THE NEED: GREATER THAN WE KNOW

MEDIA RIGHTS AND WRONGS

EYEWITNESS TO DISASTER

Let the dissections begin anew in this new year, powered by inspiring language from the poet Pablo Neruda:

“This year that has fallen like a corpse in its tomb cannot rest with love and with fear. This expired year is a year of sorrows that accuse.”

2005 promises to be the year of continuing calamity and cleanup, the clean up of the disaster that was the year gone by.

Most pressing now of course are the countries and peoples afflicted by the Tsunamis and the earthquake in South Asia with their death toll climbing and effective help still not on the way a week later. The response has so far been so disproportionate to the need. All the money pledged means nothing if aid is not delivered in a timely way. People without food or medical attention will die. They don’t have time to wait for the international “community” to get its shit together. Already, it’s being reported that the death toll in Indonesia alone is climbing, now nearing l00,000.

“A MANIFESTATION OF GLOBAL UNITY.”

Indonesia’s President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, sees aid not as charity but as a “manifestations of global unity.” He says:

“I appeal to the world community to contribute to the reconstruction of Indonesia that has been hit by disaster and we welcome those contributions as a manifestation of global unity.”

THE QUALITY OF THE JOURNAMISM

Many of the crisis stories follow traditional human interest templates with stories of heroism and survival amidst the death and destruction. One classic of the genre: “Family dog saves boy from waves”

The Indian Express in New Delhi raised some valid questions about the coverage in India that seems to have a larger relevance:

“Perhaps it’s time for channels to draw up a blueprint of coverage norms for different events/ incidents/ disasters that involve violence, death and extreme suffering. Perhaps, as is the print media, reporters, or a team of reporters should specialize in certain fields — as they already do in sports and business — so that in such moments, they have some understanding of the problem, know what to ask or say. Don’t say food, medicines and supplies are required, identify what food, which medicines and the nature of supplies so we Northerners don’t donate bajra, Vitamin C and warm clothing…Expertise may help minimise the hysteria of less informed reporting.”

Where are the investigative reporters digging into why its taking so long to get the resources to those who need them? These needs are most immediate but let’s not forget the other crises the media has all but swept aside like Iraq, or AIDS, or even our own election where nagging questions have been drowned under the mantra that the counting has been done and that’s that. It isn’t. (A CNN interview program Sunday featured some pundits explaining why this crisis is good for Bush because it drives the horrors in Iraq off the front pages. That’s one heck of a bloody “silver lining.”)

NO ONE TO CALL

Why, O, why does our world have no global mechanism in place and on alert for disasters like the one that hit twelve countries and demonstrated how interdependent our world is and why borders and boundaries mean so little in an international crisis? Why is there no existing institutional capacity for a response?

I keep thinking of that line from a movie that made a certain kind of infestation so easy to expunge:

Question: “Who ya gonna call?

Answer? GHOSTBUSTERS!

WORLD ON VACATION

But who do you call when a part of our world is collapsing around us, and on a holiday weekend? These disasters rarely happen at good times but this one struck on the day after Christmas, Boxing Day in the UK, at 7 in the morning.

Truth be told, world leaders were in bed and on vacation. Asleep at the proverbial switch. Kofi Annan was in Jackson Hole Wyoming. There was no one to call at the UN. Many staffers were on “home leave.” The place was a ghost town. Most of the US media was focused on whether airline passengers in Philadelphia would get their missing luggage. GW Bush was in Crawford, probably as unfocused as ever. As far as official Washington is concerned, they believe we are the world and only work with others on our terms

There was and still is no one to call.

Even more tragic: there were people in the know who didn’t bother to call those about to be targeted: Satya Sagar, a journalist based in Thailand writes, “According to a Reuters report on December 28 from Los Angeles the wall of water set off by the earthquake was in fact tracked by U.S. seismologists who said they had no way to warn local governments of the danger. In this age of instant messaging, email, mobile phones, spy satellites and 24-hour television it is difficult to believe that claim…”

WHEN BAD NEWS IS GOOD NEWS

Reuters reports:

“Coverage of the Asian earthquake and tsunami disaster has increased cable news channel ratings during the usually dormant year-end period. Both Fox News Channel and CNN have seen double-digit increases to their total-day and primetime ratings this week versus the same time last year, but nowhere near the viewership levels that flocked to other major news stories.”

