger. In fact, famine accounts for only a fraction (10 per cent) of the hunger-related deaths in the world. Chronic under nourishment, malnutrition, and malabsorptive hunger are the 'normal' hungers which often go unno- ticed and unreported. It is these 'normal,' hungers which account for the majority of hunger-related deaths. (Hunger Project 1985, pp. 9, 14). Internationally-funded well-drilling projects begun in the 1960s and 1970s with the ironic title of 'freedom from thirst' have left sections of Sudan pockmarked with growing circles of desert. Well-drilling enticed thousands of Sudanese to cluster their families and herds around well areas that were too dry to support permanent settlements. Trees and shrub growth were cut for fuel, cropland, and grazing. Herds and popula- tions increased and had exceeded the carrying capacity of the land by 75 per cent before the drought began in 1981. As a consequence of these mismanaged programs, the desert began to spread in rings around each well. These modernization programs stripped the land of some of its ability to absorb the drought and made people more vulnerable. Accordingly, these programs can be viewed as an underlying cause of the famine (Cox, 1986, p. 5). The devastating well drilling project was not the only human connection with Sudan's desertification. The Sudanese government also set prices so low for gum arabic (acacia tree sap) that they actively discouraged villagers from preserving these erosion preventing trees while simultaneously encouraging the harvest of these trees for charcoal which brought a higher market price (75 per cent higher) than gum arabic (Cox, 1986, p. 6).

For more than 30 years, Ethiopia's


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northern province of Eritrea was engaged in a civil war for independence from Ethiopia (which it won in 1993) resulting in war refugees as well as 8 million drought and famine victims. The war caused dis- ruption of supply lines, forced resettlement programs, and surges of refugees into neighbouring Sudan. The resettlement goal was to move 2 million Ethio- pians from the ravaged farmlands of the north to the more fertile and sparsely populated regions of the southwest. The policy appeared to be sensible on the surface but critics claimed that people were being forcibly relocated. The New York Times reported (1986), that the resettlement program was killing more people than the famine and that 300,000 people were likely to die in the process - resulting in a resettlement death rate of 20 per cent.

The ’Construction‘ of African Famine

Time published a descriptive article entitled, ’The Land of the Dead’ (1984). Newsweek published four articles including a descriptive article entitled, ‘An African Nightmare’ (1984a). The first three paragraphs of each descriptive article focused upon the devastation and death tolls. The majority of the remaining coverage dealt with the relief operations. It is not until paragraph 4 of the Time article that Ethio- pia‘s civil war is mentioned. Subsequent paragraphs (5-9) mentioned the lack of earlier media coverage and delays in relief efforts (but offered no explanations) and the political conflicts involved in aiding a Marxist regime (10- 11).

The Newsweek article discussed the appearance of warning signs two years earlier in paragraph 6 and noted that part of the damage was ’self inflicted’ due to ’mismanagement, corruption and civil strife’ in paragraph 7. Subsequent paragraphs (17, 20, 21) focused partial blame on the Mengistu government, noting that

Mengistu had been warned of the impending famine in 1982, but chose to spend 46 per cent of Ethiopia’s GNP on military purchases and $200 million on a celeb- ration of the tenth anniversary of Ethio- pia’s Marxist revolution. The article concluded on the ominous note that ’without the right investment of effort and money, Black Africa is more likely to become a charnel house than a granary’, noting that agricultural production pressures have worn out soils, that deforestation has interfered with rainfall and erosion protec- tion and decreased resistance to drought, that while food aid saves lives it also undermines long term self-sufficiency, and that government food-pricing policies discourage farmers (22-24).

Newsweek’s coverage was much more in-depth and issue-oriented than that of Time. Newsweek published three additional articles: one dealing with the issue of blame and responsibility entitled ’Placing the Blame’ (1984b), one dealing with aid and the need to maintain the public’s concern entitled ‘A Flood of Generosity‘ (1984~) and a final article outlining a five- point plan for predicting, mitigating, and/ or preventing famines, entitled ‘A Five- Point Plan for Action’ (1984d). The final article suggested that famines are in most cases predictable and therefore preventable or at least remediable through such steps as an early warning system, mobili- zation of grain reserves, settlement of the population, centralization of relief efforts and improved agricultural and population planning.

