December 29, 2004
-
Some friends visiting Chi-town met me for lunch today and we got to talking about how the Tsunami has been represented by U.S. media. My friends reported that the picture chosen by our hometown paper to represent the natural disaster was of a collapsed Starbucks. (Don’t worry Asian island dwellers–there is another Starbucks just ten yards from this one that is perfectly intact. Damn globalization!) It kills me that a corporate name receiving damage would take precedence over the people of those nations. Although I wonder if my hometown’s news editor’s assumption that small town Americans would be unable to empathize with foreign people an ocean away is a true one. I wonder if the familiarity of a Starbucks in shambles draws more compassion from my fellow midwestern dwellers than a brown-skinned face in agony. I sincerely hope this isn’t so, but remembering the hideous reactions to the few non-white citizens that found their way my slumbering hometown makes me doubtful.
I am curious–how has the media been treating the situation in the communities of my fellow Xanga authors?
Comments (4)
people need images of things they can relate to… and if it brings in the needed $$$ so use it…. one of the most heartbreaking pictures i’ve seen are of demolished schools and knowing that over a third of the students who attended those schools are dead and will never be back- even after the schools are rebuilt.
I wouldn’t mind seeing a damaged Starbucks about now. I might laugh. It would be a bit of comic relief. Seriously. CNN with Anderson Cooper had this two hour special every night about the Tsunami. That was intense. A lot of people around me feel nudged to do something.
http://www.christianity.com/naturalspirit
My hometown paper is the New York Times. The Times ran a chilling photograph on the front pape that showed a woman crying in agony, surrounded by the dead bodies of about ten babies. It was hard to look at. The Times actually got a lot of opposition for running the photo, saying that the photograph was exploitative… but the Daniel Okrent, the public editor, wrote an interesting piece about how it captured the enormity and uniqueness of this tragedy, whereas other photos that other papers ran were toned down and therefore missing something. I’m not exactly sure what my point is here… but I do have to say that I’ve been turning to the BBC for more extensive coverage… US news sources seem to be avoiding the topic. Go figure. Americans don’t want to hear about it.
To my attention all you exclaim looks like extraordinary
poultry seasoning | advertisements | apartments