As some media outlets benefited with a rise in ratings and revenues, a question must be asked: why didn’t our TV media take the lead in helping? They showed us the problem but did not focus on solutions especially by helping their audiences respond in some structured, impactful and effective way. This is why MediaChannel calls for a United Media Appeal, a pro-active effort to work together to raise more money and awareness than our government is contributing:
www.mediachannel.org/views/dissector/affalert304.shtml

Many readers responded enthusiastically. (See my last blog entry if you missed it for a slew of comments.) I bumped into a top UN official who called it a “great idea” but I don’t have much confidence that they can or will pick up the ball. All their top people are on overload, organizing donor conferences, flying from here to there. So busy.

Besides, bureaucracies are rarely inventive or efficient. As one senior official told me, it took them a long time to get a Global AIDs fund going and it has not had a great track record of getting money to those most in need. Several of you wrote in to question sending money to the UN. Maybe you’re right, but surely some coordinated effort by the independent sector of NGO’s and humanitarian groups is needed and possible. The UN can help coordinate. A new US led “coalition” of “core countries” on the model of the “coalition of the willing” is the last thing we need.

Right now, there is a militarization of the US aid effort underway with Navy helicopters and ships engaged on Indonesian soil. BBC reports “12 American Seahawk helicopters delivering aid from a US aircraft carrier stationed off the coast of western Aceh.”

UN BASHING “WORRYING”

Former UK Development Secretary Clare Short (who resigned over the war and Blair collusion) criticizes President Bush’s approach in London’s Independent:

“In the middle of an extremely complex emergency, he tells us that the US, Australia, Japan and India will co-ordinate the international response. None of these countries has a strong record in responding to international emergencies, although India takes pride in its capacity to deal with its own problems. This proposal is likely to complicate rather than help international coordination Efforts are now under way to try to ensure that the coalition of four will work with the UN, but it is hard to see where the proposal came from, apart from yet another US attempt to snub the UN.

“I find this growing appetite for UN bashing very worrying. In a period of growing international disorder, humanitarian crisis and environmental threat, there is a major push by the world’s strongest power to undermine the only system we have for taking co-ordinated action to enforce peace, respond to humanitarian crisis and reach environmental agreements.”

I have been impressed by the UN’s Jan Egeland. He was optimistic in a press conference yesterday. AFP reports:

“Jan Egeland, the UN’s emergency relief said he could not say exactly how long those affected would need the supplies but that it would be for months and not weeks.

“We will need to feed over one million people in Indonesia alone,” said Egeland, who is directing the day-to-day operation of what is believed to be the largest international relief effort in history.”

FOREIGNERS VERSUS LOCALS

Some critics like Jeremy Seabrook in the Guardian are upset about the way the media focuses more on the plight of tourists than locals: “For the western media, it was clear that their lives have a different order of importance from those that have died in thousands, but have no known biography, and, apparently, no intelligible tongue in which to express their feelings. This is not to diminish the trauma of loss of life, whether of tourist or fisherman. But when we distinguish between “locals” who have died and westerners, “locals” all too easily becomes a euphemism for what were once referred to as natives. Whatever tourism’s merits, it risks reinforcing the imperial sensibility.”

Activists in Australia have put a up a blog to report on the grass roots response: http://asiantsunami.blogspot.com/

STINGY? YES!

Why can’t our media be a bit more analytical/critical about the US aid commitment which went from an initial very low $400,000 in cash, to $35 million to what we are now being told is ten times that. (Remember eleven Billion $ was poured in to Jeb Bush’s Florida after the hurricanes there, and before the election. Notes the NY Times editorially:

“According to a poll, most Americans believe the United States spends 24 percent of its budget on aid to poor countries; it actually spends well under a quarter of 1 percent.

