Two weeks ago the earthquake hit Haiti and destroyed more or less a whole country in seconds. What we saw in the direct aftermath was a media coverage close to painful in many ways. Now, not even two weeks after the earthquake, the topic does not even make the headlines of most newspapers anymore, the twitter feeds are getting more and more silent. Some might say, not surprising and yes, they are right. That is how it is in our world. Still i believe it could be different and still i think there are many things that could have been done differently (aka better?). This is a selection of my thougts to it. I’ve not been to Haiti in that time neither have i ever covered such a high media event like this. So this are my perceptions and thoughts of the coverage and i’m happy, when i’m proofed wrong or this leads to some discussion about the topic. Here are some of my points.
This point is something what was discussed a couple of times in the last weeks. Foto8 pointed out that the huge amount of redundancy of pictures leads on the one hand to a point that many pictures are looking quite similar, but also that it takes away a huge amount of potential for stories to be told. Maybe it is normal, that in the first days in the whole chaos, where no one really has a clue where to go, how to get to places and what acually happened where, that the different media outlets are hitting the same spots. But does that mean that they should cover the same stories? In the first days we saw mainly one thing: A wild coverage of the devastation in many ways plus when ever someone was pulled out of a building. Like an overview of what happended. Quite understandable in this chaos, i guess, and maybe also the right thing to do. But isn’t a disaster like that, what is so wide spread, so total, the perfect situation to step away from the other, to find unique places, stories and pictures. It should have not been difficult to find horrific spectacular stories without the need of redundancy in that amount.
My concerns with that is not only that it leads to similar pictures. One of the problems i see is that a group of journalists covering the same events (more to that later.), also means that it will not help the relief teams in any way. There were many people who complained about the huge amount of journalists, being everywhere and not seldom just being in the way. So less redundancy means for some situations also more help for the actual relief crews on the ground.
After the first days i expected to get bigger stories, like coverage of families for some days, their daily struggle in the situation. Less emergency snapshots, more deeper into the situation. I expected more single stories on certain situations, but at least my feeling was that the coverage never really stepped into that. My feeling was that most photographers were running around, still searching for the most dramatic picture they could find and at the point the bodies were mostly removed they went on to cover the ‘crimes’ that happen now. The ‘looting’ and so on (i mean, think about it for a second, what you would do, when you starve for days. Wouldn’t you try to get some food and water, even when it’s illegal?). The more dramatic the better. The other part of photographers embeded themselves in all the NGOs now taking slowly over after the first days and covering the relief they brought to the people. Also here many complained that the huge coverage of this was far away from reality and that the amount of coverage had nothing to do with the amount of relief that actually reached the people. That as many pointed out, the relief was reaching the people way slowlier than we might have thought, but at the same time the situation was beside exceptions most of the time calm and peaceful, was not what you got out of the media.
It was interesting to see how the coverage happend. For the first days after the earthquake i had no television, but could check the internet. So what i saw in this days was mainly pictures. Good pictures have in events like that a calm deep power to bring it close to you. With all the problems that the coverage itself might have, the pictures did the right job, also because they left out many things. Like a situation of a woman being pulled out from under a house and then seeing the picture of the same situation with six, seven photographers surrounding this two guys from the relief crew who just pulled out a woman from under a broken down house was more than bizzare and it was maybe the first time i really thought something is wrong here. Then, five days into the disaster, i watched CNN for the first time. I switched on the tele and the first thing i saw were two journalists, or better call it commentators, in nice studio light talking about the crazy stuff that happens all day in Haiti. They were obviously standing somewhere a bit higher, looking down in the back on a camp with displaced people. At that point i felt ashamed. It felt like it had become another event to report from. The commentators were looking on the situation without real contact to it, at least it felt like that. This might be wrong and maybe the nice light (wasn’t there a problem with power and stuff?) they were standing in, made it more bizarre. There is no doubt about it that a disaster like that needs te highest amount of coverage possible, but also or just because of that should the journalist not behave more from a listening point of view than shouting it out in the world how horrific and unbelievable the situation is without even trying to really understand it? Shouldn’t journalists not work together and spread out to cover as many different occasions as possible? And shouldn’t they talk with the Haitians to get an understanding what it really means for them, even better let them tell their stories?
