As the tsunami crisis unfolds the power of the Internet to provide a service and information resource has been quite noticeable. In particular the bloggers have been much more part of the news gathering process than at any other time since the terrorist attacks in the USA in September 2001.

"The Internet played a similar role after the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., in 2001. Internet communities bubbled up soon after the attacks, allowing people to share their grief and information." [Michael Bazeley]

There are uncensored reports from private individuals full of first-hand accounts, without the intervention of any editor's influence.

"There are 13 colonies of fishermen, spread over the Marina beach in Chennai, which have been entirely wiped out by the Tsunami. These colonies were home to nearly 1 lakh fishermen folk, who have lost their homes and entire belongings." [Pune appeal]

As we were talking to them, everyone at the bar and area surrounding it stood up. We couldn't see properly, but something was going on. People started running, and children started screaming. A far bigger wave then lifted the jetty up, the whole porch of the bar smashed against the bar, the sea-most front of it hit the roof of the bar, and people were running through water.... I remember someone screaming for 'Alex' and her shouting back. [Stuart Lock]

Some of the filmed news reports I've seen by BBC and ITN reporters have focussed on the human misery, as you'd expect, but with a tendency to dramatise or be maudlin; the reporters' objectivity getting pushed aside by their need to show sympathy and concern for the victims. I can take this from the victims themselves but I want a news reporter to tell me the facts, not tell me how to react to them: I'll decide if I'm upset or not. I don't need a sanctimonious reporter to tell me "I feel it too."

There's also a tendency to show the white west stepping in to aid the poor brown east. Not enough notice is taken of what the local people and authorities are doing for themselves. It was encouraging to see India refusing aid because it can cope very well on its own, thanks anyway.

This time there was something different. The tsunami struck resorts where westerners were on holiday. 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. [The Guardian]

“Apart from the huge death toll,” Seth Mydans reported for the Times (using a version of the aside-from-that-Mrs.-Lincoln construction), “it was the presence of large numbers of foreign tourists that distinguished this disaster from the many floods and typhoons that take a heavy toll in the region every year.” He might as well have just said: Rich white folks are dying, too, as he listed all the European countries that had lost people. [The Progressive]

Perhaps the huge amounts of money given freely by individuals transcends all this imperialist guilt. We see on TV human beings facing crisis. It's a hard person who can't respond with some sympathy.

We can accept video of hundreds of anonymous bodies washing up onto the shores of southern India, but would we accept video of the corpse of a young girl floating in a neighbourhood swimming pool being shown on our local news? Through the news, we have become accustomed to seeing people in the developing world as victims: victims of war, victims of famine, victims of disease, and victims of natural disasters. In their eternal state of victim-hood, these people have had their right to individuality and dignity stripped, and thus their corpses are fair game for the evening news. [Christian Christensen]

I find myself turning off the television news. I get my information from reading. I am uncomfortable watching other people suffering while sitting in my safe European home.

"Coverage of the crisis is needed to alert the world to what is a massive humanitarian disaster, and showing death is a part of that. What is not needed, however, is coverage that panders to the dark, voyeuristic sides of our psyches." [Christian Christensen]

10:32:50 PM