“Bush administration officials help create that perception gap. Fuming at the charge of stinginess, Mr. Powell pointed to disaster relief and said the United States “has given more aid in the last four years than any other nation or combination of nations in the world.” But for development aid, America gave $16.2 billion in 2003; the European Union gave $37.1 billion. In 2002, those numbers were $13.2 billion for America, and $29.9 billion for Europe.

“Making things worse, we often pledge more money than we actually deliver…”

By the way, that NY Times editorial was titled: “Are We Stingy? Yes.” Check out the new website for more on this theme:
www.americamustdobetter.com

Over and over on TV we hear tht the Bush Administration US is sending TEN TIMES what was originally pledged? What does that mean when Japan gave more. Also the Times on Sunday reports that some in the Administration are suggesting that the Administration “use” the crisis as an opportunity to advance US policy goals in the region.

MEDIA COOPERATION CAN WORK

Some media outlets are cooperating in asking the public for donations. The Guardian and Independent in England are doing appeals. Chicago media outlets are working together this week on a big “ask” but so much more could have been done, and can still be done. A correspondent in Denmark advises:

“You may find joy in the fact that here in DK both DR and TV-2 are joining the help-work in the way that you have suggested in US. They work in unison with the Tele-companies and the rescue organizations — Red Cross, Unicef, Doctors without boarders etc. — to collect money. All week you have been able to send money directly to the organizations through the Tele-providers. By each call a 100 kr. (=18-20$) will automatically be charged to your next telephone bill. This coming week both stations will have daily programs for collections and information.”

If Denmark can do it, why not our networks?

ON THE SLOPES

Many of the top US media execs were skiing in Aspen or Vail last week. Most of the more experienced correspondents were off for the holiday. CNN deserves praise for its coverage but the reason they did do well is because they have an international channel in place with stringers, contributors and reporters around the region. Other networks do not.

Unfortunately, it’s only in a crisis that we hear from the likes of solid journalists like CNN’s Mike Chinoy who did a great job in Ache or Atika Shubert in Jakarta. That’s because CNN International is not on most of our cable channels on a regular basis. We have room for a million other channels but not one that brings us news of the world on a regular basis.

MOGULOCITY.COM

As for Fox, Rupert Murdoch, Fox#1 and man of the people, spent the holidays preparing to move into his new triplex Co-op at 834 5th Avenue. According to the NY Observer, the apartment has 20 rooms. 7 bedrooms, 11 1/2 baths, a top floor library solarium, not to mention a main hall and reception room. There are only three maids rooms.

The asking price was $44 million. This super-pad used to belong to Lawrance Rockefeller. The Murdochs are moving up town from Soho, a sign of how media power today enjoys the status that only financiers once occupied.

As homes in Asia wash into the sea, this is a symbol of opulent consumption worth noting.

CONTINUING COVERAGE?

Will the networks stay with the story? Will they track the continuing crisis and what is certain to be a protracted, and if the past is any guide, screwed up reconstruction effort? Will they look into why there were few warnings or the reports overseas that the US military and some Asian governments had warnings but didn’t sound them for various reasons?

AND WHAT ABOUT IRAQ?

We also have to contrast the willingness of the networks to bring us ghastly images of the dead in Asia where nature can be blamed for the carnage but not from Iraq where the US has a certain responsibility.

Writes Ghali Hassan:

“Unlike the death toll from the latest Tsunami in South-East Asia, which has morphed into an urge to hear more updates and to see more TV footages, the death of innocent Iraqi civilians is systematically ignored. The “stingy” outcry over natural disaster, and complete silence over the US-made disaster(s) is the West self-induced moral hypocrisy.”

http://uruknet.info/?s1=2&p=8541&s2=01

Mike Whitney makes a similar point on ZNET:

“The American media has descended on the Asian tsunami with all the fervor of feral animals in a meat locker. The newspapers and TV’s are plastered with bodies drifting out to sea, battered carcasses strewn along the beach and bloated babies lying in rows. Every aspect of the suffering is being scrutinized with microscopic intensity by the predatory lens of the media.

