Why the voyeurism in Haiti ?

[Tuff Gong]

Re: Why the voyeurism in Haiti ?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: evanovitch</div><div class="ubbcode-body">r is it dat u push dem in dat direction...</div></div>
LOL I push them?
Usually when I post the arguments have already irrevocably made and my point would not have made one iota of difference.

Take your position: You seem to agree with the argument that media is voyeuristic in its emphasis on the black-skinned suffering/death yet you leave the argument hanging that that Black Girl under the rubble don't win a Pulitzer Prize something inna something....maybe I am wrong?

[evanovitch]

Re: Why the voyeurism in Haiti ?

oh contraire..i take the position that there IS merit to the statement that media can n will behave in this way...my examples served to bolster the opinion i have...wedda there is this happening in Haiti is up to individual's take but i again concur wid the idea that the statement has merit....

[queenb]

Re: Why the voyeurism in Haiti ?

This is nothing new. I remember during the Vietnam &quot;war&quot;, t.v. stations showed a young Vietcong soldier gasping his last, in agony. He was about 14 years old. I stopped looking at the news whenever it was about Vietnam/Laos for years.

Death= sensationalism. However I don't necessarily link it to race. Sensationalism seems to be the name of the game. Pres. Eisenhower had a mistress for years, as did the Kennedys, but that news was considered hands off. With the internet and the public's insatiable drive for intimate details into the lives and foibles of public figures, the drive has now expanded to include the terrible natural disasters and violence of modern times.

[Sinco01]

Re: Why the voyeurism in Haiti ?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: evanovitch</div><div class="ubbcode-body">funny enuff the thought ran across my mind this mawning wen i saw a picture of a baby sleeping on top of a very stiff form...it brought to mind the reports of live people sleeping next to dead ones an i thought how differently it would be if these were white people..seriously...u would have the bold capitals of 'disturbing pictures' etc...

sarry but dere it is...the thought came to me fi real...i think they can show all that they do because if u think on it, weneva any body seeking to show poverty, it is always a minority shown....the various religious groups spring to mind wid dem ads for donations all the time...

so i guess people dont feel di said way wen is a minority as dem do to see dem own white faces reflected in such ads..who knows...

but i will say i am expecting that picture wid di lady wid wat seem to be locs half buried in rubble wid har face white wid dust, to win the Pulitzer Prize wen dat come run, ala the naked Vietanmese chick running while on fire and the blue-eyded Afghani girl from dat Soviet -Afghan conflict...

</div></div>


[img]http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/tools...cartoon-jan-18[/img]
cartoon ..

[diabolical_Tanya]

Re: Why the voyeurism in Haiti ?

[diabolical_Tanya]

Re: Why the voyeurism in Haiti ?

[Wendy]

Re: Why the voyeurism in Haiti ?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Peasie</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I actually read through this entire thread (without looking at the images). What RichD said back there was that with the speed of news via Internet, the delivery of news is changing. It is difficult to compare even relatively recent events, like Katrina, for e.g., to Haiti as technology has changed so rapidly and is now relatively cheaper than before. It seems everyone has a cell phone with video camera. </div></div>

Not to mention the people there on the ground who are NOT media posting pics of the tradegy to FB and other media sites. It was through a person's personal cellphone that we watched a woman bleed to death from the throat in the streets of Iran. We can't blame this all on the media.. plus we live in &quot;Need to know&quot; age.

[Wendy]

Re: Why the voyeurism in Haiti ?

I thought this satire by this artist has some kind of relevance to this thread

[Blackstar*]

Re: Why the voyeurism in Haiti ?

There's another phenemon at work here (in addition to those already mentioned). According to work by Shankar Vedantam, people are more responsive to individuals in crisis, i.e. one person's death is a tragedy; a millions deaths is a statistic. People give more when charities and the media personalize the effects of un/natural disasters. Graphic photos of individual persons suffering create greater feelings of empathy.

