Tsunami and the US Media

[Judi Lynn]

1



News articles pointed out that you had to go back centuries, in some cases, to find as many deaths caused by an earthquake ..

Tsunami and the US Media
1/4/2005 - Social - Article Ref: AN0501-2570

By: Michael Saba
Arab News* -

Tsunami devastated
Akkrapattai, India
A friend posed a question to me. He said, "You write about these things all of the time. Does it make sense that the US has allocated $87 billion to spend on Iraq and initially only $35 million to help the people of South and Southeast Asia devastated by the earthquake and tsunami?" Is the US "the most generous nation in the world" as stated by President Bush or is it one of the most "stingy" countries as mentioned by Jan Egeland, the UN relief coordinator? And how have Americans and the American media reacted to one of the largest natural disasters that mankind has experienced?

As we listened to the first media reports of the Indonesian earthquake and the subsequent tsunami last Sunday, those reports were initially lost amongst the holiday season stories of storms and stranded airline passengers. Initial accounts of the Asian disaster placed the numbers killed only as one or two thousand. Those numbers brought to mind the 2,982 people killed in the Sept. 11 crisis and the more than 1300 American servicemen killed in Iraq. America had responded to Sept. 11 and Iraq in a very strong fashion. Would we respond to the Asian crisis and loss of life in a similar fashion?
(snip)

The American media showed devastating pictures of destroyed cities and villages in Asia and videos of scores of unidentified dead bodies floating in the water. However, the stories about individuals lost in the tragedy were overwhelmingly about Americans and other Westerners. Profiles of fair-skinned victims were shown over and over again yet the darker skinned victims were just part of the mass deaths. Very few, if any, stories emerged about Asian individuals who died or suffered as a result of the disaster while the story of the Western super model who survived the flood was repeated many times. We were not exposed to the "humanization" of the Asian victims.
(snip)

One had to search far and wide in the Western media to see that Saudi Arabia initially pledged $10 million for relief aid to the Asians. And you had to research even deeper to see that Saudi Arabia has, over the last three decades given foreign aid to 70 countries in excess of $76 billion. More significantly, this amounts to about 4 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Saudi Arabia, one of the highest percentages of foreign aid amongst the world's nations. In contrast, the United States gives about one tenth of one percent of its GDP to foreign aid. Again, significantly, between one fourth and one third of that American foreign aid goes to Israel which has a higher per capita income than some European countries.
(snip/...)

http://www.iviews.com/Articles/articles.asp?ref=AN0501-2570

(The author landed a couple of points worth considering, especially the reference to the actual percentage of U.S. foreign aid, which has been discussed at D.U. recently.)

[BrklynLiberal]

1. It was pointed out on Laura Flanders, I believe, that all the faces that

were shown on TV, of children who lost parents, were white faces. There was no real focus on the Asian and other local residents who had suffered losses. The immediate losses that were shown on the MSM were on the European and American faces. I know that there was a big story about how some supermodel survived.
Reminded me very much of how the early Christians thought it was heretical to say that the Earth was not the center of the universe.
The NeoCon RW Fundies, supported by the MSM, are still pushing the concept that the center of this planet, and ergo the universe, is white, Christian, and particularly, male.

(It may have been on Thom Hartmann that point was made)