“This is where the western press really excels: in the celebratory atmosphere of human catastrophe. Their penchant for misery is only surpassed by their appetite for profits. Where was this ‘free press’ in Iraq when the death toll was skyrocketing towards 100,000?…”

www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=6941

Iraq’s “girl blogger” Riverbend has a new report up on what it was like to watch all the New Year’s celebrations on TV in Baghdad:
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

DO ANY COUNTRIES HANDLE DISASTERS WELL?

Have we been deadened ourselves in a sensory overload of visual grief? I am thinking of the hurricanes that devastated the Caribbean largely out of sight when the US media focuses on Florida. The Island of Grenada was wiped out; parts of Haiti were destroyed. Yet Cuba contained the catastrophe. Why? Organization. Preparation. Popular mobilization. Is there a lesson here worth reporting. In Asia for example, Vietnam all but crushed the threat of SARS. China has been effective in responding to floods and natural disasters. What could these countries have done, and why were they unable to. Was their poverty all their own fault or are larger forces at play?

In short, we need more than a litany of horror. We need context, Explanation. Analysis. History. What lessons were learned in responding to earlier disasters?

EYEWITNESS REPORT

Also, can we get a deeper sense of how people are and are not coping. What are the relief workers dealing with. Can we get some more depth there? Read this — a letter from a friend of mine, “an inside-out” journalist, Brennon Jones who is working in Thailand. This is a great example of the “participatory journalism” that I called for last Wednesday in that profile that Chris Hedges of the New York Times did on me. (If you missed it, you can link to it from Tim Karr’s cool new Media Citizen blog)

www.nytimes.com/2004/12/29/nyregion/29profile.html
http://mediacitizen.blogspot.com/

BRENNON JOINES: TRAUMA IN PHUKET

“As a veteran emergency medical technician with years of experience on a New York ambulance, it just made sense that I try to lend a hand. The Thai Government was pleading for medical assistance in the aftermath of the December 26 tsunami that had hit the resort provinces of Southern Thailand. Most of the injured — more than 10,000 in all, according to the latest estimates — had suffered blunt and penetrating trauma – not dissimilar to the type of injuries my emergency medical colleagues and I routinely treat on the streets of New York.

“As I was temporarily staying in Bangkok, I rushed to Don Muang International airport thinking I would offer my assistance with the masses of injured who were beginning to be medivaced from the South. At the Thai government help desk, an official quickly responded, “Thanks, but would you be willing to fly to Phuket instead?”

“I was soon aboard a Thai Royal Air Force jet bound for that principal resort city 430 miles to the south, the focal point for most of the relief and recovery efforts in the region. Surprisingly, I was the only ‘farang’ (foreigner) to be found on a mercy flight that included several hundred medical volunteers. There were doctors, nurses and medics and dozens of search-and-rescue workers. They included many of Bangkok’s legendary “body grabbers,” the groups that compete vigorously with each other in chasing Bangkok’s horrific car crashes, retrieving the road-dead to give them proper Buddhist burials. The latter came burdened with hundreds of sheets of white cloth to wrap the dead — the only covering available until supplies of zippered body bags could be procured. The rest of us carried medical supplies — tetanus shots, antibiotics, painkillers and dressings — to treat the living.

“While in the air, I befriended a team of six Thai surgeons and a dozen nurses. The head surgeon, Dr. Taweewong Chulakamontri, from Bangkok’s Vajira Hospital, invited me to join his medical team in their mission. Working with staff from Phuket International Hospital, our group quickly established an aid station just outside the departure area at Phuket Airport. A second medical station, chiefly for the stretcher borne, was operating in a building a short distance away. I ended up moving between the two.