Five of Gans’ (1980) seven categories of foreign news were demonstrated by the print news coverage of drought and famine in Africa: disaster news, American activities in a foreign nation, the activities of communist nations, political conflict and the excesses of dictatorship. The coverage also demonstrated the themes of ethnocentrism, altmistic democracy, natural, social, and moral disorder, and the lack of



responsible national leadership (Gans, 1980). Additional themes included resource elitism, blame assignation and reproach, and the power of the news media in ending world indifference and inertia and in promoting relief efforts. The coverage was initially event-oriented (fact- advancing stories) followed by consider- able issue-orientation (fact-explaining stories) particularly regarding the so-called, ’self-inflicted’ nature of the disaster (due to mismanagement, corruption and civil strife), the need to restore order, and the need for sustained, substantial, long-term assistance.

TROPICAL CYCLONES IN BANGLADESH, 25 MAY 1985

Background

The greatest loss of life from cyclone^'^ is drowning due to ocean surges (Fazi, 1991; Pearce, 1991a, b, 1992; Sattur, 1991; Bern et al. 1993). Cyclones can cause surges up to 7.5 m, and can send floods kilometers inland. Australia, Bangladesh, China, India, Japan, and Mexico have long stretches of coast prone to these surges. In 1737, a storm surge killed 300,000 in India and what is now Bangladesh; an 1876 storm killed 215,000; a 1970 surge killed 300,000, the 1985 surge killed approxima- tely 100,000, and a 1991 storm killed 138,000 - all in the same geographical area. As Marx (1977, p. 34) has noted, ‘. . . hazardous land possess a siren quality. We prefer to risk, rather than to respond to, the latent potential for disaster. Indeed the word hazard comes from the Arabic name for a game of chance played with dice (uz-zuhr).’

The ’Construction’ of a Bangladesh Cyclone

The first paragraph of Newsweek‘s article, entitled ‘A Deadly Wall of Water: A

murderous cyclone sweeps away 10,000 in Bangladesh’ reported that U.S. weather satellites had detected the cyclone in its formative stages (1985a). It is not until paragraph 5 that we learn that the U.S. satellite warning was useless because it was impossible to alert, much less move, potential victims since most did not have radios, roads were virtually non-existent, and the government allegedly owned only eight helicopters. Paragraph 4 of News- week’s coverage discusses the ’how’ of the devastation by describing the development of groups of tiny, low-lying alluvial islands known as ’chars‘ which are formed by the silt of the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers. The paragraph also noted the fact that the chars are ’. . . enormously fertile and immensely tempting to the impoverished farmers of one of the world’s most densely populated nations.’ We are also told that despite Bangladesh laws prohibit- ing the settlement of chars until ten years after they form it is difficult to know how many live on the chars, much less to enforce the law. Subsequent paragraphs mentioned the widespread poverty and lack of resources (6) and governmental plans to blunt the effects of future storms by building concrete cyclone shelters (10). In the concluding paragraph, ‘runaway population growth’ and population density - 100 million people reside in a nation the size of Wisconsin - are identified as Bangladesh’s major problems. This paragraph further stated that ‘. . . people will take almost any risk to obtain land - including resettling on the vulnerable chars - it is only a matter of time before another catastrophe strikes Bangladesh.’ While implying that the people have nowhere else to live, this fact is not clearly stated or explained. As is often the case with news coverage of weather and natural disaster phenomena, this cyclone was anthropomorphized and personified as ’murderous’.

Time‘s coverage consisted of an inter-


News Media ‘Construction ’ of Five Natural Disasters 315

esting, philosophical article, entitled, ’Suddenly, Two Waves of Death: At a soccer game and in Bangladesh, men and nature rage out of control’ (1985c), which compared the ‘savagery of human nature’ demonstrated at soccer riots in Belgium in June 1985 to the ‘fury of external nature’ as demonstrated in Bangladesh (June 10, 1985). Paragraph 2 stated that nature was ’out of control’ in both places - ’external nature’ in Bangladesh and ‘human nature’ in Belgium and that ‘one ought to be used to such sights by now. Yet a peculiar terror rises in the age of progress from seeing people carried backward, haplessly becoming the forces that oppose them.’ Paragraphs 3 - 4 discussed the lack of explanation for the cyclone and possible explanations for the soccer riot concluding that none of the explanations were ’wholly dismissable’, since each requires’ a leap of faith from some assumed normal cause to an abnormal horrendous effect. In the gap between cause and effect sits gasping human will, flailing about in an effort to rationalize events that, in the end, cannot be rationalized.’ The cyclone is anthropomorphized, the author quoting Bacon: ’nature will lay buried a great Time and yet revive upon the occasion or temptation.’ The article concludes that ’. . . nature is more palatable to the conscience in the form of a cyclone than dressed as human savagery. Better to suffer the weather than to be the weather.’

