Thanks go to MSNBC's Will Femia for mentioning this web log in his on-line blog column on January 7. Femia also linked other web logs that question why no media alerts were issued after the Sumatra earthquake. George Murray of Graz, Austria subsequently sent word that as early as December 27 he was concerned about the absence of a tsunami warning via the media. He included correspondence he's had with the BBC.
Femia writes that he has a hard time imagining the major media reacting to a call from a scientist by immediately sending out an urgent tsunami warning to their clients. The response, of course, is that all necessary coordination with the media must be done in quiet times, not in the middle of a crisis. As a former journalist, I'm convinced senior policymakers at the Associated Press, Reuters, CNN, BBC and other agencies would have responded positively to NOAA's request to have emergency contact procedures in place.
As for Femia's skepticism that people in south Asia would have been monitoring the media as the tsunami approached, he might ask a few Americans where they get their news while traveling abroad. It's often in the kind of beachside hotels, restaurants and bars that were destroyed on December 26. As George Murray wrote to the BBC: "Is it unreasonable to think that some of the tourists in their hotels and/or hotel staff might have seen and perhaps heeded these warnings? Don't you have thousands of listeners in the affected countries?"
If it isn't happening already, NOAA must now launch an investigation into all of its agencies' activites once the Sumatra earthquake was detected. Plans must be made to issue potentially life-saving warnings to the media -- verbal warnings exchanged between people in addition to those sent to computers and fax machines. The news media must respond to these requests for cooperation by recognizing they can play a critical role in saving thousands of lives.
George Murray also reminded the BBC of Edmund Burke's observation: "No one could make a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little." Maintaining a list of media contacts to call may seem like a little thing compared to multi-million-dollar high-tech detection systems, but it's a necessary thing.
Doug Carlson
Honolulu, HI
January 9, 2005
www.DougCarlsonCommunications.com
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