“We were soon treating a tidal wave of injured foreigners, all of whom, despite their injuries, were desperately attempting to secure passage on long flights home, mostly for Sweden and other European destinations, or shorter flights to Bangkok, where they could obtain further medical treatment.

“A good number of these injured foreigners had lost passports and airline tickets. The Thai officials and counselors from the foreigners’ own countries worked wonders to get them temporary travel documents and on board flights. Many of the injured I saw in any normal situation would likely be deemed medically unfit to fly. But this was definitely no normal situation, particularly given that local Thai hospitals and clinics had become taxed far beyond their means with the massive numbers of Thai and farang injured.

“Working on an ambulance in New York, I am used to treating patients at the moment of injury, when the wounds are raw and the adrenaline runs high. If not unconscious, they are typically wide-awake anxious, often hysterical at the extent of their injuries, or just plain exhilarated at the realization they are still alive. What we found at Phuket airport was profoundly different.

“Several days had now passed since the foreigners were initially injured. Any adrenaline high was long since gone, replaced by blank-faced despair and depression as the reality of the injuries and of the loss of loved ones settled in full-force. In addition, most of the injured were suffering considerable pain from wounds now turning dangerously infected.

“Our medical team cleaned the festering injuries the best we could, rebandaging them and providing sufficient antibiotics and painkillers to buy the patients adequate time to get safely to their next destination.

“Some of these foreigners had multiple injuries, from head to toe. It was the result of the crushing forces of a sea gone wild, equivalent to being caught in the spin cycle of a washing machine in which you’re joined by the household furniture and the occasional appliance or car as well.

“…. I wouldn’t be surprised that it is the psychological injuries, not the physical ones, which are the most enduring….

“MY 9-11″

“In a small way, the Thai tsunami disaster has been my 9-11. In September 2001, I had not been in New York, but working with the United Nations in far off East Timor. I had been filled with anguish at the death of friends and colleagues in the towers, and particularly at being unable to assist my fellow emergency medical workers in their initial response, and then with the recovery of the dead and the dealing with the grief.

< "In Phuket, however, I was able to provide a bit of much needed medical help and, more importantly, lots of psychological first aid. I mention the psychological first aid, because a curious phenomenon unfolded. Sadly, many injured farang would focus their attention on me, the western face, absolutely convinced that I was the doctor and the authority figure. This occurred even though I was standing right amongst a highly competent team of Thai doctors and nurses, most of whom spoke some English and all of whom were, of course, of higher medical skills than me the EMT.

"In the end, we used this to our best advantage. I would steer the patients to the overworked Thai surgeons, saying "These are the doctor, ask them those questions." And the doctors would then proceed to give them immediate medical attention where necessary. But I would linger longer with such patients, hearing their stories sharing their grief, taking the time to lend them an ear and the psychological support they were desperately grasping for at that moment.

"In medical terms, the trauma in Thailand is worlds different from that experienced in 9-11. The numbers of fatalities suffered in Thailand alone will far exceed our own losses in New York, and the psychological scars will likely be even far more lasting. In New York, the lack of survivors was, of course, heart wrenching for the families of the victims and rescuers alike. But in most cases, family members did not actually witness the death of loved ones.

"In my short time at Phuket Airport, I saw fathers nearly catatonic over the loss of their children and children grown mute at the loss of their parents.

"Here, as in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and all the other countries that fell victim to the tsunami, thousands of adults and children saw immediate family and loved ones disappear before their very eyes on the cusps of lethal waves. That experience, combined with their own serious personal injuries, will leave psychological scars not easily removed. It is likely that long-term counseling and psychological support will be needed, and on a worldwide scale given the sheer numbers and disparate nationalities of those who have been traumatized. God knows, just being amongst those survivors, hearing their stories and gazing at their faces, left more than a few relief workers, including myself, deeply moved and occasionally in tears."

www.nytimes.com/2004/12/29/nyregion/29profile.html

GOOD RIDDANCE TO 2004

Peter Shrag summed it up in the Sacramento Bee:

“One of the blessings of having been around a long time is that in any dark moment of our national life you can usually think of another moment that, if you put your mind to it, seemed almost as dark or maybe darker: McCarthyism, Watergate, the disaster of Vietnam.