The first nine paragraphs of the New York Times article entitled ’Bangladesh Storms Kill 249; A Far Higher Toll Is Feared’ (1985a) were descriptive of the death and destruction. The storm forecast was not mentioned until paragraph 10. The existence of protective embankments, buffers, and shelters built since the 1970 cyclone were mentioned in subsequent paragraphs (13- 14). In another article entitled, ‘For Bangladesh Victims, “No Place Else For Us to Go”’ (1985b) the New York Times dealt directly with the fact that

thousands of peasant families had no place else to live but the chars, that wealthy landlords bribe officials to allow settlement of farmers on the chars and that, even if the warnings were heard, they probably would not have been heeded. The article also noted that there were violent battles between families for land and that the disaster area would be resettled within six months, in time for the harvest of the next rice crop.

The print news coverage of this event focused upon the themes of ethnocentrism, natural and moral disorder and the lack of national leadership. Additional themes were the limits of human knowledge and power, the irrationality of natural events, divine providence, the inevitable repetition of such disasters, and poverty and the lack of resources. The coverage was almost exclusively event- oriented and the category of foreign news was ’disasters’ (Gans, 1980).

EARTHQUAKES IN MEXICO CITY, 20 SEPTEMBER 1985

Background

According to Cuny (1983) earthquake losses are largely preventable. Approxima- tely 90 per cent of the loss of life in quakes is the result of building collapse and the engineering technology exists to make new structures reasonably quake resistant at a small additional cost and technologies are being developed to make older buildings more safe (p. 28). Fire risks are often high in quakes due to the breaking of electrical and gas lines. In recent years many of the world’s major cities have installed automatic shutoff devices (p.28). The secondary effects of quakes (landslides, fires, tsunamis, and floods) are often more damaging than the quake itself. Landslides are often the most damaging and deadly secondary effects (p. 26). Unfortunately, much of the housing in



the quake zones consists of heavy adobe block, or stone and timber walls with stone, mud or timber roofs. Consequently, a great many victims are crushed by their own homes (Wijkman and Timberlake, 1984, p. 88; see also Kerr 1985, 1987; Anderson et al., 1986; Bolt, 1991).18

The ’Construction’ of Mexico City Earthquakes

Newsweek’s coverage included three articles: one descriptive entitled, ‘Disaster in Mexico’, one on the mechanics and prediction of quakes entitled, ’Forecasting Future Shock: Experts Know Where Quakes Will Strike - But Not When‘ and one entitled ‘No Mexicos - Yet’ which listed U.S. quakes and noted that the U.S. had thus far been spared the destruction of such a ’killer quake’ (Newsweek, 1985a, b, c, d). Paragraph 6 of the article entitled, ’Disaster in Mexico’ (1985b), mentioned Mexico’s massive foreign debt and the fact that its strained economy would limit its recovery. In subsequent paragraphs, Mex- ico City was described as the second largest metropolitan area in the world with 18 million residents ’a city living on borrowed time’, ’ringed by slums and shantytowns, blanketed by a miasma of smog, filled with dozens of energy instal- lations with poor reputation for safety.’ The particular vulnerability of Mexico City’s location, its building codes, the lack of disaster preparedness, and the predictability of the disaster were mentioned later in the article. The article entitled ’Forecast- ing Future Shock’ (1985c), discussed the inability to forecast accurately earthquakes. This article concluded that ’terrify- ing as they are, earthquakes kill and injure people mostly because buildings fall on top of them. An earthquake, at bottom, is a man-made disaster.’

In the article entitled ‘No Mexicos - Yet’ (1985d), the comparison of Mexico City’s quakes with others throughout

history and in the U.S. was an attempt at rationalizing and placing the devastation in perspective. The article did not include a discussion of the fact that a relatively minor quake in a densely populated area of the developing world can cause more death and destruction than the major quakes experienced by the U.S. As in other natural disasters, the earthquake is anthropomorphized as a ’killer‘.

