Using Wordle, a web tool which analyses text to highlight key words in proportion to their frequency, I have compared newspaper reports about Haiti with reports of the 2008 earthquake in China. (I used news pieces from the Daily Telegraph, Times, Guardian and Daily Mirror - a total of approximately 1,500 words per day.)
Here is what the first day's coverage of each earthquake looked like according to Wordle:
Haiti (13 January 2010):
China (13 May 2008):
Initial coverage focused on reporting that the earthquake had happened - with words like DEAD, BURIED, RUBBLE, SCREAMING, COLLAPSED, STRUCK.
Two days later, the reports have a different flavour, with new words like UN, CHILDREN, STILL, COLLAPSED, TRAPPED and HELP featuring prominently in both disasters:
Haiti (15 January 2010):
China (15 May 2008):
From the above, one might almost say that a big earthquake has a built-in generic story - of large numbers of casualties, international commitments to help, the problems of delivering aid and the joy at finding lone survivors amid the widespread grief.
As time passes, reporting of earthquake stories begins to diverge into the particulars of each situation. So, ten days after the first reports, the focus in Haiti is on the relation between the different agencies trying to help (UN, AID, AGENCIES, RELIEF etc below).
Haiti (23 January 2010):
By the same time after the disaster in China, the reporting was about why so many buildings, particularly schools, had collapsed in the quake (CEMENT, CONCRETE, CHILDREN, SCHOOLS etc below).
China (23 May 2008):
One story from Haiti that was anticipated by the media but never really materialised was of violence and looting.
Four days after the quake, a New York Times headline was "Officials Strain to Distribute Aid to Haiti as Violence Rises." The story itself didn't deliver on the headline: there was only one, uncertain mention of violence, in the third paragraph: "reports of isolated looting and violence intensified as night approached."
In Britain, Andy Kershaw complained about the predisposition of the media, including the BBC, for this kind of story:
"This assumption that there is a security threat has gone completely unchallenged by an army of foreign press, equally unfamiliar with Haiti and the character of the Haitians. Indeed, TV reporters particularly, having exhausted the televisual possibilities of rubble, have been talking up 'security', 'unrest' and 'violence' when all available evidence would indicate anything but."
Unlike the New York Times story, the BBC had headlined an online report "Security fears stalk Haiti as quake survivors await aid", acknowledging that the story was about "security concerns" and "reports of gangs preying on residents and looting" rather than any definite information about violent or criminal behaviour.