Here's an excerpt of an on-line chat with Mr. Vedantam:<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><span style="font-weight: bold">Washington, D.C.: </span>Fascinating article - thanks so much! It provoked a lot of debate among my friends on Facebook.

I noticed that this explains why charities have tried so hard to set up one-to-one connections between donors and beneficiaries. Like the thing where you sponsor a child in Africa or contribute to a particular person's loan through a microfinance organization. These groups have gotten in trouble for making the connection seem more direct than it is. It would be a lot easier for the charities do their work better if we just gave undirected money. But, wow, marketing with one individual's story is obviously a better way to touch your brain.

<span style="font-weight: bold">Shankar Vedantam:</span> Thanks so much, DC. I think you are exactly on the money here. Charities have often found themselves puzzled that telling people about millions who need help in, say, Africa is much less effective at getting people to open their wallets than telling people about the single child or person who needs help. This is why many nonprofits (either intentionally or unintentionally) have come to focus on individual victims. Even charities focused on non-humans do this -- The World Wildlife Fund would be a lot less effective in fundraising if it took the focus off the panda and talked about the thousands of species of animals that need our help.

_______________________

<span style="font-weight: bold">Washington, D.C.:</span> Is part of the problem the media? I can understand why quirky, unique stories like Hokget's get attention in the media -- because they're a departure from the norm (the norm, sadly, being death and destruction in faraway places). But the media attention garners public attention and then officials are forced to 'play politics' and devote resources to something like a single dog's rescue, or risk being villified in news reports.

<span style="font-weight: bold">Shankar Vedantam:</span> The media certainly have their fair share of the blame here, but it is not as if reporters and editors do not have hidden brains!

Journalists are also doing what nonprofits are doing -- they have found, through trial and error, that the anecdotal story about the single victim is much more powerful to read than a dry story about thousands of victims. The central problem is not that reporters do not write stories about mass tragedy; the problem is that it is much more affective to write about the single victim. Those are the stories readers want to read and hear about; those are the stories that get placed on front pages and on magazine covers and on the evening news. The downside of this collective bias is that we are much less able to feel compassion -- and act responsibly -- toward groups that do not have single victims around whom we can wrap our empathy.


<span style="font-weight: bold">Alexandria VA:</span> Is there evidence that we respond differently to a one-time tragedy versus the nearly-constant-tragedy that is life in much of the developing world? In other words, does the earthquake in Haiti loosen more wallets than the despairing poverty that was normal life in Haiti before the earthquake? Seems to me that it is &quot;yes,&quot; that we give to disaster relief in greater numbers than to continuing charitable work.

<span style="font-weight: bold">Shankar Vedantam:</span> This is absolutely the case. I don't know whether this is specifically true of Haiti, but many previous disasters around the world have shown that the disasters cause charity dollars to skew disprportionately toward the single cause. Again, and this is important to underline, the phenomenon is driven by compassion, not callousness. We see earthquake victims and want to do something to help. But at every moment, it is useful to remember that there are many more victims whom we do not see. I have personally found it useful to contribute to charities working in disaster areas, but not require that my money be used only for that particular disaster, but can be utilized by, say a Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders or a Partners in Health, in whatever domain the nonprofit believes would help the largest number of people. </div></div>

[andronian2]

Re: Why the voyeurism in Haiti ?

You know, I haven't been wtaching the orgy of coverage on TV, only reading a few reports to keep informed.
It's quite possibly I was subconsciously turned off by the very phenomenon rollin_calf mentioned.

[Blackstar*]

Re: Why the voyeurism in Haiti ?

When are Haitians looters and when are they just hungry?
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Philip Kennicott of the Washington Post believes that Hurricane Katrina helped pave the way for loosening standards for how graphic images can be published in the news media. He calls the graphic nature of the images coming out of Port-au-Prince dehumanizing. &quot;Bodies caked in dust and plaster, faces covered in blood, the dead stacked in the streets without sheets to hide them -- these are all violations of the unwritten code [how] death can only be seen, in the established etiquette of the mainstream media,&quot; he wrote in a recent essay.