Time’s coverage included four articles: one descriptive entitled ‘A Noise Like Thunder’; one dealing with Mexico’s finances, entitled ‘The Trials of Job’; one dealing with the anatomy of a quake, entitled ’Anatomy of an Earthquake’; and one describing the world’s deadliest quakes, entitled ’Worst of the Century’ (Time, 1985d, e, f , g). The article ‘A Noise Like Thunder‘ mentions the fact that the quake was ’no surprise’ to seismologists in paragraph 8. Subsequent paragraphs personify the quake as having ‘chosen’ a particularly vulnerable target (9), mentions the dense population and shaky geological base of Mexico City (lo), and finally, mentions the surrounding shantytowns (with 12 per cent unemployment and 40 per cent underemployment) (12). The poverty issue is not mentioned again until paragraph 24 when the havoc wreaked on a housing project is described.

The New York Times published four articles: one descriptive, entitled ‘Earth- quake Rocks Mexico; Hundreds are Feared Dead as Buildings Fall and Burn’; one dealing with the inevitability of the quake, entitled ‘A Fragile Part of Mexico’s Shore Gives Way‘; one dealing with quake mea- surement entitled, ‘Measuring Earth- quakes’; and one dealing with the worries of American relatives and friends, entitled ’Kin in U.S. Worrying About Fate of Relatives’ (New York Times 1985c, d, e, f). It was not until paragraph 32 of the article, ’Earthquake Rocks Mexico; Hundreds are Feared Dead as Buildings Fall and Burn’ (1985c), that the recurrence of quakes in

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the region is noted. Paragraph 1 of ‘A Fragile Part of Mexico’s Shore Gives Way‘ (1985d) states that ’it was an earthquake that had to happen’. Subsequent paragraphs recall past quakes and the ‘gap’ method of quake prediction (4), and report that the extent of damage and loss of life depends heavily on the existence of quake- resistant structures (10- 13).

The themes of ethnocentrism, altruistic democracy, natural disorder and ineffective national leadership especially regarding disaster preparedness were evident in this coverage. The relevance of this event for the U.S. is derived from the fact that Mexico is geographically adjacent to the U.S. and at the time of the disaster at least 8.7 million Americans were of Mexi- can- American origin, more than 130,000 Americans were permanent residents of Mexico City, and some 4,500 U.S. tourists were believed to be in Mexico City (New York Times, 1985f, p. A6; Time, 1985 d, p. 39). Additional themes included the fore- casted inevitability of such a disaster by seismologists, the effectiveness of earthquake-resistant designs if they are strictly enforced through building codes and the recurrence of quakes. This coverage was initially event-oriented with a subsequent focus upon underlying issues of causation. The categories of foreign news were disaster, foreign activities affecting Ameri- cans, and American activities in foreign nations.

MUDSLIDES IN PUERTO RICO, 7 OCTOBER 1985

Background

According to Cuny (1983, p. 32), ‘mudslides in hilly or mountainous areas are usually a direct result of human activity’. Heavy rains quickly super-saturate hill- sides that have been deforested or stripped for farming, and immense landslides result. Over 150 Puerto Ricans lost

their lives in October 1985 when rains triggered a mudslide. Ultimately, they lost their lives because

population pressures and a lack of afford- able land left them little choice but to build their shantytowns on a slope known to be unstable. Contributing to the tragedy were leaking water lines and septic tanks that saturated and loosened the ground, a problem authorities conceded had been recognized for 15 years (Cox 1986, p. 3; see also Dietz, et al., 1990; FEMA, 1985).

The ’Construction’ of Puerto Rican Mudslides

Paragraph 1 of Newsweek‘s article entitled ’Puerto Rico’s Grave of Mud’ (1985e) mentioned the mountainside shantytown but offered no explanation for its existence. Paragraph 2 indicated that the slide was caused by three days of torrential rainfall. Subsequent paragraphs characterized the event as a ‘battle against nature’ and anthropomorphized the mud as ‘unforgiving’ (4- 5). Time‘s article, ’Last Rites for a Barrio’ (1985h), mentioned the torrential rainfall and the fact that the hillside barrio was ’impoverished’ and built on a 30 degree slope. The article offered no explanation for this land use. Subsequent paragraphs anthropomorphized the weather as ‘killer rains’ and personified nature as having ’fashioned’ a mass grave with ’awful force’ (5-6). The New York Times, in an article entitled, ‘55 in Puerto Rico Die in Landslides and Flash Floods‘ (1985g), mentioned the rain and the shantytown in paragraph 1. Early weather predictions are mentioned in paragraph 11.

The themes of altruistic democracy, individual heroism, natural disorder, the restoration of order and effective national leadership are evident in this coverage. An additional theme was the uncontrollable power of natural forces. This coverage was primarily event-oriented.