I was looking for it all the time: That they start reporting not only on two things, the international help and the chaos, but start reporting what the people are going through. That they get deeper in the situations. Where are the stories following the people? Where are the stories about all the Haitians who pulled out way more people than any relief crew? Where are the stories of the Haitians who describe the situation and tell their perspective on it? Where are those stories that step out of the stereotype that a failed state like Haiti can do nothing right without the help of the western world? Isn’t it time that we learn that this is not reality, even when we would like to believe it? There is no doubt that every relief that comes these days to Haiti is good, that every help that really helps the people is good. But isn’t there another side of the story? We should stop to show them only as victims without a voice when we want to understand their situation. Without doing this we just swim in the same stereotype we are swimming in for way too long: The poor black people, not able to get anything running by themselves, but luckily the big western world comes and helps. We have to get into that when we really want to help on a long run and make Haiti something what could last longer than the glimpse of two weeks. When we not only want to bring the relief that billions of donations and the power of international help finally made it good, so we can forget about it again. When we want to keep the attention for the problems and potentials for a longer time and help, we have to understand it. And that is only done with the help of the Haitians. When we do not evolve a interest in their stories, Haiti will become just another goodwill story where no one feels bad about, because we stood together and donated some money, but also a story forgotten in some weeks.
The problem of redundancy and with that the missing deeper stories and photoessays might not be solved in the first days of a disaster like that, but wouldn’t it be an idea as get cooperations running, like big media outlets working together, sending photographers to different places, with clear stories to cover, not this a little bit of everything? That would allow to dig deeper into stories, take more time for these. In times of the internet it could also be easily made accessable. Just think of twitter (a great resource of photography from Haiti these days…) What when photographers operating in a crisis area like that would upload their pictures and then tweet this with a certain hashtag (like Haitiphoto for instance). It would allow a good overview on what happens and the newspapers could pick out the stories they would like to take. This is just an idea and for sure there are some needs in the back to organize that, but it would also allow a bigger freedom to report and dig into stories.
Where are the Haitian photographers? Why were the first groups of journalists or NGOs not coming full with bags of cameras to equip the local photographers that might have lost their stuff, to get them back into the story? They know the place, they speak the language, they have passed through all this, so they have all the sensibility and understanding to cover it, a understanding of the situation that no one else will get close to in a short amount of time. Why not support them in any way possible? I’m not saying they should cover it alone, there is for sure a big need for the best photographers in the world to be there and cover it, but not only! And a big plus with local photographers is also that they could be the ones to cover the long-run stories when the crowd of war(event?)photographers had left for a long time. And it would be the right step to give the people more respect and act from a less voyeuristic point of view. What do you think, how a local photographer or journalist would have told the story of people looting? Without getting deeper into that discussion, would he have called it like that?
Maybe, that is my feeling, reporting from a crisis like that needs less shouting out, but more listening sometimes. And more power to the people, more trying to get their stories if we do not want to end it as a story of the western world intervening in a developing country to help, where we get out with the feeling of ‘just another crisis’ that could have taken place everywhere, more precise in every developing country.
At the end the media is also just a big business, so the amount of really caring for a situation like that might be low, especially when they go with the flow and report 24/7 on it till the point people get tired of it. For sure that is what brings for a short amount of time, when the story is hot, high TV ratings and good selling newspapers, but shouldn’t there be a little bit more sense of duty to do it right and with respect? And this way maybe create an interest for it that lasts longer than two weeks?
[...] The final quote I believe sums a lot of what I have been writing about – but something we should learn from. “When we do not evolve an interest in their stories, Haiti will become just another goodwill story where no one feels bad about, because we stood together and donated some money, but also a story forgotten in some weeks.” Simon Sticker (@flow_media) – Haiti a learningful experience [...]