“But never in the memory of the living generation have the errors, falsifications and unreason of policy come in such rapid and overwhelming succession that each buries its predecessor before it’s even partially absorbed, much less understood.

“The result is an historic dynamic of error, dishonesty and corruption that’s far more frightening than any individual event. The counterpoint of revelations of flawed and myopic foreign policy decisions against the deepening quagmire overseas is itself so overwhelming that most people must have trouble keeping track of it.”

THE VOTES UNCOUNTED

I would add, Peter, that our media does not help us for the most part keep track of it. Obscuring “it” seems to be the role of all too many media outlets. Or simply refusing to follow up. Read on:

The Columbus Free Press reported December 31: “Ohio’s Official Non-Recount Ends amidst New Evidence of Fraud, Theft and Judicial Contempt Mirrored in New Mexico”

“By Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman

“Columbus - The Ohio presidential recount was officially terminated Tuesday, December 28.

“But the end comes amidst bitter dispute over official certification of impossible voter turnout numbers, over the refusal of Ohio’s Republican Supreme Court Chief Justice to recuse himself from crucial court challenges involving his own re-election campaign, over the Republican Secretary of State’s refusal to testify under subpoena, over apparent tampering with tabulation machines, over more than 100,000 provisional and machine-rejected ballots left uncounted, over major discrepancies in certified vote counts and turnout ratios, and over a wide range of unresolved disputes that continue to leave the true outcome of Ohio’s presidential vote in serious doubt.

“Officially, Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell has confirmed substantial errors in the vote count, with a shift of some 1,200 votes based on statewide recounts of about 3% of the vote. But additional new evidence of massive vote-counting fraud across the state continues to be unearthed, calling into question George W. Bush’s alleged victory in Ohio and pending re-election in the Electoral College.

“Blackwell, who was co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign, announced that his recount awarded 734 additional votes to Kerry and 449 additional votes to Bush. Meanwhile, more than 92,672 machine-rejected ballots remain unchecked and uncounted, as do at least 14,000 provisional ballots. Conservative estimates of Kerry’s net gain among those ballots are another 36,000 to 40,000 votes. No accounting in the count or recount has been made for voters turned away at the polls due to insufficient voting machines, computer malfunction, tampering with registration data, mishandling of absentee ballots, misinfo…”

www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/1057

NOW WE FIND OUT

Sunday’s Chicago Tribune carried a new poll that shows that the war was the issue that most Americans voted on.

“PEW RESEARCH POLL: MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE (IN THE ELECTION)

“It was the war.”

“On second thought, it wasn’t moral values.”

“THE IRAQ REFUGEE WHO DUPED AMERICA”

Read this article in the new Esquire. It tells the story of an articulate Iraqi refugee whose story of being raped and abused by Saddam and his crew became a top news story with Paul Wolfowitz and Paul Bremer using it to justify US policies. Sara Solovitch shreds the story and shows how it was based on lies. A great debunking, another blatant deception.
www.esquire.com/features/articles/2004/041222_mfe_dream_1.html

MEDIA NEWS: “RED-STATERS WATCH TV PROGRAMS THEY’RE SUPPOSED TO DESPISE

The Atlanta Constitution’s Cynthia Tucker writes that viewers in Red States, the ones thought consumer by “moral values” are the biggest fans of TV shows attacked as obscene.

She writes about the hypocrisy of Fox: “Fox pioneered the fine art of matching the basest human emotions (greed, thirst for celebrity, the insatiable desire to view public humiliation) with the most super-charged of human desires (the longing for romance, the desire for beauty, the need for familial acceptance) in so-called reality shows. Fox, after all, gave American culture the appalling “Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire?,” a miasma of greed and deception that made a mockery of marriage.

“Fox has also been socked with a record-setting federal government fine — $1.2 million — for violating decency standards on a show called “Married by America.” Last season, Fox introduced an unscripted show about wife-swapping.