318 Penelope Plough man

LAHARS IN COLOMBIA, 15 NOVEMBER 1985

Background

In addition to the eruption of lava, and the ability to generate tsunami (tidal waves), volcanoes also create mudflows (lahars), ash falls, toxic gases, and nuees ardantes (‘glowing avalanches’ - dense masses of hot highly gas-charged and gas emitting fragmented lava) (Wijkman and Timber- lake, 1984, p. 103; see also Francis, 1976; Whittow, 1980; Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, 1990; 1991). While the easiest way to avoid death as a result of volcanic eruption is to increase one’s distance from the source, the immediate agricultural benefits of rich volcanic soils typically outweigh the risks.

The ’Construction‘ of Colombian Lahars

The deaths of over 20,000 Colombians in November 1985, were caused by a volcanic lahar: a cascade of mud and ash moving at speeds in excess of 30 mph. Newsweek published three pieces regarding this disaster: one descriptive entitled ’Buried Alive’; one entitled ’Anatomy of a Disaster’; and one a comparison of the deadliest eruptions, entitled, ’The Lethal History of a “Ring of Fire”‘ (Newsweek, 1985f, g, h). Paragraph 3 of ’Buried Alive’ (1985f) anthropomorphizes the disaster by stating that ‘. . . thousands . . . could not escape the wrath of Nevado del Ruiz.’ Subsequent paragraphs mention the fact that the government had a set of evacuation plans thereby indicating that the tragedy could have been averted (9), that ’early warning signs’ began in December 1984 (13), that the lack of response to early warning signs may have been due to the government‘s preoccupation with civil war and economic crisis (17), and that the government claimed that there was no ‘lack of will’ on its part but rather simply not enough time to enact the evacuation

plans (19). Time produced two articles: one

descriptive, entitled ’Colombia’s Mortal Agony: A Volcano Unleashed its Fury, Leaving at Least 20,000 Dead or Missing’ (1985i); and one on the mechanics of volcanoes, entitled, ’In the Belly of the Beast’ (1985j). Coverage in Time also ani- mates and anthropomorphizes the volcano as ‘unleashing its fury’, describes the volcano as ’thunderously alive‘ and ’reborn’ (3) and as having ‘irresistible force’ and ’ferocity’ (9, 13). Subsequent paragraphs describe Colombia as a nation ’. . . plagued by man-made travails: civil war, leftist terrorism, and battles with powerful and entrenched drug mafia’ (4), report that warnings occurred in Sep- tember 1984 and that evacuation plans were completed but not implemented bec- cause the volcano ’erupted too soon’ (6)’ and that the residents probably never knew that their agricultural prosperity was the result of the 1845 eruption of Nevado del Ruiz which deposited over 250 million tons of lime and ash on the land which decomposed into 25 feet of rich topsoil (11). Finally, in paragraph 30, it is reported that in response to a report published by the Colombian National Institute of Geolo- gical-Mining Investigation on 7 October 1985 warning of the virtual certainty of the eruption, ’the Colombian Ministers of the Interior, Public Works, and Mines had all taken turns depreciating the danger.’ A subsequent paragraph ironically states that ’not for nothing, however, are calami- ties like Nevado del Ruiz known as acts of God. For the people who lived and worked in the farmlands around the shim- mering mountain, the early signs were accepted as part of the environment. Nor could anyone have predicted that the disaster would finally take place at night, the time of maximum vulnerability’ (34).

The New York Times published four articles: one descriptive, entitled ’15,000 Feared Dead in Colombia As Eruption of

~~



Volcano Sends Torrent of Mud Over Two Towns’ (1985h); one entitled ‘A Classic Avalanche of Mud’ (1985i); one describing the ten worst eruptions, entitled ’Volca- noes: The 10 Worst‘ (1985j); and one describing the preparations which were in progress at the time of the event, entitled ’Volcano Expert Says Colombians Tried to Prepare’ (1985k). Paragraph 10 of the article ’15,000 Feared Dead in Columbia As Eruption of Volcano Sends Torrent of Mud Over Two Towns’ mentions that an evacuation plan was in the process of development at the time of the event. Para- graph 13 mentions that the eruption occurred just one week after a 28-hour siege of the Colombian Palace of Justice by leftist rebels which resulted in the murders of 100 people including 11 of Colombia’s 24 Supreme Court Justices. Subsequent paragraphs mention that the volcano emit- ted smoke two months prior to the eruption and ashes were spewed three days prior to the event (15), that a Colombian Institute of Geology and Mining study had indicated a ‘67 per cent probability’ that the volcano would soon erupt ‘in a rain of ashes and gas emissions’ (33), and that an evening radio report assured listeners that while the volcano had erupted ‘there was no danger‘ (39).