&quot;[Haiti] was a country tossed aside, seemingly consigned to the status of a street person whose needs are intractable...The camera is recording something elemental that will affect everything to do with the future of this troubled country. It is asking if these are people, like us. It is asking if we believe they are human.&quot;

I am inclined to find the Port-au-Prince images so far more illuminating than exploitive. But Kennicott's larger point about the way the camera views brown people is totally sound. The lynching scene depicted in the Sunday New York Times was appalling. It is one thing to &quot;find&quot; bread; it is quite another to break into stores and score bolts of carpet and luggage while intimidating people with machetes and guns.</div></div>

[Blackstar*]

Re: Why the voyeurism in Haiti ?

Here's a comment made on the above article:
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><span style="font-size: 8pt">There are two ways of thinking about the photos. Yes, some are difficult to behold but they tell a story of people suffering unimaginable distress and degradation. The starkness of their ordeal needs to be personalized and shared. Blood-caked faces, piles of bodies, even the squalid crowded conditions in which these people are forced to live are part of the human drama and tragedy. No, these images should not be edited no matter how difficult to watch. They do not negatively define Haitians! Instead, what they do show,realistically,up-close and personal, are the negative conditions the victims have been forced to endure! We need to see in order to understand and to sympathize: mankind is one family.

Most distressing are the media's continuous loops depicting scenes of looters with the reporters' annoyingly insipid voice-overs trumpeting &quot;widespread&quot; lawlessness and &quot;total breakdown&quot; of security. AARGH! The camera pans to a charred body on the street. We are told he was killed and set on fire by a mob (of looters?!) for looting! Everybody is so sure of this they can't even preface looting with &quot;alleged&quot; or &quot;rumored.&quot; Any thinking person would ask WHY are starving people turning into vigilantes? Haitians in Port-au-Prince have witnessed police criminal brutality and they universally reject and loathe it. We are shown the bodies of two men shot by the Haitian police caught &quot;looting a market&quot; (but there is no sign indicating &quot;marche&quot; (or the camera person neglected to capture it); the building is rubble, it could be a house!) Zooming-in on their slim backpacks reveals no discernible foodstuffs. Not one outlet has even attempted balanced the reportage with perspective or present valid reasons WHY starving, thirsty, desperate persons would loot. Another newscast posits without any proof that the looters are some of the 4,000 inmates who escaped jail after its collapse. It's infuriatingly inflammatory, derisive and, if I may say so, gloating!

Then is the replay of Images of people, crowded on a hillside, who have been 5 days without food or drinkable water, fighting over boxes of food dropped from the &quot;safety&quot; of hovering helicopters because, the narrator states, of &quot;security concerns.&quot; &quot;Safety&quot; is the first priority for the providers, the report continues. No mention is made that survival is the motivating factor for these peoples actions. That's not criminal, that's natural.

One of the brighter spots was an interview with the US Lt General in charge of Rescue Command. He calmly assessed each question and firmly rebutted information about widespread looting and put down the specter of angry, unruly mobs of survivors. In fact, he stated emphatically that he admired people who, in spite of their distress, were uniformly patient, polite and orderly while lined up at the various food distribution centers. They all smiled and said Thank you, he said.

The magnitude of this disaster, the number of people affected, the primitive or non-existent infrastructures, the logistics are each sensational news items. When interpreting the on-ground reports we should know that some will be sensationalized for the sake of grabbing headlines. Some will intentionally dwell on the violence - watch the channels which make it their niche! We must learn to be discerning, remember the advice &quot;e caveat emptor&quot; and to take much with a grain of salt when ingesting the news coverage lest we become complacent, gullible sightseers.</span></div></div>