“Those shows, like so many others of their ilk, were lapped up by the red-state voters who claim to despise such cultural degradation. Indeed, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. — which owns both Fox News and Fox Broadcasting Co. — has created a stable of morally repugnant programming because viewers flock to it. (Murdoch, an ultraconservative who contributes heavily to GOP causes, worships money above all else.)

“An enduring paradox of our times is that the very people who enjoy watching trashy television heap so much opprobrium on the machinery that produces it. Red-state America hates Hollywood, according to its self-appointed leaders. After national elections in which “moral values” supposedly trumped other concerns, Karl Rove summed up the results: “I think it’s people who are concerned about the coarseness of our culture, about what they see on the television sets, what they see in the movies.” Yet red-staters can’t get enough of that coarseness…”

YOUR LETTERS/OUR CONVERSATION

Ron Shepston:

“With the coverage of the deaths of the tsunami comes a realization that mass media are lazy or cowards or both. It’s easy to do stories that are dumped on your lap. Support for victims of natural disasters is massive if their plight is broadcast for the entire world to see. It’s easy to understand the differences between bringing the stories of the tsunami and the stories of the American occupation of Iraq. The public begs for coverage of natural disasters. In Iraq the American government was the consequences hidden and reporters could be picked off by ‘friendly fire’ for reporting stories that would show the real consequences of war. These differences are simply reasons but they are not an excuse for the lack of reporting on Iraq…”

SOS TSNUMANI

Han-shan:

“I appreciate the sentiments in your article ‘SOS Tsunami.’ I think most people are sincerely saddened by the fate that has befallen millions of people, no matter how removed it all seems. And I think most folks want to help but need a little prodding and well, as I think you suggest, ‘marketing.’

“I want to see a smart campaign (maybe by one of the gutsier relief orgs, like Oxfam) to convince a big retailer to make the following announcement: ‘Customers, bring in your unredeemed holiday gift cards, and we’ll cash them and give the money straight to the tsunami disaster relief effort. We think it’s the least we can do to help. Thank you.’”

RF Salz:” Don’t send the donations to the UN. They screw up everything they touch.”

WALMART CAN DO BETTER

“D Boone: “Please tell me if this idea has merit: Late last week I saw where WalMart was reported to have donated 2 million in aid … NOW I seem to have remembered hearing where the WalMart heirs each received several BILLION each in profits for the past year alone. These people should at least drop a BILLION to assist the people in getting back some of what they’ve lost. After all it is from the cheap labor of people like this that allows the truly cheap products to be flooded into the US to turn out the vast profits year after year….”

Kathy Swaa from Canadia, New Hampshire:

“It dawned on me instantly…When I had read about how we give Israel more than $15 million A DAY(!), I thought, why not suspend that exorbitant donation for, oh, maybe a hundred days or maybe only give them that money, for which I can’t explain as to why they need so much more than all other suffering countries combined, every other day. I doubt they’d suffer nearly as much as the earthquake victims. Besides, I don’t think landgrabbing is anything we should support. But that’s just me. I don’t have a problem with Israel other than their policies. I think the people are generally good. They can’t help who is elected just as we can’t help who we selected/appointed/reunelected. I simply can’t justify the amount. $15 M… I think this proposal makes sense and I think we, as a nation, should vote on it. Long as the election isn’t rigged, of course.”

AMERICANS MISSING

Catherine Kenward writes:

“3000 Americans missing in SE Asia. I had to do a major internet search to find that out. Finally found it on a conservative website that had posted an email from Bill Frist. Just thought it was funny that there were no numbers for Americans when the number of missing Europeans has been so thoroughly discussed. The corporate media doesn’t let us know anything any more.”

