Dart Blog The Real "Enemy" in Disasters
The Real "Enemy" in Disasters
The newly formed Emergency Media and Public Affairs group in Australia held its annual conference in Melbourne, Australia May 24-26. Network Nine news reporter Brett McLeod, who produced Dart Centre Australasia’s "News Media and Trauma" DVD, and Ochberg Fellow Gary Tippet both represented the Dart Centre at different presentations at the two-day conference.
McLeod gave a 40-minute presentation on the work of the Dart Centre from the perspective of "do no further harm." In this presentation, Brett spoke of not only the importance of self-care and peer support but also Dart’s focus on respectful and ethical interviewing and treatment of survivors. Ochberg Fellow and Dart Centre Australasia director Gary Tippet presented on a panel that explored the media’s interactions with emergency services.
Both presentations raised the issue of working with emergency services rather than in opposition to them, highlighting the fact that during emergencies the two groups typically have more in common than not. Australian Broadcasting Corporation local radio journalist Richard Dinnen from Far North Queensland noted that during Cyclone Larry the media "saved lives during the emergency and sustained life during the recovery.” This sentiment was echoed throughout the recent Victorian bushfires. During the disaster, the media often became the main avenue of communication for local communities, and their storytelling became part of the healing process.
The panelists encouraged proactive dialogue between media and emergency services, concluding that the "enemy" in disaster situations isn't the media, but bad media-responder relationships.
Cait McMahon
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Cait McMahon PhD (Cand.) is a registered psychologist and fulltime managing director of Dart Centre Australasia, with headquarters in Melbourne, Australia and activities throughout the Asia Pacific region. McMahon has been interested in the nexus of journalism and trauma since working as staff counsellor at The Age newspaper in Melbourne, Australia in the mid ‘80’s and 90’s. This interest resulted in postgraduate research in the area in 1993 with subsequent publications.
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Comments
I discovered this file on PTSD Combat, by Ilona Meagher in the US.
after watching TV news of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita here in the US, then today finding your net, I want to compliment you on the approach of complementing the emergency service with broadcast.
Here in the US, even on CNN, the reporting is often on the sensational, rather than helping the situation. Having been involved in disaaster palnning, I beleive the media have a responsibility to compliment the efforts of emergency services, rather than just report the sensational.
I urge you to explore the Gender disaster network out of Boulder colorado at the university. There is much the media could do in providing accurate information about situations in disasters, rather than sound bites. This DGender disater net has contacts worldwide of people on the ground, rying to make life easier in the
less developed disaster capable aspects of our world.
I urge those of yoou involved in this net to explore the disaster work at the university of Colrado in the US.
WADR
Chuck McIntyre
Thanks for a great post about the conference. What great work you all do.
I would point out one other way that reporting about catastrophe and disaster could be more effective and nuanced. The good old panic narrative, in which disaster hits and everyone immediately reverts to a “save your behind” state of nature, simply does not hold up in social science research. “Panic in the streets” or other nifty tabloid headlines might quicken the pulse or cause some hyperventilation, but they are seldom accurate descriptions of human behavior.
A whole host of researchers have found that disasters can tear at a social fabric, destroy family ties, and disorient communities for decades. But I can't tell you the number of disaster researchers who, hypothesizing panic and selfish behavior, have found no small amount of altruism instead.
It is unfair to pin our romance with the panic narrative solely on the press. It is pervasive in media and culture. Who didn’t love those old horror movies when crowds, fleeing some oversized lizard or gob of goo, ran helter skelter through the back lot at American International Pictures?
But altruistic behavior also needs to be part of media coverage, not because it will make us feel good about ourselves (although it might), but because it is real.
Good news coverage tells the whole, nuanced story, and stunning and even unexpected altruism is often front and center in the midst of catastrophe.
Steve Gorelick
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