In the midst of a crisis, what does an audience need to know?
How should extreme situations be covered?
You be the editor! Decide how to cover the Haiti earthquake.
Disaster struck Haiti late in the afternoon on January 12, 2010. A catastrophic earthquake, with a magnitude 7.0 Mw, struck the island nation at 16:53, its epicenter only 25 kilometers west of the capital of Port-au-Prince.
You Be the Editor
News editors had to decide what image to pick to tell the breaking news story of the quake. What part of the story should be emphasized?
Which photo would you choose? How would you ‘frame’ the news?
- Should an editor tell the distressing story of people still trapped in the rubble, as pictured in photo 1 above?
- Or should an editor focus on the positive: that some victims were already receiving aid? See the photo of the small child receiving medical attention.
- Should an editor emphasize that as tragic as the quake was, some Haitians had been rescued? Consider photo 3 of the survivor.
- Perhaps editors should emphasize how many thousands had died? Is the photo of the row of dead too graphic — or ‘just right’ because the dead can’t be identified?
- Or, given the scale of the human tragedy, should editors to bear witness to everything that happened—even if such an image is hard to look at? This last photo has everything: a victim, a row of aid workers, and survivors.
Which news outlets chose the same photo as you?
A bit more about the 2010 quake in Haiti…
It is not known how many died in the quake from the dozens of aftershocks that followed, but estimates range up to a quarter of a million people. In addition to those dead, another 300,000 are believed to have been injured and 1,000,000 made homeless. A quarter million homes either collapsed or were severely damaged.
The severity of the earthquake made it difficult for aid workers and journalists to access the area. As a result, the first photos of the crisis hit world headlines on January 14. As the images came back, news outlets wrestled with what to show.
→ And as the images above demonstrate, editors across the world did make different decisions about how the disaster should be ‘framed.’