US POLICIES “OFFENSIVE”

Sandy Lambrecht:

“I’m sure I’m not the only one who felt deeply embarrassed at our Idiot-in-Residence offering the barest pittance of aid. While billions are being frittered away for ‘missile defense’ and the shameful debacle in Iraq, not to mention all the incestuous war-profiteering, the few million being pledged to this unprecedented catastrophe is extremely offensive. We shouldn’t have to personally be ponying up extra money to send to the victims - our irresponsible government should be moving heaven and earth to get help to those people - what they need, not what we’re trying to dump.

I well remember the self-pitying indulgence when those hurricanes struck Florida — and all the whining by privileged spoiled Americans (remember the complaints about phone service) — and the instant response — all those pallets of bottled water and other necessities pouring in to aid the afflicted. Here we have over a hundred thousand people killed — the count will rise sickeningly as the ‘clean-up’ progresses — and our government is twiddling their thumbs and tossing pennies at the problem.

“This is a national disgrace. We should be mobilizing as if this happened right here in America — and one of these days, it just might — global warming promises that much. I don’t want to hear another Colin Powell mealy-mouthing excuses — or defending incompetence, as he did today regarding the half-ass US response so far.

“We, as Americans, are responsible to some extent for the extreme poverty of the affected regions — we’ve allowed non-elected agencies to exploit the poorest and most vulnerable populations around the world — and then we’re SHOCKED!!! just shocked that a tidal wave could cause so much destruction and loss of life. This is the perfect opportunity for all of us to vent our outrage - inundate mass media with a snowstorm of requests for in-depth coverage - and not just the most titillating aspects of the carnage for the benefit of our addicted voyeurs….

“Okay guys — get to it! Call your local TV station, PBS, cable channels, your favorite magazines — every outlet you can imagine — and innocently ask for ‘more information’ about the economic and cultural realities of the regions affected. We CAN make a difference — just as the Right-Wing overwhelms mass media whenever THEY want an issue addressed, we can have just as much clout. Let’s try it and see what happens. this tsunami look like a splash in a kiddie-pond….”

WHAT ONE READER DID

Hats off to Larry Geller:

“I noticed that Google AdSense ads were placing some rather sleazy ads on pages related to the tsunami disaster. For example, on a page at the waveofdestruction.org website which has gruesome photos of the disaster at Phuket, Google Adsense has placed an ad which tastelessly says: ‘Phuket Guys and Girls/Conferencing and Mingling On/the Web Looking for Dates,/Romance and Fun!’

“Too bad they aren’t placing public service ads that could actually direct people to ways of helping, thought I.

“So I dashed off an email to Google on Wednesday — not to the AdSense support address, where it might get buried, but to their press relations address. There, I felt, it would be noticed and acted upon.

“It was — I got an email within hours that they would fix the problem, and later another:

“‘We appreciate your comments and are working hard to avoid showing ads that may not be appropriate at this time. Meanwhile, we are working to ensure that such sites are displaying ads aimed at relief for the area. Relief ads are now displaying on the page with photos from Phuket and on other pages across the waveofdestruction.org domain.’”

Jade Mortimer from Mass’don’tblameme’achusetts:

“Danny Schechter, the News Dissector from ‘BCN circa 1970ish? … Obviously you are doing good things in your life because I read your article on ‘Common Dreams’ … thanks for the blast from the past … ”

Joyce Vanman of SF:

“Greetings Mr Schechter, I loved your article first off, I have a small charity networking site and I’d definitely post your banners or press on there. I am organizing a benefit concert where I live in the hopes we can raise a lot of money to help with relief and rebuilding.”

Mary O’Reilly, St. Louis, Mo suggests protesting to Bush and Cheney re miserly $ for aid. She adds “applaud and admire your work. Please stick with it!”

THE YEAR AHEAD

One resolution I have is to try to keep this year is to keep these blogs at a more reasonable length. I am not getting off to a good start, am I? Forgive my transgressions. Today, I am trying to sum up some of what I missed…. We are planning some cool upgrades for the Dissector blog soon.

If you like what you read — even if I doth go on too long — tell your friends to subscribe. Onward, into the news year.

I am Danny Schechter. Reach me at dissector@mediachannel.org.