The difference on the reporting of natural disasters between China and other countries

Member: LiangZefang( ) WangShanshan( ) ChenYanzhou( ) PeiTong( ) SunJie( ) LiuWei( )

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The differences between the reporting of 3.11 Japan earthquake in China and United States

General Compare

March 11th

By Daily Mail Reporter 12:19 GMT, 11 March 2011

March 14th

The United States The Anchorage Daily News.

Several days later

Los Angeles Times

Chengdu Commercial Daily

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Differences between <Peoples Daily> and <New York Times>

About their own countries: <Peoples Daily> It provided special contents about how to find embassy in Japan to overseas Chinese and students who were in Japan . <New York Times> Nothing about Americans who were in Japan.

About the scene of the earthquake: <Peoples Daily>:only the journalism said how he felt when the earthquake happen. < New York Times>:use many details and different peoples feelings to describe what a huge earthquake it is

Use of resources: <Peoples Daily>:news come from NHK and Embassy in Japan only < New York Times>: synthesize different resources reports(including NHK US Geological Survey BBC Russian Emergency Situations Ministry Pacific Tsunami Warning Center)

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Some articles only focus on the surface phenomena of the earthquake and ignore those people in earthquake-relief campaign. For example the 21st century business herald The newspaper called the 21st century business herald makes plans for one selected topic about a Tibetan girl who survives in the earthquake. Their original idea is to explore the change of the girls attitude towards religion. It tries to discover the conflict between human nature and religious faith in the background of natural disaster. However, they didnt put the plan into practice in the end because this topic is a little sensitive. Many details about religion have to be deleted so that the article is confusing. Therefore they choose to give up.

The media dont have the ability of applying various branches of learning to their report. We can use economics to analyse the financial policy of post-disaster reconstruction. We can use political science to connect rescue with the organization of the local government. We can also use sociology to explore ethnic and religious problems in the earthquake.

Some media dont pay enough attention to the technology report. Maybe some information such as magnitude and the source of earthquake are mentioned in a few reports. However, other information such as environment is seldom mentioned. The earthquake will more or less affect the surrounding such as SanJiangyuan. Whats more, the journalist can also to collect material about geology in China. For example, how many cities are located on the earthquake zone throughout our country.

The government tends to impose a lot of restrictions on news media coverage when the serious accidents break out. For example, there is an article from a local newspaper in Qinghai province. We can find those words such as Party and government dozens of times between the lines. However, theres no word about the contributions which Lamas make to providing disaster relief. In fact, there are about ten thousand lamas in the scene of the disaster and they played an important role in rescuing victims. The local government always regards the religion as a sensitive topic so it is hard for lama to appear on the newspaper. However, it's worth mentioning that some authors begin to realize them such as the article called rescue team made up of lamas written by ChenJiang.

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Some comparisons about humanism

When serious accidents or natural disasters happen In China, we usually just find casualty count from our news. Audiences cant get the information about the victim, the wounded or the missing. But the Western media show more humanistic thinking in their news reporting. They usually announce the victim list to show respect and mourn the dead.

For example: 2 29 17 46 13 43 By February 29 in the afternoon, Kerr chemical plant in Hebei Province explosion accident death toll is 17, and 46 people were injured. The day before casualties data was13 people dead and 43 got injured.

This is an article from Beijing News. It tells the number of the victim and the wounded in the explosion accident, but nothing about their names or the missing. However, some family members of the missing are looking for the missing anxiously. The newspaper didnt give any help in their news. Actually they can publish the names and t photos of the missing to help them to be found.

Example: The school shooting in Virginia Tech on April 16th left 32 people, and the gunman, dead.

After the crazy shooting happened, many newspapers in America gave detailed report. And on 19th, the media announced 29 victims names and photos. On 20th,a complete list of 32 victims was announced.

Example:

The Iraq war

War is a disaster too. In this disaster, about 2000 soldiers lost their lives between 2003 and 2005. The New York Times carried the names and photos of the dead on their newspaper, and the behavior was highly spoken in the world of journalism.

The conclusion:
In a word, a good journalist should put humanism and humanity in the first place. In this way the news they report can be more meaningful and honorable.