The themes of ethnocentrism, altruistic democracy (aid provided), natural disorder and ineffective national leadership (particularly regarding evacuation plans) were evident in this coverage. Additional themes included ignored early warnings, the power and cruelty of nature and the imprecise forecast of such disasters. The foreign news categories were disaster and political inac- tion and ineffectiveness. The focus was primarily upon the event with subsequent discussion of underlying issues.

CONCLUSION

The principal hypothesis that the print news media would ‘construct’ these five

disasters as natural disasters in the lead three paragraphs was supported. The ’who, what, where, when, and how‘ of disasters - the description of the devastation, the death and damage figures, and the rescue and relief operations - were well-covered. However, the ’whys’ of disasters - warnings, predictability, pre- ventability, recurrence, and contributing causative and exacerbating forces - if they were mentioned at all, were not prominently reported or discussed in detail. Examination of the lead coverage (initial 3 paragraphs) of these five disasters indicated that the print news media selected for this study focused primarily upon the dramatic descriptive qualities of the events rather than upon causal explanations. Much of the focus and design of disaster reporting is a consequence of the operating principles, frameworks, and priorities of these types of media. These operating principles, frameworks and priorities include an emphasis on dramatic or visual events (so as to capture and maintain the audience’s attention), a tendency to cover immediate, acute events rather than chronic or developing events, an emphasis on present events and a lack of historical context, an ethnocentric viewpoint, and an emphasis on present events rather than on issues or underlying conditions. As a result of these operating principles, the root causes of disasters are often oversha- dowed by the acute drama of the events themselves. Print news media ’constructions’ of disasters typically emphasize the uncontrolled wrath of nature and promote the value of ’social order’ (ethnocentrically-defined) by emphasizing either the efficiency of rescue and relief operations in the restoration of order or its tragic absence. Print news coverage functions as an ’order barometer’ (Gans, 1980) informing the audience of the disorder and reaffirming the value of order - natural, technological, social, and moral. In addition, print news coverage functions as an



’order thermostat’ - reaffirming and maintaining the value of order. Print news media ‘constructions’ of disasters emphasize: (1) the ethnocentrically-defined value of order, the status quo, and ’the system’; (2) the power of technology and resources (forecasting, communication, engineering, and transportation infrastructures) as prevention, solution, or savior; and (3) the ultimate power and mystery of nature, the divine, fate, or hapless luck.

The concepts of cultural relativism and ethnocentrism are particularly relevant in print news coverage of disasters in non- elite, developing nations. There is evidence of a ’foreign- domestic dimension’ in the imagery of social breakdown depicted by journalists in the wake of disaster. For example, American print news media coverage of the ’domestic’ story of Puerto Rican mudslides emphasized the effectiveness of rescue and relief operations in the wake of the forces of nature. The reason why the hillside shanty-town existed or why the community was impoverished were not discussed and neither were the policies of the U.S. government regarding Puerto Rico. Cover- age of the foreign disasters, in contrast, placed more emphasis on the degree of pre-existing social and political disorder and the ineffectiveness of rescue and relief operations. The print news media tend to impose Western values, assumptions, pre- rogatives, and explanatory frameworks in their framing and presentation of disasters. If journalists intend to convey the ’truth’ of disasters rather than merely ’signalize an event’ they must be cognizant of the fact that disasters occur within a socio-political context and scrutinize disasters for evidence of human precipi- tation and exacerbation and present these fundamental findings in lead paragraphs rather than merely focusing on the physical phenomena which appear to trigger disasters.

The United Nations declared the 1990s

to be the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR). The major goal of the IDNDR is to shift the focus from post-disaster relief to pre-disaster risk reduction. The mass media and mass communications technology can play cru- cial roles in pre-disaster risk reduction if they are linked with hazard mitigation experts. These roles include risk assessment, avoidance measures, early warning and evacuation, public awareness and education, and organizing for self-help and effective response to risk (Rattien, 1990, p. 41; see also National Academy of Sciences, 1987).

