Resorts Replace Tsunami Victims
Lindsay North
Issue date: 2/7/06 Section: Features
The culture in the United States is one that promotes rapid change. While this change may lead to positive outcomes such as innovative ideas and inventions, it can also create negative ones. Take, for example, our news media. The constant demand for something new in our culture has resulted in media coverage that bounces from topic to topic in order to feed the seemingly insatiable public appetite for a different and more sensational story. As a result, our major news sources such as CNN, Fox and the New York Times have what amounts to ADD at a corporate level; what makes headlines today may not even make the paper tomorrow. Remember that cute Cuban boy? His name was Esteban, right?
This "ADD" became glaringly obvious as I was reading The Guardian online (a U.K.-based newspaper) and I noticed a big headline about the tsunami relief effort in southeast Asia. I had just been on MSNBC.com and the only world news listed was about the war on terror, China's nuclear quest and the Gaza strip. Thanks, then, to England. Since the tsunami was over a year ago, you generally have to dig (deeply, I may add) through a printed news source to find an update on what's happening in regards to the relief effort. Even then, it may only be one of those "Where We Are One Year Later" bits of photojournalism. So it was monumental, then, that this tsunami article was a headline, complete with lots of text and had nothing to do with the sensationalist image of a boat on top of what used to be someone's house.
Instead, the article documented human rights violations that are occurring under the auspices of relief efforts in the affected countries. ActionAid International, along with Habitat International Coalition and PDHRE (People's Movement for Human Rights Learning), conducted a study in Thailand, Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives of over 50,000 people and concluded that "the governments frequently ignored human rights principles and failed to protect survivors from discrimination, land grabbing and violence."
This "ADD" became glaringly obvious as I was reading The Guardian online (a U.K.-based newspaper) and I noticed a big headline about the tsunami relief effort in southeast Asia. I had just been on MSNBC.com and the only world news listed was about the war on terror, China's nuclear quest and the Gaza strip. Thanks, then, to England. Since the tsunami was over a year ago, you generally have to dig (deeply, I may add) through a printed news source to find an update on what's happening in regards to the relief effort. Even then, it may only be one of those "Where We Are One Year Later" bits of photojournalism. So it was monumental, then, that this tsunami article was a headline, complete with lots of text and had nothing to do with the sensationalist image of a boat on top of what used to be someone's house.
Instead, the article documented human rights violations that are occurring under the auspices of relief efforts in the affected countries. ActionAid International, along with Habitat International Coalition and PDHRE (People's Movement for Human Rights Learning), conducted a study in Thailand, Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives of over 50,000 people and concluded that "the governments frequently ignored human rights principles and failed to protect survivors from discrimination, land grabbing and violence."
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