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Hurricane Sandy

This time, Chinese media did deep and comprehensive reports for the Hurricane Sandy. Including the details, electric power, life, economy, lose and settlement of claims.

Many of those reports involve the American Election.

Chinese state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) was also in the game, and did all-to-wall coverage reports of super storm Sandy.

 With already more than 150 employees in Washington, D.C., alone about a third of them Chinese nationals CCTV boasts the means to provide extensive coverage of major events outside of its home country.

The American media use all available tools to report sandy, from real-time chat to interactive map. Those reports are more helpful than Chinese reports to the victims.
Real-time blog A lot of news agencies, such as CNN, were providing a stable flow of information and field reports for the storm. The other two blogs are New York Observer, it continues to offer the local news reports, such as the bridge closed and rainfall; another is Reuters real-time blog. Real-time chat The timeliness of the BBS, such as NBCs BBS in Washington and Newarks Star Period Times, provide specific areas of public space to share the safety prevention techniques and communication security for the readers.

Social media The Wall Street journal and ABC news did the proving job with the pictures from Twitter and Facebook. Maps Many news web sites published sandys radar image, or made project contents.

In such a dense report, some net friends feel uncomfortable.

Why did some networks have to show reruns or Dateline type shows about the storm damage when they had something else scheduled? All they were doing was showing the same footage that was just already on. I understand reruns of the Daily Show and Colbert they are shot in NYC. I watched enough of the news to know exactly what was going on I did not need an addition 3 hours of the same stock comments and footage. Is it really 24 hour news or it just the same things on an endless loop? http://behindthewall.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/31/14833820-wall-to-wallcoverage-of-superstorm-sandy

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Why the Chinese media did all-to-wall coverage reports of super storm Sandy ?

 As the storm played out and CCTV provided near-continuous coverage, comments on China's popular Twitter-like service, Microblog, exploded over 6 million at this point, making it easily the biggest trending topic on the site. Many comments were overwhelmingly negative and they criticized CCTV's handling of super storm Sandy. Their complaints: CCTV was so singularly focused on coverage of the American storm that the Chinese state broadcaster had stopped covering news in China, ironically transforming instead into what many here called mockingly "the conscience of the United States."

 Or as a popular online cartoonist who goes by the pen name "Murong Aoao" sardonically put it: "CCTV is an excellent American media company In a cartoon that has been shared more than 50,000 times on Weibo, Murong paints what appears to be a CCTV reporter or government employee pointing to what is assumed is the United States while calling out, "Look! His house is on fire!" all while he himself is ablaze.

Asked why he drew the cartoon, Murong simply told NBC News: "It wasn't a big deal, it was just a way to ridicule the coverage."

 The cartoon encapsulates the anger that has been laced through many of the online dialogues over CCTV's coverage. Much of the frustration conveyed in Murong's cartoon is rooted in the fact that CCTV's reporting on the storm and other American disasters in the past often superseded local stories here in China that Netizens believe demand coverage. Most noticeably, a week-long protest in the eastern city of Ningbo over local government planning to build a controversial chemical factory occurred.Yet its nearly completely ignored. State media was allegedly warned not to cover the story and when thousands flocked to the streets of Ningbo to peacefully opposed the plant, only foreign media could be seen in the city reporting on the gatherings, sparking applause from grateful locals. "CCTV sends lots of correspondents to the U.S. to report on Sandy," complained one irate citizen. "Why do they have no time for Ningbo, but for America?"

- CCTV CNN

 Yes, of course, it's necessary for China's media to report the Hurricane Sandy. It does not mean that China has exposed the US's scandal deliberately. Sandy itself was a significant incident no doubt and it could be the same focus for every media wherever it came from. We could see the point clearly on Japan's earthquake and the tsunami occurred in the Indian Ocean. In recent years, China's medias have grown rapidly. This phenomenon has loaded too much weight than it could, yet we can judge a news article appropriately through the insight the article presenting to us only. In a word, the Sandy event was a quite good chance for all the medias to practice and exercise. It's time for us to take the colored spectacles away as far as we can.

Thank you for listening