The media’s ‘construction’ of disasters reflects the criteria of newsworthiness employed by news organizations in the selection of stories and creates the public reality of disasters. ’Constructing‘ a disaster as ‘natural’ or as an ‘act of God’ is cognitively consistent, provides solace, emphasizes the value of social order, and relieves guilt. ’Constructing’ a disaster as precipitated by human acts or omissions provokes dissonance, blame attribution, and guilt. Consideration of resource inequities, the bifurcation of the world into rich and poor nations, the ‘dependence- disaster cycle’ and the variable valuation of human lives is unsettling and conflicts with the values of equality, classlessness, altruistic democracy, and the bounded rationality with which the public views disasters. The print news media ’constructed‘ the events analyzed herein as ’natural’ disasters despite clear evidence of their hybrid, ’natural- human’ nature. The fact remains that if developing nations lack the capacity to take preventive steps, and developed nations lack the will to assist the developing world, then perhaps at the social level, these types of disasters are indeed, ‘normal’ and ‘natural’.

Notes

1. The definition of natural disasters as social


News Media ‘Construction’ of Five Natural Disasters 321

problems has been debated in the literature. Stallings (1991) for example, wrote that the functionalist approach to natural disasters as social problems ‘provides no empirical referents to determine when or whether disasters are problems or even what kind of problem they may be’ (p. 70). The constructionist view of social problems is problematic because ‘disasters lack the organizational base associated with claims pressing in public arenas’ and ’since claims-pressing groups and social problems are coterminous, disasters therefore are not social problems’ (p. 70-71). Stallings concludes that ’until natural disasters comprise part of the agenda of a social movement with sufficient political resources to influence public discourse and to attract the attention of elites, a social problem approach to natural hazards and disasters is unwarranted’ (pp. 72-73, citations omit- ted). Drabek (1989) defines disasters as nonunique, but ‘nonroutine’ social problems ’requir[ing] more precise specifi- cation and clear linkage to the functioning of social systems’ (p. 262). Drabek advo- cates a comparative social problems orientation to assess ‘mixes of strains and tensions‘ in public opinion and responses to nonroutine events. He also suggests placing the disaster within the ’broader historical context, recognition of the “quality of routinism” as a variable in disaster response, and expansion of the research agenda into the mitigation phase where distributions of risk and social processes are emphasized rather than just blame assignation (see Quarantelli, 1987, 1989; Kreps, 1989; Kroll-Smith and Couch, 1991).

2. ’Story importance’ is determined by rank in governmental and other hierarchies, impact on the nation and the national interest, impact on large numbers of people and significance for the past and the future (Gans, 1980, pp. 147-152).

3. ’Interesting stories’ include ’people stories’ role reversals, human-interest, expose anecdotes, hero stories, and ‘gee-whiz’ stories (Gans, 1980, pp. 155-157).

4. ‘Novelty’ includes ‘internal’ novelty, the peg, the repetition taboo, ’freshness versus staleness’, and excessive freshness (Gans,

1980, pp. 167-171). 5. ’Balance’ includes story mixture, subject,

geographical, demographic, and political balance (Gans, 1980, pp. 173- 176).

6. ’Story quality’ includes action, pace, com- pleteness, clarity with parsimony, esthetic and technical standards (Gans, 1980, pp.

7. E.g., ’news concerns the event, not the underlying condition; the person, not the group; conflict, not consensus; the fact that ’advances f h e story’, not the one that explains it’ (Gitlin 1980, p. 28, emphasis in the original). Nimmo and Combs identified four traditional styles of television journalism: (1) populist/sensationalist accounts which ‘threaten viewers with the awful‘; (2) elitistifactual accounts which ‘render the awful manageable’; (3) ignorantldidac- tic accounts which ’demystify the awe- some’; and (4) pluralistlfeature accounts which ‘blend . . . sagacity with resignation‘

8. The ideal of altruistic democracy is expressed in news which ’implies that politics should follow a course based on the public interest and public services’ and that “’waste” is always an evil’ (Gans, 1980, p. 43). The value of responsible capitalism is expressed in the ‘optimistic faith in the good society’ (p, 46). Pastoral values include the values of nature and smallness (p. 49) while the value of individualism emphasizes the struggle of the individual against adversity, heroism, and self-made people. An additional individualism theme deals with threats to individualism such as those posed by certain types of technology (pp. 50-51). The enduring value of moderatism ’discourages excess or extremism’ (p. 51).

9. According to Gans, the seven categories of foreign news are: 1) American activities in foreign countries, 2) foreign activities that affect Americans and American policy, 3) communist-bloc country activities, 4) elec- tions and other peaceful changes in government personnel, 5) political conflict and protest, 6) disasters, and 7) the excesses of dictatorship (pp. 32-37).

10. Galtung and Ruge (1965) explore the factors of frequency, threshold, absolute

171 - 173).

(1985, pp. 28-29).



intensity, intensity increase, unambiguity, meaningfulness, cultural proximity, relevance, consonance, predictability, demand, unexpectedness, unpredictability, scarcity, continuity, composition, reference to elite nations, reference to elite peoples, reference to persons, and reference to some- thing negative in hypotheses regarding news coverage.

11. There are four types of disorder stories: natural disorder news (natural disasters and accidents ascribed to natural forces), technological disorder news (accidents not ascribed to nature), social disorder news (‘activities which disturb the public peace’, violence or threats against life and property, and ’the deterioration of valued institutions’), and moral disorder news (‘transgressions of laws and mores which do not necessarily endanger the social order’) (Gans, 1980, p. 52).

12. Included among these myths are widespread social breakdown, panic, flight, psychological dependency, victim compe- tition for resources, physical convergence and looting by non-victims. Specific myths include the following: a) that famine victims die of starvation when, in fact, they most often succumb to famine-related dis- eases such as malnutrition, diarrhea, typhus, or cholera; b) that victims who lose their homes are left helpless and dazed when survivors are most often amazingly resilient; c) that victims always need clothing after a disaster; d) that earthquake victims need food when food is not typically affected by quakes although food distribution could be affected; e) that disaster victims panic and become shocked and dazed when such ‘abnormal’ behavior is actually the exception rather than the rule; f) that looting frequently occurs after a disaster when such behavior is actually infrequent; and g) that the best way to help victims is to send food, clothing, blankets, and medicine when cash donations are the most helpful gifts (Cox, 1986, p. 25; Cuny, 1983; Dynes, 1970; Goltz, 1984; Quaran- telli, 1981; Quarantelli and Dynes, 1972, 1976, 1977; Scanlon, 1978; Wenger et al., 1975).

13. The ‘political economy of disaster-suscepti-

bility‘ is based upon population density, the level of prosperity, the resources and skills for disaster prediction, the organization of preventive measures, and the organization of relief and recovery measures.

14. E . g . , earthquake and volcanic zones; zones of meteorological extremes, flooding, and tsunamis; areas prone to epidemics; and areas with ‘high concentrations of hazardous man-controlled energy sources’ (Turner, 1979, p. 55).

15. A review of the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature and New York Times index indicated that the subject events had a typical duration of newsworthiness lasting only through the initial coverage day or the subsequent day in the New York Times and only during the week subsequent to the disaster for Newsweek and Time. This find- ing confirms the observations of previous research which indicates that media attention to disasters is short term (Moore, 1958; Waxman, 1973; Gans, 1980).

16. Brown (1985b) suggested a land-uselover- population theory which posits that when the surface of the earth is altered in some fundamental way the amount of heat ref- lectivity of the land or albedo is changed. When forestland is cleared for grassland the land becomes more reflective, and when grassland becomes desert, the albedo increases even further. When the albedo increases, a weather phenomenon called subsidence also increases. Consequently, dry air from the upper altitudes sinks down and displaces moist air. Thus, if changes in land surface increase albedo and albedo increases subsidence, then it might be possible that land use changes can ‘dry out‘ areas.

17. A tropical cyclone is an intense storm with windspeeds of over 118 kilometers per hour. Tropical windstorms are called ’hur- ricanes’ in the Caribbean, Atlantic, and North Atlantic regions; ’cyclones’ in the Indian Ocean; ’typhoons’ in the Pacific; and ’baguio’ in the Philippines. Winds are usually accompanied by torrential rains and can create ocean surges. (Wijkman and Timberlake, 1984, p. 70).

18. While quakes would appear on first glance to be no respecter of social class - affecting


News Media ’Consfruction‘ of Five Natural Disasters 323

rich and poor alike - they may in actuality be ‘class-quakes‘. According to Wijkman and Timberlake (1984) ‘strictly enforced building codes and zoning laws make Northern earthquake-prone cities less and less vulnerable - a growing number of people are building their homes in Third World cities on illegally occupied land. They are outside any building or zoning regulations. In the rural countryside virtually no building or zoning regulations exist . . . Governments face a choice of acknowledging the presence of illegal shantytowns by providing sanitation, water and road programmes - and thus being seen to abet the law-breakers - or of constantly demolishing shantytowns, which would mean a continual war against the poor. So many governments compromise by officially ignoring their presence’ (pp. 89-91).

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